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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles
Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda cautions that an EV-only future could have serious repercussions for Japan’s auto industry. 
He estimates that 5.5 million jobs, including those in Toyota’s supply chain, could be at risk. Toyoda also reiterated his backing for gasoline vehicles, voicing skepticism about completely shifting to electric options.
There is no question that the automotive supply chain will be badly shaken by the phasing out of internal combustion engines in favor of EVs.  Most obviously, we have the gradual but certain elimination of fossil fuels, but we also have an enormous shift in parts, as we replace a drive-train with hundreds of moving parts (that are constantly wearing out) with one that is far simpler.
We all understand that, as the chairman of one of the world’s largest corporations, Toyoda has a profound responsibility to his employees and shareholders.  But as one of the world’s most powerful human beings, he also has a responsibility to everyone living on this planet to act in  a manner consistent with environmental sustainability.
The merits of his decision here will play themselves out over a period of decades, and there’s a good chance I won’t be on this planet to experience them.  But my children will, and I predict they’ll ultimately be quite unhappy about what went down here, one-quarter of our way through the 21st Century.
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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

It’s not completely clear where working class Americans are getting their information, but it’s obvious they’re being misled.

Wish this weren’t the case.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

It’s a good bet that most progressives are connected, somehow in their lives, to Republicans who still support Trump.  That said, as suggested in the meme here, that number is dwindling.

So many of the GOP faithful have simply seen enough–of the stupidity, the lies, the criminality, and most of all the threat to our democracy,

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Electric Vehicles

Re: the meme here, Plug-In America co-founder Paul Scott writes:

BMW will go out of business if they give up on EVs and try to make fuel cell cars. If you think charging infrastructure isn’t ubiquitous enough yet, try finding a station that sells H2. But the real kicker is that it takes considerably more energy to acquire H2 than you would use by just charging a battery. Plus you can generate electricity on your roof to power your home and car. I’ve been doing exactly that for 22 years. The only way to get H2 is to buy it from an oil company.

Yes, Paul, completely correct.  This is an example of the “fake news” we see all around us.  As our educational standards continue to decline, we’re approaching a point at which Americans will believe anything and political actors like Donald Trump are able to transform our nation into a third-world country.

BMW has done an excellent job in the EV space, and has no plans to make any strategic changes in its drive-train platforms–and certainly not in the hydrogen space.

From BMW’s most recent report on the matter:

We already provide our customers with an extensive range of all-electric, battery-powered vehicles (BEV). In 2023, another high-volume model, the all-electric BMW i5 business sedan, went on sale. MINI presented the new all-electric MINI Cooper SE to the public during the year under report. The Rolls-Royce brand launched its first all-electric model, the Rolls-Royce Spectre, in 2023. In 2024, the BMW Group will have a BEV option in virtually all its main segments. There will be more than 15 fully-electric models across all BMW Group brands on the market this year.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

What scares me most about Trump isn’t that he’s capable of fascistic thoughts like these. We’ve all seen him in action here, and this comes as no real surprise.

What’s most terrifying about our current-day politics is that, if he loses, Trump will want to bring out the military to hunt down all the “radical left lunatics” who beat him in a “rigged election,” and that he’ll be supported by tens of millions of heavily armed Americans.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

I just ran across this bumper sticker, but I’m having trouble figuring out what it means.  Here are a few suggestions.

The rules have changed in that:

1) Now someone, in this case a former president, can be indicted, tried and convicted of felony charges for crimes like business fraud, incitement of an insurrection, theft of classified government documents, and conspiracy to overthrow the United States federal government.

2) If one side loses, it can claim, without a shred of evidence, that the voting was rigged against them.

3) This country may be on the brink of ridding itself of the electoral college, which would eliminate the advantage that candidates have in states with a tiny population, like Wyoming, the Dakotas, etc.

I’m honestly struggling to understand this.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Here’s a blurb I came across on social media, in which a boyhood friend makes an important point about the use of the words “capitalism” and “socialism.”  If it seems familiar, it’s because it’s the same concept that I’ve been writing about for years. He begins:

Let’s make sure we are defining “Capitalism” and “Socialism” in the same way so that we’re speaking the same language. Per Merriam-Webster Dictionary:

“In the modern era, “pure” socialism has been seen only rarely and usually briefly in a few Communist regimes. Far more common are social democracies, such as Sweden and Denmark: democratically elected governments that employ some socialist practices but within a capitalist framework in the belief that extensive state regulation paired with limited state ownership produces a fair distribution of income without impairing economic growth. Capitalism is an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.”

But what is a free market? If a free market is strictly defined as “an economic system in which prices are based on competition among private businesses and are not controlled or regulated by a government,” then price controls, tariffs, etc. would be forbidden. However, a pure free market has never existed. Adam Smith recognized this and that externalities, such as the town commons, exist and must be accommodated. Thus, there has never been pure capitalism. There has always been an element of socialism to handle the inequities of externalities. IMO.

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I would only add that an astonishingly large number of Americans haven’t been able to think this out.  How many of the people who despise our country’s “wokeness” want to privatize things like infrastructure, public education, fire fighting, national defense, criminal justice, disaster recovery, and the dozens of other services that benefit all of us? I think I speak for damn near everyone when I said that, if my house is on fire, I want a taxpayer-funded fire department to come and put it out.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Business, Uncategorized

Without a doubt, the word “fascist” is overused in modern-day American politics.  This is understandable, given the mutual finger-pointing that has become so common in our discourse.  A great example from the Clinton-Trump debate in 2016:

Clinton: “Trump is a puppet of Putin.”

Trump:  “Puppet?  You’re the puppet.”

Having said all this, what are we to make of the general’s statement? Well, one could infer that Mark Milley, who served under Trump as the nation’s 20th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is some sort of woke socialist who actually hates the United States.

That’s a considerable stretch, but one wonders how Trump supporters deal with news items like this one.

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Science

At left is a brief discussion on the subject of public schooling, and, in particular, the question of who should make the decisions re: curricula.  The author suggests that the “client” to be served by public education is not the parents of the children, but rather society itself.

A couple of examples in support of this idea:

1) Science

Society is best served by educating kids in the basic sciences.  For example, the theory of evolution is the accepted scientific theory as to how all this plant and animal life got here.  Creationism isn’t a valid scientific alternative, and thus shouldn’t be taught as if it were.

The woman who taught my kids science in the local public school tells her class at the end of the year, “Now you know what scientists tell us about these subjects.  Are there other ideas?  Yes, for instance, that an all-powerful God created the universe and populated the Earth with various life forms.  If you like, you can attend a church and pursue this concept, but it’s not what they pay me to teach.”

A reader suggests that failing to teach science is a form of our child abuse.  I think he’s nailed something quite important there.

2) History

The best ideas in teaching of U.S. history reside in making sure our kids understand that slavery was an extremely important, albeit cruel, institution in the development of the southern part of our nation–even if that doesn’t support the notion of American exceptionalism and our nation’s moral superiority.

 

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by craigshieldsPosted on Posted in Renewables - Politics

Here’s another example of how Americans have somehow, and fairly suddenly, lost their ability to think.

Trump will say something that any five-year-old would immediately reject, but that statement will be adopted as fact by tens of millions of the former president’s adult supporters.

 

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