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‘It’s stupid’: why western carmakers’ retreat from electric risks dooming them to irrelevance
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
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Electric Vehicles
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Here’s a hot take you won’t find elsewhere: battery-based EVs are not a good solution to our problems - they require extraction of rare earth minerals often in areas with slavery and conflict mining, and strain on the energy grid. A far better solution is green hydrogen fuel cell based EVs and more investment in public transport, but it’s too hard to generate profits from either of those under capitalism, because the infrastructure costs required would be too great to be privately funded and public services are basically non-existent these days.
The physics are agaist this, batteries are more efficient than fuel-cells, so fuel-cell EVs would put infact more load on the grid in the end than battery based EVs.
You are mistaking rare earth minerals for conflict minerals such as cobalt & nickel etc. Neither are required to build an EV battery. LFP & sodium-ion batteries do not require said materials.
Hydrogen vehicles also require a battery and electric motors.
I don't understand how much different the "strain on the energy grid" will be from an hydrogen car compared to a battery electric one. Both require electricity either to charge or generate and store hydrogen.
In fact for countries with the huge strain on its grid I.e Ukraine, electric cars are more popular as with vehicle to load functionality (V2L) it can be used to power homes and devices under blackouts.
That is cool as fuck, though, to be fair, I guess you could also use any other kind of vehicle as a generator - but it would need adaptions, so I'll hand that to you!
No matter what battery technology you use, it requires an unsustainable amount of extraction if we want to scale it up to the same scale as ICE vehicles.
Sure, but on a much smaller scale.
Because if everyone gets home from work at 5pm and sticks their car on charge suddenly the residential energy grid gets a surge demand of a quadrillion megawatts, and that load is generally going to go through a grid that is not equipped for that level of load, and additionally that means the sources might not always be as renewable/green as we'd like. By contrast, green hydrogen can be generated in the place most optimal for it, at the time most optimal for it, throughout the day, situated close to renewable energy sources, with a dedicated connection to the grid, suitable for the demand
At current rates all the lithium required for battery production in China can be obtained by 2040 just from recycling old batteries with other materials followed closely behind.
Many grid operators have specific off peak pricing to encourage people to use electricity at those hours. You could set your electric car to charge at those hours to reduce the price you have to pay for electricity.
In fact certain energy providers have used the V2L capability built into many electric cars to balance the grid. Which in certain scenarios you could even get paid by your grid operator for your services.
Also gird operators already use dedicated batteries to balance the load from renewables so its not like batteries will not be produced.
Hydrogen vehicles for the same performance will require basically the same electric motors as a battery electric car.
Those sure are a bunch of pretty theories, but I think reality will not be kind to them. You can reject what I'm saying, that's your prerogative, but remember when you see the consequences of the current approach, you won't have the excuse that you didn't know any better.
Wishing you love, solidarity, and all the best <3
Hydrogen could/can be done greenly but there's a reason the oil and gas companies push it as the green option of choice when they're not trying to stop any transition at all: hydrogen keeps them relevant longer - most of it is obtained and transported through their systems. They'd love if we spun our wheels investing in a precarious energy transition into a new tech on the promise that the generation of hydrogen will eventually become green - they can draw that out for years.
Electrific cars are still basically the same thing for auto companies - keeping the car relevant, but there's value in the comparative mechanical simplicity and the fact that the electric transition has already made significant progress and is hurting oil and gas sales now.
Full agree that public transit would be a significant improvement, especially improvements in coverage area
Hydrogen is not green. It's a byproduct of the fossil fuel industry. What we need is bicycles and electric trains.
Green hydrogen is green. That's what the green part of it means. Fossil fuel derived hydrogen is called blue hydrogen.