This is a difficult topic with too many tentacles to explore here in great detail.
I think Chinese EV's are Trojan Horses.
Why?
Well, without protectionist policies they could implode auto manufacturers everywhere. It would be a game-over extinction event.
In addition to this, they would also implode even more layers of industry and the supply chain outside of China. Again, game over.
The other effect has to do with energy. Nobody has enough energy to support a full transition to EV's. That has been the case for a very long time and it is even worse now when AI data centers are at the top of the list for energy.
Which means that the world will have to build new power generation capacity at a staggering rate in order to support EV's and AI.
Where will all the components and systems come from to build this generation capacity? China.
They manufacture everything and can do it (and are willing to do it) for less than anyone else. Their internal supply chains have been optimized over decades to create competitive advantages that do not exist anywhere in the world. From blenders and microwave ovens to solar panels, every component that goes into making inverters, storage, mechanical, etc.
Also, think of everything required to support massive EV deployment: Charging stations, transformers, power lines and myriad other components and systems. All made in China.
Finally, the renewables power generation infrastructure requires maintenance at roughly modulo 25 years. And, once again, all of that material will come from China.
If one were to be strategic and have the advantage of time and patience, making cheap EV's that can be sold by tens of millions of units per year into every possible corner of the world becomes a genius Trojan Horse strategy with massive long-term payoff.
And then, if we were to add a little conspiracy-theory flavor in there...Imagine a scenario where they carefully backdoor control into everything. They would be able to remotely shutdown any town, city, state, province or country. Did I go too far on that one? Well, human history proves we are capable of doing horrible things to each other, you know, like walking people into gas chambers and carpet bombing. We are one good power outage away from being cavemen. I wouldn't put anything past the realities of the human condition.
And then add cheap mass-produced humanoids to that equation.
Well played I say. The next few decades will be in a range between interesting and horrific.
French car makers sat on their asses since the 80s. Their repair shops are dumps where you are scammed every time you go. Last but not least, they moved the production of their car to cheap countries. Their car sucked until Japanese companies like Toyota came and threatened their business. They deserve to have their asses kicked for all this.
As for the "made in China," it’s not a Trojan horse, it’s the reality we have since the 80s too. Everything is already made in China, except cars. If I want to be patriotic, I buy local food or clothes, it’s the only choice I have nowadays.
Nothing would change except a few French billionaires complaining about a foreign company eating their lunch by selling cheap cars that people can afford. I certainly can’t afford those new EVs, but I could buy a BYD, it’s the only choice I have and it’s not China’s fault. It’s the greed of all the western companies who sold cheap crap at expensive prices.
If the car industry is that important to the west, then we can nationalize it and strip the current ownership/management of everything they gained from the venture, since they've clearly squandered their lead in the space in favour of siphoning of cash instead.
Alternatively, we could reduce the relevance of the car market entirely by transitioning towards a transportation system that is not focused on automobiles, favouring trains (these are still competitive when built in Europe afaik) and bicycles (we'd have to learn to make these in the west again, but this is a smaller leap than doing the same for cars). This also helps with the energy consumption issue since these modes of transportation are vastly more energy efficient.
> If the car industry is that important to the west, then we can nationalize it
Nope. History has taught us --many times and across many cultures-- that this is a truly bad idea.
> we could reduce the relevance of the car market entirely by transitioning towards a transportation system that is not focused on automobiles, favouring trains
Nope. If we are talking about the US, this is impossible. It would require a complete re-engineering of not only our society but every single town and city. We have enough problems that we fail to address to add another pipe dream to the list. Look at the disaster that is the high speed train project in California. Now imagine that multiplied by a thousand, or ten thousand.
> and bicycles <snip>.
C'mon.
> This also helps with the energy consumption issue since these modes of transportation are vastly more energy efficient.
>> If the car industry is that important to the west, then we can nationalize it
>Nope. History has taught us --many times and across many cultures-- that this is a truly bad idea.
I don't think there's any valid argument for protectionism without accountability or in the very least any form of return from the car industry. Currently, there's very little of that.
>> we could reduce the relevance of the car market entirely by transitioning towards a transportation system that is not focused on automobiles, favouring trains
>Nope. If we are talking about the US, this is impossible. It would require a complete re-engineering of not only our society but every single town and city. We have enough problems that we fail to address to add another pipe dream to the list. Look at the disaster that is the high speed train project in California. Now imagine that multiplied by a thousand, or ten thousand.
China has built arguably the most expansive HSR network basically from scratch in 10 years - what essentially entails a complete re-engineering. Decarbonizing will be a complete re-engineering. Hell, building out the road network was arguably also a complete re-engineering.
Quit making excuses and start delivering results, there's no valid argument for the west adopting a position of patheticism given our past.
>> and bicycles <snip>.
>C'mon.
Not exactly what I would call a compelling argument.
>> This also helps with the energy consumption issue since these modes of transportation are vastly more energy efficient.
> I don't think there's any valid argument for protectionism without accountability
Why are you changing the subject? I replied to your idea of nationalization.
> China has built arguably the most expansive HSR network basically from scratch in 10 years
The US is not China. We cannot do what they have done. There are dozens of reasons for this.
Again, go study the California high speed rail project, stop and think.
>> and bicycles <snip>.
> Not exactly what I would call a compelling argument.
The idea is ridiculous. Even countries that are known for bike rarely get to even 10% bike utilization. Do your research and do a little analysis. In the US, the idea is just plain ridiculous. Our town and cities are not built for bikes or mass transport.
>>> This also helps with the energy consumption issue since these modes of transportation are vastly more energy efficient.
>> Given reality, this is irrelevant.
> Yikes.
Well, I am glad you learned something there. You have a lot more to understand yet. I mean, we can't even maintain our existing roads and you are talking about building entire new rail-based mass transportation systems. Again, while commendable in isolation, reality makes this either impossible or nonsensical.
I think a reasonably large fleet of self driving EV's is something that is within the realm of attainable reality in the US. If a robotic Uber-like service were to be available at a low enough cost, people might start to question owning cars or driving them all the time. That is also well within the practical reality of life in the US in most towns and cities. And that's within the realm of something that is attainable without having to rip-up and re-engineer every town and city in this country.
More importantly, this would not require a full electrification of our ground transportation system at a 1:1 scale; meaning, we will not need to replace 300+ million existing vehicles with 300+ million EV's. I have no clue what the right number might be. I could see a scenario where we end-up with 100 million EV's and 50 to 100 million IC vehicles in, say, 30 years. Most of the EV's might be robotic ride-share vehicles and the IC vehicles might serve special purposes.
That's the difference between ideas. What I am talking about is attainable and likely sensible. The energy, resource and ecological benefits are plain to see. Behavioral changes are not massive and align well with existing patterns. It might even save people money by making car ownership (and the insurance and maintenance that goes with them) less necessary. Etc. Trains and bikes will not ever work here. Nice dream. Not real.
> The other effect has to do with energy. Nobody has enough energy to support a full transition to EV's.
If every ICE car in the US were replaced with an EV driven the same distance per year we would need about 20% more electricity.
Raising US electricity production 20% over a 10 or 20 year transition to nearly all EVs doesn't seem to be unreasonable.
Note that this does not mean that the US would need to produce 20% more energy. As ICE vehicles are replaced with EVs the oil that would have been refined into gasoline for those ICEs could instead be used for electricity production.
> Charging stations, transformers, power lines and myriad other components and systems. All made in China.
Is that really true? It has been a while since I have worked with anyone in that industry but the last time I did, quite a lot of it was made in the US.
Assembled in the US might be a better way to put it. Nearly every component is made in China or elsewhere. This already makes less and less financial sense for a wide array of products, from consumer to industrial.
For example, components and assemblies for televisions are made in China (and Korea). They are shipped to Mexico and assembled there into televisions. This is because there's volumetric efficiency in shipping well-packed components for assembly in Mexico. A finished television in a box consumes most of the shipping volume with air. You pay a lot to ship air. If, instead, you can pack components efficiently, you can ship more TV's per container as parts than as finished products.
Are you saying this because you have experience in the industrial power products industry? Or because you're presuming it's the same as how TVs are built?
Because when I worked in the industry, it wasn't. A lot of the components weren't stocked on a shelf, they were made to spec, on demand, and occasionally under the supervision of a customer inspector. It's not at all like assembling a TV.
I am narrowly talking about what I might call the mass elements of the EV transition. The simplest example of this would be chargers. Regardless of where they might be assembled, all components are likely made in China and some in other places. Consumer (home) chargers are likely all fully manufactured in China.
Yes, I did work with high power electronics. However, I do not have any experience in grid-scale electrical components (large transformers, transmission lines, etc.). I would not be surprised to learn that a significant portion of this is sourced from China. This is certainly true of a large percentage of residential, commercial and industrial electrical components. Walk around Home Depot and see how many US made electrical components you can find.
I am not trying to be negative. Sometimes reality just sucks, and ignoring it does not lead to solutions.
Sure, there are certainly a lot of parts made in China, for a lot of things in a lot of product categories. I did work for a short time at a company that made grid scale components and pretty much all of the things they sold were made domestically. I also worked for a few other industrial manufacturing companies, and I noticed a pattern -- things that are too big to fit into a shipping container, or too custom/critical to outsource tended to get made domestically.
> Walk around Home Depot and see how many US made electrical components you can find.
Quite a bit actually, especially compared to other product categories. Breaker boxes and breakers are often made in Mexico. The wiring is mostly made in the US. Much of the conduit, boxes, and fastening hardware is too. More basic switches and receptacles are often US origin, and many with more involved electronics inside will be Chinese. It's probably one of the most US-made aisles in the store.
I know because I've replaced most of the electrical system in my house since I've bought it, and pretty much the only Chinese components are lamps/fixtures, and a couple of USB charger outlets, and some GFCIs. The boxes, romex, service connection, and grounds are all US origin. The breakers are all Mexican. The switches and outlets are all US, and the GFCIs are mixed origin with a few being Chinese.
I mean, I get your point that buying more stuff is good for the Chinese -- but that could apply to just about anything, I don't think there's some conspiracy to do with electrical equipment here.
It's part of their plan to shift fossil-fuel economy stack to electric stack, just so China can own a piece of the supply chain in as many industries as possible
I agree with most of this. Chinese EVs, power electronics, and solar and wind power generation hardware are in extremely strong positions and have a lot of market share. Economies of scale will make it hard to unseat them. The world will have to build electrical generation capacity at a staggering rate to transition to EVs, a transition that is very likely to happen due to their lower costs and higher efficiency. There is a major risk of backdoors and remote shutdowns.
I do have three quibbles, though.
1. you say:
> Nobody has enough energy to support a full transition to EV's.
Probably what you meant to say is that nobody has enough electrical power generation to support that transition. Conventional, full-sized electric vehicles will, for the most part, be displacing internal-combustion-engine vehicles which consume about three times as much energy. That energy consumption will evaporate. Transport is about 27% of US energy consumption and about 15% of world energy consumption; electrifying all of that transport would drop those numbers to 9% and 5% respectively. (Reality will stop somewhat short of that because electrifying long-haul airliners is not in the cards.) So we're talking about a significant drop in energy consumption, not an increase.
But it will be a significant increase in electrical energy consumption. The US, for example, currently generates about 460 gigawatts of electrical energy (using, mostly, much larger amounts of primary energy) and uses about 800 gigawatts of energy for transportation, so we're talking about adding another 270 gigawatts, average, of electrical generation. This will probably be mostly solar, which will require about 1400 gigawatts of nameplate solar power generation, assuming a 20% capacity factor. This amounts to about US$7 billion of investment at the current bloated US equipment prices, which will hopefully come down to more like US$1 billion before all is said and done. Additional transmission and distribution capacity may triple that. The intermittency of solar doesn't bother EVs at all—quite the contrary, those EVs amount to something like 3000 gigawatts of decentralized, dispatchable electrical energy storage, with a total storage capacity on the order of 70 PJ ≈ 20 TWh.
The above assumes that the EVs are exactly as efficient as the ICEs they replace once the energy gets out of the engine, rather than, for example, being lighter or having regenerative braking. I'm only assuming a factor of 3 reduction in energy use due to using 90%-efficient electric motors instead of a 30%-efficient ICE. There are additional interesting effects from EVs being more efficient and able to scale down to the scale of scooters, which we should expect to increase the energy usage of transportation.
2. EVs are only cheap if you can recharge them cheaply. So EVs steamrollering the global auto industry is a scenario preconditioned on the rollout of that electrical generation, transmission, and distribution capacity. Nobody will buy EVs if they expect frequent days-long blackouts or extortionate prices for electrical energy. This may be a spur to the deployment of decentralized solar generation even when it's inefficient. But in any case it seems like a regulatory mechanism that will keep the transition relatively orderly.
3. You say:
> Finally, the renewables power generation infrastructure requires maintenance at roughly modulo 25 years. And, once again, all of that material will come from China.
I have three separate subquibbles with this.
3.1. The 25-year thing is kind of a myth. (I corrected you in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42424748, 19 days ago, the last time you made this false claim, so you already know, or should know, that it is false. In https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42539289 you seem to be saying that you don't care whether the things you're saying are true or false, but hopefully I've misunderstood you or you've changed your mind, and at any rate other people presumably do care.)
In more detail: solar panels are subject to significant infant mortality from things like hotspots, breakage, and delamination, but after that, crystalline photovoltaic capacity degradation is a pretty continuous process, typically at about 0.5% per year. Usually this is modeled as a linear decline, which means that you have 87% of the original capacity at 25 years of age, 75% at 50 years, and 50% at 100 years, but of course nobody has panels that old to test with. We do have 50-year-old panels, and they seem to have degraded significantly less than that.
Solar modules typically come with a 25-year warranty because what is being warranted is that they will produce at least 90% of their rated power for that time. (To ensure this, initially they produce a little more than their rated power.)
Some degradation mechanisms, in particular corrosion of copper conductors in the panels by water, catalyzed by acetic acid released from the UV-induced breakdown of EVA glue, as well as browning from that same breakdown, seem to accelerate over time. Others, like milky discoloration of that glue, slow down. It's possible that those that accelerate will dominate, causing panels to fail en masse rather than slowly degrading, especially in humid climates where corrosion is more of a concern. But that won't happen all at once at 25 years; it might happen at 30, 40, or 60 years, or not at all.
The most in-depth paper I've found on this is "Degradation analysis of photovoltaic modules after operating for 22 years. A case study with comparisons," https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038092X2... showing lots of different kinds of degradation, with photos. It mostly focuses on a particular case study in Spain, but is careful to explain how circumstances vary elsewhere. "Long-term degradation rate of crystalline silicon PV modules at commercial PV plants: An 82-MWp assessment over 10 years," https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/pip.3456 covers 13 different commercial PV plants in Spain and Portugal and analyzes different modes of degradation seen there in somewhat less detail. Finally, "Technology and Climate Trends in PV Module Degradation," https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56690.pdf, is a slide deck from NREL from 02013 that summarizes the degradation rates seen in several thousand studies, including amorphous silicon and other thin-film cells and many degradation studies over more than 20 years.
(Due to US protectionism, First Solar is still making and selling a significant number of thin-film panels there, and those may have different failure characteristics than the monocrystalline silicon panels that are almost universal elsewhere.)
So, probably, for the most part, people will respond to solar generation capacity degradation by adding more panels, not replacing existing ones.
3.2. You seem to be envisioning a scenario where the electrical grid gets built out by more than 50% over the next few years in order to support a transition to EVs—and then the buildout stops, because I suppose nobody can figure out what to do with two or three times as much super-cheap solar energy, once they have electrified their current level of travel?
This doesn't seem like a likely scenario to me. Much more likely is that, as the cost of energy goes down (and energy in the daytime becomes almost completely free) people will find ways to "waste" what today we would consider massive amounts of energy on things we wouldn't consider now, just as we waste billions of CPU cycles and gigabytes of RAM in a way that seemed improbable 20 years ago.
This means that, even if solar panels dropped dead at the 25-year mark instead of gradually degrading, we probably wouldn't see a giant bolus of electrical capacity buildout over the next five years, followed by another one in the years 02050–02055. Instead, we'd see gradually increasing amounts of electrical power generation capacity being built every year over that timespan.
3.3. Even if we did see the collapse you are implicitly predicting in new electrical power generation capacity installations after the grid grew to accommodate new EV and AI demands, followed by a giant replacement effort in the 02050s, what leads you to predict that China will still have the virtual monopoly on solar power it enjoys today? Every industrialized country in the world seems to be currently scrambling for energy sovereignty—some in implausible ways like Mexico's giant bet on petroleum and Argentina's bet on nuclear, but others simply by copying China's success, such as Brazil, Vietnam, India, Thailand, Malaysia, and the US—and some of them will surely be successful. And, as other commenters here pointed out, there are already other makers of power electronics.
Thanks for a thought-provoking comment! I'm interested to hear what you think.
Yeah, I didn't try to estimate losses due to the rest of the energy system itself; there are also transmission losses with electrical energy, as well as battery losses. Do you have a ballpark for the sizes of these different losses? I'm assuming that for gasoline it's mostly the energy consumed in hydrocracking?
> And then, if we were to add a little conspiracy-theory flavor in there...Imagine a scenario where they carefully backdoor control into everything. They would be able to remotely shutdown any town, city, state, province or country.
Doesn't that apply equally to every Western product which has a CPU? Like that cars made by a billionaire who makes rockets and digs tunnels?
> Doesn't that apply equally to every Western product which has a CPU? Like that cars made by a billionaire who makes rockets and digs tunnels?
Well, I don't know about the qualification process for tunnel digger or EV components. In aerospace, each and every part you use goes through a very detailed qualification process before it is selected into a design.
Industry is based on trust. Using TSMC as an example, every semiconductor company using their foundry works on the basis of trust and verification. In other words, there's a likely reasonable expectation and assurance that the chips will be made as designed and not modified with nefarious intent.
You then have companies like ST Micro, who are heavily investing in their own fabs. There are assurances there as well.
My guess is that the path to potentially dangerous technology might be through products entirely made in China. A Chinese EV has no US or European regulatory oversight of any kind for potentially malicious software and back door access. The same is true of such things as EV chargers and other potentially critical components.
The vectors for such attacks don't have to necessarily be destructive. I'll give you a simple example: We do not make display modules in the US. We don't make the chips that drive them either. Nobody knows what's in them. They are black boxes designers use to make computer monitors, laptops, car dashboards, medical and industrial equipment. It wouldn't be too crazy to add circuitry into these chips to be able to simply shut down or alter the operation of displays at a massive scale. Bingo! You make hundreds of millions of systems inoperable.
This is clearly in crazy conspiracy theory territory. Then again:
In that case, eleven million cars were sold worldwide between 2009 and 2015. This makes me believe that automotive hardware and software don't really get scrutinized at a level necessary to prevent their use with nefarious intent. Perhaps the new potential reality will change this?
Imagine buying a bunch of Chinese humanoids to work at your factory. Now imagine how much you'd have to trust them. Do you? I am not sure I would.
Way back when the first Bamboo Lab 3D printer came out, I supported their project on Kickstarter and got a few of them. When delivered, we learned they had to connect to the Bamboo (Chinese) cloud service for everything, from printing to software updates and more. Returning them was not possible. We sold them all and got rid of the potential exposure.
I think Chinese EV's are Trojan Horses.
Why?
Well, without protectionist policies they could implode auto manufacturers everywhere. It would be a game-over extinction event.
In addition to this, they would also implode even more layers of industry and the supply chain outside of China. Again, game over.
The other effect has to do with energy. Nobody has enough energy to support a full transition to EV's. That has been the case for a very long time and it is even worse now when AI data centers are at the top of the list for energy.
Which means that the world will have to build new power generation capacity at a staggering rate in order to support EV's and AI.
Where will all the components and systems come from to build this generation capacity? China.
They manufacture everything and can do it (and are willing to do it) for less than anyone else. Their internal supply chains have been optimized over decades to create competitive advantages that do not exist anywhere in the world. From blenders and microwave ovens to solar panels, every component that goes into making inverters, storage, mechanical, etc.
Also, think of everything required to support massive EV deployment: Charging stations, transformers, power lines and myriad other components and systems. All made in China.
Finally, the renewables power generation infrastructure requires maintenance at roughly modulo 25 years. And, once again, all of that material will come from China.
If one were to be strategic and have the advantage of time and patience, making cheap EV's that can be sold by tens of millions of units per year into every possible corner of the world becomes a genius Trojan Horse strategy with massive long-term payoff.
And then, if we were to add a little conspiracy-theory flavor in there...Imagine a scenario where they carefully backdoor control into everything. They would be able to remotely shutdown any town, city, state, province or country. Did I go too far on that one? Well, human history proves we are capable of doing horrible things to each other, you know, like walking people into gas chambers and carpet bombing. We are one good power outage away from being cavemen. I wouldn't put anything past the realities of the human condition.
And then add cheap mass-produced humanoids to that equation.
Well played I say. The next few decades will be in a range between interesting and horrific.