Nearly all major car companies are sabotaging EV transition, and Japan is worst, study finds

Just in: capitalism continues to be shit

Celebrated greed will be our end.
- The kick is there is a large voting block who thinks we aren't being greedy enough.
Let the market find the most efficient solution.

The market cheats, lies and scams.

Oh

This shit actually hurts my soul. This is the type of shit as to why we might not make it. We have the technology to mitigate climate change yet we don't because those in power don't want to see their power decrease. It's a serious reason why we might not make it. How do we even begin to take direct action? I really have no clue, this entire planet, life as we know it, is entirely fucked if we don't do something soon. The US government gave billions to implement charging infrastructure and the corps did jack SHIT with it, the government has become the corps fuck pig, bent over dishing out money while getting fucked.

Might not make it? Sorry man we're literally looking down the barrel of end times.

Human greed can only be stopped when the earth has nothing left to give.

This is the reality we all exist in and 99% of us are powerless to change it, unless we all collectively agree to (spoiler we're not gunna).
- It only takes 1/4 of a population to effect change.
- Nah, we're not powerless, and we don't all have to collectively agree. We have so many technologies that have been developed over the past several decades that can help solve this problem. Change is constant, this kind of shit is just another bump in the road.
EVs are garbage anyways. The only way to actually save anything is to migrate most of the commonly occurring transportation to public electric systems like trains.

EVs are made in a non sustainable manner by raping the earth for the last scraps of rare earth materials, they're hardly the answer
- Certainly correct, we still need a path to direct action and it needs to be everywhere.
- 19 downvoters bringing a strong "shooting the messenger" energy
Is there a number on the break even point where it’s better for the environment to buy a new EV than to keep driving an old ICE vehicle? I bike most days when I don’t need to buy more than a backpack of groceries or go more than 3 miles. Surely when you consider the carbon cost of refining materials and constructing a whole new vehicle, it doesn’t make sense in most situations for people who drive less than 30 minutes a day on average. This is of course assuming you have a current vehicle, new vehicles should have to be hybrid/EV in the modern era.
It's not a might at this point.
bro we're so far past this lol

it's been too late for probably a decade now, get ready to starve cuz there's only a couple years left

More of that capitalist innovation I keep hearing about huh. Finding innovative new ways to stop new technology that threatens their business from reaching a broader market! Great job

I guess one last year has been allowed. After that a flood of cheap (true prices) chinese EVs will arrive.
- Don’t worry, Biden just imposed tariffs on Chinese EVs so they can rest easy now.
So when they say capitalism is innovative, they mean like regressively innovative?

Sabotaged, or just efficiently increasing shareholder value. It’s called “Fiduciary Responsibility”.

I am constantly baffled how refusing to futute-proof the company meets the definition of "fiduciary responsibility".

"Let's spike today's profits by destroying tomorrow's profits" doesn't seem very responsible to me.
- It's because it's a prisoners dillema. If they do it and other companies don't, they are at a disadvantage. The only way to get proper behavior is to have the government force companies to behave.
- The desires of private shareholders, which have exclusively become "give me more NOW!" are wholly incompatible with the long term needs of our species, such as homeostasis with our sole shared COMMUNal habitat. The private shareholders that dictate how our economy runs through their captured governments literally only care as far out as their next quarterly earnings/ego score report, the planet can explode beyond that as far as they're concerned, and my pet theory is that the wealth class is so egotistical, living like Pharoahs as others suffer and still needing mooaaaaaaar, that they kind of want the world to end after they're gone, as they were the only point of it ever existing from their perspective.
  
  Our species only pays lip service to the second, because many to most of us have been successfully propagandized to believe in the lie that we may one day be in the irresponsible sociopath hoarder con-man class, whether through lottery or not buying lattes, lol. And heaven forbid we kneecap the gluttonous, destructive lifestyle we delude ourselves we'll one day have with... barf... responsibilities towards the societies that facilitated such unethical levels of antisocial wealth hoarding to begin with. Punching down looks fun amirite?
  
  Basically the self-inflicted doom of our species that we're sleep walking towards can be boiled down to this meme:
- the same reason that you're better off taking the lump sum vs the 30 year pay out if you win the lottery.
  
  money today that i can use today is worth more than money tomorrow.
  
  and money today that i invest now, will be worth a lot more than money tomorrow that i can't invest and get interest on
  
  it's not responsible in terms of my company lasting a long time... but it's responsible in terms of profit.
- It doesn’t.
No. So many people misunderstand that. No, it does not simply mean you automatically sacrifice longterm profits. Fiduciary responsibility is pretty widely open to interpretation because shareholders overall can want different things. Some stocks barely budge in price but the board gives good dividends. Some companies make no profit for years upon years because they are pushing for growth. Just chalking this up to fiduciary responsibility is misguided and misses many big reasons why many boards choose short term profits while sacrificing longterm sustainability. Many get most of their earnings in stock. As long as they can keep the share price up long enough for them to make bank, they have little care about the longterm health of the company. This is one of the reasons that stock buybacks have been so big over the last decade.
- Then other companies do stock buybacks instead of quality control in their airplane factories...
- Well, ackchyually… /s

Nothing surprising.

EVs have been developed since the 90s at least as far as I know, and progress on them has been sabotaged at nearly every turn by the industry.

Technically the first one was developed in the late 1800s, but it had a range of about 5 meters.
- 41 miles at 20mph.
- Wasn't aware of that. My thoughts were more towards the EV1, although I assume there were many others before that.
I remember an early Saturn EV that was never sold, only leased so GM could maintain ownership of them. Even with a limited range, the drivers all loved them for commuting and running errands, and many tried to purchase them outright, which GM refused. Eventually, GM issued a mandatory recall for all the Saturn EVs, mothballed the project, and then they released the Hummer... made me sick even at the time.
- Saw that on a great documentary, "Who killed the electric car?"

Japanese car manufacturers actually sell a lot of EVs... in Japan. They don't seem to be interested in selling those mini EVs abroad.

Well to be fair, trying to sell anything with the word mini in it in America is it uphill struggle; if there's one thing us Americans hate, it's walking uphill.
- Or just walking.
- Especially walking uphill both ways

And people don't really care about it . Let the wheel spin and get as much as you can while you ride, don't think about next drivers.

Here in Australia I busted someone with a locked Facebook profile who apparently worked at a ford reseller lying about Kias EV9.

He did the whole laugh emoji and called me a stalker, but deleted his message a few minutes later (probably got a call from his employer who I tagged who was probably worried about the legal repercussions). I pointed out it was libel to lie like that

hating EVs is a lifestyle choice for too many people in australia
- in the world*
  
  car goes vroom vroom and stick shift goes shift shift is honestly a lot of fun in responsible amounts. it will be a battle to undo the carbrain propaganda in people, including myself.
- Actually.. Just noticed one talking shit about EV's who works for Land rover.
  
  But yeah, I've realised the same people talking shit about EV's, tend to be the same people causing issues for everyone.. They always have a locked profile (because they troll that much), they're often anti-vax/anti-science and they're the kind of toxic a-holes who were buttheads in high school, and continue to be.
  
  I guarantee they also stocked meat and toilet paper during the pandemic, and tend to leave trash when 4wd'ing
- It's the policy of an entire political party. Remember "War on Your Weekend"?

Japan in japan sabotages cars. The real issue is that Japan went deep on hydrogen power combined with the large increase in electric prices after 3/11 any future of electric car died for the Japanese domestic market. Toyota in particular put its money in hydrogen buses, cars and other things which lead to a galaoagos tech like half of the rest of the crap in japan. Theres also some general resistance to electric over the past decade to create a parallel technology stack to china which fizzled out.

is that purely because they can't make them well or is there another reason?

honestly the japanese EV ive been in felt decent?

I know Toyota is still ragging on EVs because they invested a lot into hydrogen tech and want that to be the next big thing instead. But I didn't know Honda, Mazda and Suzuki also under-invested.
- It isn't about development investment. It's about engines. Engines have long tail after sales profits from maintenance and parts. It's why Toyota recently unveiled their ammonia fueled engine and declared electric vehicles are dead. Electric engines remove a ton of after sales profits in the form of servicing, spare parts and upgrades.
- Honda is full-on for hydrogen as well.
- Toyota may be cranky about EV's beating out hydrogen, but they're the company claiming to have invented some new solid state battery that has an 800 mile range and can charge 80% in ten minutes on a fast charger, which would be huge for the EV market.
- i hear it has to do with the fact they don't have much space for solar?
- I don't really understand the hatred for hydrogen honestly.
  
  It seems like a great tech. There are huge hydrogen facilities being built in Western Australia to crack hydrogen from sea water.
I know someone with a decade old Leaf and that thing is still going strong with more than 300k on it.
- yup that was the one! and it wasnt even that old. which is why i'm confused, it seemed good enough.
  
  japan seemed to me like one of the places where great EVs would consistently be coming from.
Japan doesn't have enough electricity. After Fukushima, they lost most of their nuclear. The country is densely populated, and the parts that aren't populated are covered in forested mountains, which all makes building the required amount of renewables very difficult. So today and in the future, Japan runs on coal and natural gas. So they make cars that run on hydrogen (which is more efficient to create out of their imported natural gas than burning the gas for electricity) and then sell those abroad greenwashed as "but you can produce hydrogen from green electricity!"
- First of all EVs do not need that much power. We are talking something like 25% more electricity production for a country like Japan. Then Japan has rather a lot of onshore and even more offshore wind potential. Mountains are a problem, but hardly something which can not be overcome. Solar can easily be installed on roofs and mountains are even less of a problem.
  
  Also really important to say it. Combustion engines in cars are massivly inefficent. So an EV is still better for the climate, even if run with coal electricity. The other factor is that Japans population is falling. So they will need less power over the long term.
Japanese carmakers were trying to go with hydrogen fuel and did a big grift on their government to get it subsidized. I think the idea was that Japan would have a national disadvantage with EV production as they don't have the material base for batteries but they could have an advantage with hydrogen.

Those failed, or course. Now they're a decade behind - there were only two Japanese EVs sold internationally just a few years ago.
The margins are thinner. There's almost no resale value. Someone might buy a 60k car and eat the payments for a few years, knowing that they can sell it any time for a decent price.

Buying a 60k EV is more like setting your money on fire. The car might be fine, great even, but it just won't hold it's value.
- why is that? i don't think lithium batteries degrade THAT fast?
  
  ~~if the used market had these dirt cheap evs here id probably be considering them.~~ scratch that there is no way to charge them in my country unless you live in a house, or unless you can use regular power outlets hahaha
- Guess I'll just buy a cheap used one then
- Those are reasons people don't want to buy EVs, not reasons for companies to sabotage the change over.
- There’s almost no resale value.
  
  That is not an EV thing, that is a new, rapidly developing technology thing.

Great timeline isn't it

Imagine where we’d be if this stuff was allowed to mature in the 2000s alone

Who [Is Killing] The Electric Car

Watching that in my high school electronics class was a early radicalizing moment
Today I learned: the "conspiracy theory" about the oil industry killing electric cars in the 90's was absolutely true.

Force them to commit or repeal Chinese tariffs

The tariffs were explicitly to protect them. To prevent them from having to compete. We're about to eat a lot of shit.
- Well they have to first compete.. I have yet to see a good under $25k mass produced EV

At this rate Saudi Arabia will beat Japan on EVs. A very big claim but I have cause to believe it.

The Saudis are also huge investors in Lucid Motors .
- Lucid already started making EVs in Saudi Arabia. And they also have investments in Human Horizons and an EV manufacturing deal with Hyundai.

Seems kind of spurious to call lobbying sabotage as if the politicians being lobbied are machines and not human beings doing what they've been elected to do as nominally bourgeois party members.

Seems weird to assert politicians do anything they were elected to do. They're far more worried about what the donor class wants.
- Politicians from bourgeois parties are going to serve bourgeois interests. Nobody should expect anything different from them.

We're all going to fry in old age. Our children are going to become sterile. Who tf knows what's going to happen to whatever ppl make it past that.

The Japanese car companies put all their eggs in the hydrogen basket, despite their early head start in EV with the Toyota Prius and such, and as hydrogen looks to be more and more of a dead end due to transportation and safety concerns, of course they are going to be sandbagging EV adoption to buy time and catch up.

Gotta love the Japanese culture of holding onto tradition until you can't anymore.

Gotta remember that Japan was still mostly feudal up until the World Wars. Pretty recent in human history.
China being a massive producer of EVs is also a large part of it. Japan and China have a long hatred of one another, but will sometimes set aside differences for simple things.
Care to share some sources regarding hytrogen safety?
- NEDO is a big public institution for renewable energy research. The budget is ~500M$ a year and they bet a lot in hydrogen : https://www.nedo.go.jp/english/index.html (https://www.nedo.go.jp/english/activities/activities_ZZJP_100096.html)

Companies doing austerity internally to own the clean energy enjoyers

Tesla and Tata Motors are exceptions noted, but noted highlighted in the article.

Tesla isn't really a major car company in the transitional sense since they didn't exist at all as a pre-EV car company.

Now that we've trained the whole world in american-style corporate criminality, we're gonna pull the rug out from them and reveal ourselves to be the good guys! Right? Right, guys?

Let's just block Chinese EVs. Crisis over

Sounds like oil tycoons didn't find ev adoption humorous any more

Link to the report

Blame everyone but your SUV driving selves. The devil made you do it Im sure.

I'm only buying Toyota because it didn't get sucked into the stupid EV craze. They have common sense. The U.S. doesn't even have the electrical grid to currently manage many parts of the U.S., especially California. How tf are we going to introduce a product that will require electricity, straining the electrical grid further beyond its capacity? It's fkin nonsense.

Not to mention.. the number of EVs (Teslas) that were having battery failures during the Winter in the midwest. And this last Winter was mild.

This is the most fear mongering nonsense I’ve read on Lemmy to date
The only reason Toyota is pushing back against EV is because they are so heavily invested in hydrogen powered vehicles, which isn't going to happen.
- Right. At the moment, hydrogen production is too costly, energy wise. If we could find an easier, better way to make it, that would change the game entirely.
- And still proudly producing gas powered vehicles which I will continue to outfit my family with.
Nobody is going to upgrade the grid, if there is no prospect of increased demand.

I've noticed that media tend to bitch equally about both surplus and shortage of certain commodities. Expensive power? Horrible! Cheap power? Catastrophe! That way the world seems even more depressing than it really is.
- Let's be honest: They're not even going to upgrade the grid if it fails and burns down half the state
- They should be upgrading the grid as the population and demand for electricity increases ahead of time. This is how it works in the tech world. We set the base for the upgrade and then commit to the upgrade with fall back / disaster recovery plan.
- That’s just the media doing its thing. Information content is a byproduct of making money. Actually, educating the public isn’t strictly necessary, because you can also manipulate emotions to attract attention and clicks.
Gas stations popped up where they could make money, cars came first and then the gas stations.
- Cool.. I'll buy an EV when both EV and electrical grid issues have been resolved. Until then.. LOL
Driving my Prius to own the libs
- Maybe one day when the libs work towards better public mass transportation, they'll drive their EVs to own the libs.
Been driving a VW ID4 for 3 years in Ireland. They're lovely to drive. Zero battery issues, zero charging issues. The future is electric.
Stupid is as stupid does.