I saw this CNBC video on the Chinese EV industry and it showed how BYD has a fully vertically integrated production model and that’s how it can undercut the competition on price and quality. The report also said that BYD got $3.7b in subsidies between 2018-2022 almost as if US automakers including Tesla don’t get any subsidies.

Based on my reading artisanal mining has overall significantly reduced from ~50% to ~10% between 2014 and 2020, and during this period, China was equally if not more responsible for dealing with artisanal miners.

However, as of 2020, China simply does not deal with artisanal cobalt mining anymore (jokerfyingly presented as as "bad chinese company bows to pressure and ruins peoples livelihoods (while western ones still use child miners)").

As of 2023 in fact, it looks like the West is leaning back into the direction of artisanal miners and child labour.

So in China's defence, it does look like their mining operations are significantly more ethical. Though there's still an argument for an exploitative nature of the deal, it looks like a better operation than first appeared.

It’s green washing if it’s touted as the best strategy to combat climate change, which china doesn’t do rhetorically or with policy. China has over a billion people, and while they have advanced greatly with public transportation, people are still gonna keep driving. They can either keep burning gas or switch to EVs while China continues to make progress with other forms of renewable/sustainable energy. Not to mention other developing countries currently drive diesel vehicles which China seeks to replace.

Meanwhile, the US has resisted highly rated Chinese EVs and every form of renewable energy and not interested in public transportation, and instead they give Elon billions of dollars to jack off and make memes. They are not serious in anything except greenwashing.

even if the only benefit from EVs is future proofing and transferring carbon debt from the car to the power grid, that's still a huge boon since you can reduce a power grid's CO2 production

the moment cold fusion is solved every single EV becomes near-zero emission, the same cannot be said for carbon emitting cars, and for that reason alone every country with the means to do it should be trying to make sure the future average citizen's cars can run on electricity

Like Ryan said, it is green washing if it's viewed as the end to climate change. The best solution is mass public transit and ending fossil fuel use.

The efficiency of fossil fuel power plant production is greater than the efficiency of a single ICE car, so the overall emissions are lower, but emissions will grow the more people drive.

Now if the power source changes from fossil fuels, then the emissions go down a lot, except for what is needed to exploit resources to make the cars and the power production.

Which EV(s) have you driven?