I absolutely love that the tyrannical bullying by the US is going to result in a globally-visible solar win.
That being said, now I worry that this administration will simply bomb them from existence to keep it from happening.
It is hilarious how America is suiciding itself at multiple levels with its latest dick-wagging:
- It’s seriously pissing off its allies and pushing neutrals away.
- It’s showing the US’ force projection capabilities as a much smaller and weaker stick than they have been boasted as being.
- It’s acceleraring the move away from Oil and the USD status as Reserve Currency is linked to Oil trade and when it ends, well, Helloo hyperinflation!
- It’s acceleraring the move away from Oil when the US is commercially doubling down on Oil, which means that the US is stuck in a commercially fast shrinking market and in developing yesterday’s Technologies.
IMHO, we are right now living the end days of an Empire, something that even in the Modern Era only seems to happen maybe once a century.
Funny how the anti-green energy USA is expediting the adoption of renewables around the world due to their moronic laws, policies and wars.
Can’t wait to see them left behind in the past with all that oil they can’t get enough of, when nobody will need it anymore in the rest of the world.
So that “drill baby drill” didn’t just backfire, it backfired spectacularly yo the point where I’m thinking that we still might have a chance to stop climate change. Thanks Cheetos!
I hate to tell you, but building solar isn’t going to do it. We need to basically defy thermodynamics in order to decarbonize the oceans and atmosphere simply to SURVIVE climate change. We are not stopping it. It’s already at heat levels that were, at one point, predicted to arrive in the later half of this century.
Edit: why down votes? I don’t understand. Nothing I said was wrong or rude or off topic. For what reason do people dislike this comment other than it made them feel sad?
I’m open to defying thermodynamics, if that’s what it takes!
Okay so let me go over this again as I have an idea…
Nation that’s struggling with dependency on petroleum and unreliable supply chain turns to renewable energy. The solar energy is clean, reliable, requires little maintenance, and is helping that country become less reliant on foreign petroleum.
If that works for Cuba, a tiny nation with few resources, perhaps it would work in other more wealthy nations also. Perhaps if a nation were, say, reliant on petroleum to the point that they start multiple multinational wars to ensure their own access to oil, costing literally $trillions, it might be cheaper to put some or all of that money into renewable energy. Presumably China will sell their solar panels to whoever’s buying, yes? So why wouldn’t a larger, more developed country purchase them in great quantity so spending $trillions on military actions in the Middle East would no longer be necessary?
If a country like this has some of their own domestic oil production, wouldn’t it be a desirable future to just walk away from the Middle East entirely, let the oil assholes kill each other without our involvement, and run the country for a few decades on sunshine? Use that money to buy solar panels literally by the boatload / container-ship-load (or buy the tech and manufacture them ourselves), and then national security is improved through removing foreign dependencies?Or is this just crazy talk?
Have you even said thank you to the oil companies?!
Have you even said thank you to the oil companies?!
Good point. They made oil prices so high I bought a Tesla. Thanks guys you really did me a solid, best car ever :D
If that’s your best car ever, you haven’t driven many cars.
It’s a 2023ish car so pre-refresh. The suspension is stiff and it lacks a lot of luxury creature comforts. But it’s FUN AS HELL to drive, tons of chargers everywhere, the nav system is top notch, and the self driving system is light years ahead of anyone else’s. Plus they don’t sell their customers data like GM and some others or show ads on the display like Stellantis.
Fun to drive? I’ve never experienced that. You drive a car. They’re all pretty much the same. I never take it above about 75. I wouldn’t call that fun. What’s fun about it?
Go test drive one and you’ll understand. Seriously.
Cars are pretty much the same, EVs are a different animal. No shifting, instant torque, full torque at all speeds. A Tesla SUV can out-accelerate many gas-driven sports cars. You put the hammer down on the highway and you’ve got instant 1st-gear-level acceleration.
Most people just want a reliable safe car, not a high-performance penis extension.
Out of all EV manufacturers, why tf did u decide to get a Tesla?! Hope you got yourself a used one, at least.
There was a point in time where Teslas really were the only good EV worth talking about.
Unfortunately, that’s arguably still true, in the us. Given the current administration’s desire to roll back the calendar, outside EVs have been effectively banned, and many of the choices we were finally about to get were cancelled.
If I were looking for a new EV today, Tesla is still by far the most compelling choice available to me.
Golf carts are better EVs than Teslas.
All oil lobbiests, oil barons, and dipshit right-wingers whose primary source of info is focks nooz, blowroganexperience, and other propaganda outlets: it’d take 30 years to get the infrastructure in place for rEnEwAbLeS!
So what you’re saying is if we started during the oil crisis of the 70s, we’d be celebrating 25 years off our dependency on petroleum? If we started at the turn of the millennium we’d already be in the home-stretch toward completion?
You can’t think that way. Just understand that building clean infrastructure is too difficult and too expensive and will take too long. The electric car is always 10 years away.
(Like the dude or not- this is something you gotta give Elon Musk credit for-- before Tesla the electric car was perpetually ‘10 years away’, Tesla actually went and built one, and a whole fast charging network, with the intended goal of embarrassing other automakers into producing their own EVs and chargers. It worked, and I truly believe without Tesla we’d still be hearing that the electric car is only 10 years away.)
But for real, as a Freedom-loving American- it pisses me off because the sooner we start the sooner we’ll be finished, and then from a national security POV we are MUCH better off as we aren’t depending on shithole sandbox countries with religious dictatorships to provide our fuel.
Ehh, Tesla was building those things before Musk took over. It’s like the Nazis and the autobahn, these people are taking credit for previous good decisions when they take over.
With respect- I have been following Tesla closely since the original Roadster was first in development. Your statement is not correct.
When Tesla started, Elon was one of the first, and biggest, investors. A man named Martin Eberhard was one of the team, he was put in charge of Tesla and wrote a blog that I read religiously. The original Roadster, under Eberhard, had a two-speed gearbox- no clutch, just a synchromesh. This would allow one to select either rocket fast acceleration in first gear, or higher top speed in second gear.
The gearbox however became a significant source of problems. Making a gearbox work at 16,000 RPM is difficult, getting one that shifts under load at 16,000 RPM and will last for 100k miles (without costing a fortune) is a real challenge. And while not impossible, it’s not something that had been done cost effectively for a vehicle before. So Tesla went through several gearbox designs and multiple suppliers trying to make one that was cost-effective and reliable. Demo cars were loaned to reviewers, locked in 2nd gear so they wouldn’t shift.After the 3rd or 4th attempt at the gearbox and a year plus worth of delays, Elon took over Tesla. Eberhard was pushed out. He was salty about that and for a while wrote a blog called ‘Tesla Founders’ which was critical of Tesla. As I recall there was a small legal dispute, it was solved and Tesla/Eberhard went their separate ways.
Anyway, Elon took over at Tesla, and one of his first orders was delete the shifting gearbox, use a simple non-shifting reduction gear (inexpensive and lasts more or less forever if you keep it lubricated), and make the motor bigger to provide more torque. The result was the Roadster. Model S, the luxury production sedan, followed. Then Model X, luxury production SUV, Then Model 3, mainstream sedan, and Model Y, mainstream SUV. All under Elon, as the company grew from a ‘might not make it’ startup to one of the biggest automakers.
I say you’re incorrect because all the ‘good decisions’ Tesla made in the beginning were under Elon, NOT Eberhard.
All of the good decisions?
There were of course other people at Tesla- smart people who made lots of good choices.
I’m simply pointing out that your initial assertion (that other people made most of the good decisions, Elon showed up after those decisions were made and took credit) is demonstrably false, given that pre-Elon the company was proceeding down an ultimately failed engineering path.
Okay, now you are changing what I said to continue to make your point that “Elon saved the company” which is very different from your original claim that “Elon provided the vision”.
It’s infuriating how successful the oil companies have been at turning solar vs oil into a fucking culture war.
ain’t this the damn truth.
I know! Oil is just a fiction and we can totally grow crops and fertilize them and make pesticides and plastics and chemicals with sunshine and rainbows which is why the population reached 8 billion by 2000 BC!
So they went full solarpunk?
no, read the article: they went a smidge solarpunk, are mostly petrolpunk, and often there-is-no-electricity-todaypunk
