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Forgive me, but I think this perspective is broadly insane. The use of electric cars - or electric anything else - is a solution only to the extent that the electricity used comes from renewable sources. And those renewable sources need to be really renewable, not something that we can maintain for five years until there need to be mass replacements.
If you look at https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix you see that the big story of the last few years is a massive upsurge in coal. Solar capacity may be growing but so far has managed only to propel world solar usage to the giddy heights of 2.8%. Scaling up to even 20% would produce massive issues in the manufacturing requirements (silver) and battery requirements.
In general I think there is this common problem where the battlegrounds over climate measures have been fought so intensely for so long that people have long forgotten the chains of reasoning behind them. For the forseeable future electric cars are just a more complex way of turning fossil fuels into movement, and one third of new cars being electric means diddly squat except more competition for cobalt.
Apology accepted, don't let it happen again ;)
Since electricity generation is your main point of contention, let me address that. I can't understand how you can look at that graph you posted and say there's been a surge in coal power. Over the span of 10 years coal went from 42000 to 45000 tw/h, which is actually misleadingly positive about coal cause that 42000 is after a dip from 44000, whereas over the same timespan solar when from 800 to 5000, growing more both in absolute and relative terms. Overall coal looks pretty stagnant to me. Also, about the 2.8% market share, to put that into perspective, the electric car market share was pretty damn close to that in 2019. It went from just under 3% to over a third in seven years. These kind of transitions happen faster than you may believe possible and the solar curve looks pretty similar to the electric car curve to me. As for the resource issues, I remember during covid when people where freaking out over a lithium shortage due to EVs that turned out to never happen. Capitalism is actually pretty good at solving these supply issues if you let it do it's thing.
Now, if I may engage in bulverism on why you think coal power is surging, conveniently the energy institute recently released it's world energy report for last year. To give the relevant numbers, global energy generation grew by 855 tw/h and renewables grew by 861 tw/h, yes you read that right, renewables grew more than global energy did. Part of the reason is because coal declined by 58 tw/h, which doesn't sound like a boom to me. However despite that co2 emissions rose by over 300 million metric tons. Where did this increase come from if globally fossil fuels are stagnant? Well, just under half of that increases is coming from the US and pretty much entirely from coal. If you are american I can therefore understand why you think coal is booming, based on your personal experience it probably is. But america is the only place is it booming and everywhere else it declined so much that americas coal boom wasn't enough to offset it (in energy terms if not in c02).
Finally, ever if the above was not true and clean energy never grew from where it is now EVs would still help reduce co2 because ~20% of electricity generation is clean energy which better than gas cars which are 0% clean energy.
I will never apologize for being a climate bloomer.
I was talking about the big surge in coal from 2000 to 2011 ('last few years' not very helpful), where it nearly doubles from 27k TWh to 45k TWh and then remained stable as you say. Natural gas has also heavily expanded.
FWIW your bulverism is incorrect, I live in the UK. My skepticism is that from where I'm standing in the UK these technologies are being incredibly pumped up by governments and institutions that believe buy-in is the most important factor for growth, so they're all operating on a fake-it-till-you-make-it mindset as well as subsidising like billy-o.
The EV sales figures you cited don't distinguish between true battery-powered EV vehicles and hybrids, and indeed almost nobody does. (Again, my suspicion is that this is to juice the numbers.) I therefore found it difficult to find a good source but https://www.cnbc.com/2026/05/19/hybrids-having-their-moment-as-car-buyers-rethink-electric-vehicles.html suggests that true EV sales are broadly stable (and low) while hybrids are doing well. EV sellers like BYD are certainly having a moment and are visible in the market, but are nowhere near a third of all car sales, and that's before you start looking at takeup of used vs new cars.
I am not saying that you're completely wrong, or that this isn't somewhat good news rather than bad news. I'm saying that you're presenting pretty curves and I'm not willing to take it as-read that those curves are going to curve up till they hit the stars. It may happen, it may not. Reform UK had great growth last year, beating the Conservatives out of the park, but Reform has now broadly stabilised at a level significantly lower than they need to win elections outright.
Because nobody is actually buying battery-powered EVs.Sorry, that was mean :P What did happen? I am/was expecting higher battery demand to lead to supply issues.I don't understand why you thought a surge from more than a decade and a half ago would be proof of much of anything about the modern energy market. Technology has changed a lot. Theres a reason why the all the globes growth last year came from clean energy. Sorry about the bulverism. I will refrain from further assumptions about you.
I did not find it difficult for either europe or china. As you'll see it's mostly BEVs in both markets. America is once again the odd market out. You really shouldn't be using american stats as representative of anywhere else. Although there is a lot of variation between markets, with some having a lot of hybrids and others being completely dominated by BEVs.
This a particularly poor analogy. It's the nature of politics to blunt growth curves. In technology the kind of growth curve I'm talking about is the norm with the only notable exceptions being when a tech got cockblocked partway by an even better tech. Any if the curve ends because we find something even better than gas or electricity I'll be plum happy to eat salt on that one.
People anticipated the crunch and dug more lithium mines to meet expected demand. In fact supply increased so much that in spite of sky rocketing demand prices have continued to fall.
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Surely the fundamental argumeny here would also include the relative efficiency of electricity used in EVs versus fossils used directly in EVs. Electricity has some transmission/generation loss, while ICE seems like it produces a lot of waste heat. How do these net out?
It does seem like a safe assumption that solar will rise in prominence.
I dare say it's probably net green on EVs but tbh I don't care to look up exact numbers as I expect the effect from this to be small potatoes.
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