“Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman accused President Biden of being “willing to sacrifice the American auto industry and its workers in service of its radical green agenda.”
I mean we could try and transition workers from a more negative industry type to a positive one…but that seems like a lot of work and less profitable, so never mind.
What the actual fuck is wrong with Republican politicians? I mean, I already know what’s wrong with Republican voters - brainwashing by years of Fox “News” - but the politicians? Are they all literal sociopaths?
No, they’re just doing what they’re being paid to do by special interest groups aka big business. It’s not a bug and it’s not a feature; it’s the point. Optimal profits this quarter. Every quarter is a new quasi generation of executives who want a good quarter before moving on after x quarters.
The philosophy behind conservativism is to stay still. Conserve the status. Do not progress.
But you’re describing a standard Dem. Repubs are actively trying to drag us backwards. They are regressives.
This is so infuriating, especially when it’s so easy to show that voting against progressive initiatives also hurts their own constituents…
This is so infuriating, especially when it’s so easy to show that voting against progressive initiatives also hurts their own constituents…
“I don’t care how much it hurts me, as long as the people I hate are also getting hurt!”
I’m already depressed as it is. Why do you have to do me in like that?
That’s a popular misconception. The philosophy behind conservatism is to perpetuate hierarchy. The ideology was developed by literal monarchists, and when the “divine right” excuse became untenable they moved on to others like racism and capitalism, but the goal remained the same. It only seems like they want to maintain the status quo because the historical status quo was hierarchical, but rest assured: if society were magically egalitarian instead, conservatives would vigorously try to make sweeping, wholesale changes to create a hierarchy from scratch.
Interesting insight. Thanks for the correction. Perhaps the choice of lexeme “conservatism” would best be swapped for a neologism like “hierarchism” or something to better describe the principles of the school of thought. Otherwise, I made the connection like OC that conservatism = no change, whether good or bad.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
developed by literal monarchists
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Correct.
They are in charge and are going to do everything to keep it that way.
As you said.
Nothing. They’re behaving quite rationally.
You just have to understand that their motivation is not “successful governing” or “making the world better” but rather, “getting more money.”
When you view their actions through the lens of self-enrichment, they’re behaving quite normally.
You gotta know at this point the system has feedback. Its possible most of them were raised on the same shit their constituents are huffing.
ever since the tea party and especially trump the inmates are running the asylum
Nah before that was Bush and Cheney getting us into decades long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan because some Saudis attacked us.
It’s been so long that the inmates are running the asylum in the GOP these days.
When you brainwashed for generations, you end with brainwashed in politics. This is just the beginning.
It’s just simple corruption (or lobby, as it’s called in the US), they are saying what the highest bidder asks them to say
The American auto industry could also produce EVs, if it so chose. Nobody has to lose their jobs.
As an American auto worker, I like our move to EVs and the jobs at the massive new factories we built. But I guess wanting blue collar workers learning new skills and technologies makes me a gay communist.
Why gay?
All communists are gay trans fairy men who love satan and hate guns. Didn’t you get the pamphlet?
I’ve been dodging memos and pamphlets for some time now.
Two groups conservatives hate.
Because nonsensical insults are their bread and butter, and just being a communist isn’t good enough anymore.
just being a communist isn’t good enough anymore.
Especially since they love Russia now (because it’s fascist), but the distinction between the communist USSR and the fascist Russian Federation confuses a lot of their base.
Because it’s part of the communist agenda.
Tesla is an American company. The ‘traditional’ American auto companies like GM and Ford don’t even build or source a lot of their parts in the US and Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep has been owned by a European company for quite a while now. This guy is a chump and I wish someone would have called him out on his BS.
This guy is a chump and I wish someone would have called him out on his BS.
It’s no wonder. He’s a Republican, so that automatically makes him a assbag. Also, Toyota has a Camry manufacturing plant in Georgetown, Ford assembles Escapes in Louisville, and of course GM makes Corvettes in Bowling Green, so it’s no surprise that he’d be regressive towards automotive tech (even though Ford and SK are spending like $4 billion to build two battery manufactuing plants outside Louisville).
Maybe someone should create EV incentives, with a requirement to be manufactured in country - both incentive to buy and incentive to manufacturers to invest in guaranteed growth area, and for their own future. Oops, that’s what we already have
The American auto industry could also produce EVs, if it so chose.
I find that very hard to believe.
A lot of manufacturers are. They just aren’t making as many EVs as they are ICE.
There’s also nothing stopping the big three from making EVs.
And making more than the minimum the government requires them to make for quota. Demand is even there now, so there’s no excuse other than the bottom line, plus a bit of cooperation with the oil companies.
So I keep hearing people say:
“Just wait until the big players get into the game, then I’ll buy a good car”.
Imo the big players don’t deserve to survive this transition. They had their opportunity to spearhead it but instead literally chose to be on the wrong side of history.
Nothing stopping big players but greed to get into the EV game.
Yeah but it’s cheaper to just kill the competition than expand into a whole new sector.
Perhaps they’d like to rollback all the times we’ve bailed out the auto industry. We don’t want the government to be choosing winners and losers, after all.
Please do. “too big to fail” is bullshit. All the equipment getting liquidated could have went to companies that could have started up for pennies. I can only imaging how many companies could have started and where they’d be today if they were allowed to do their thing.
I don’t know what this guy is pissed about. China is going to make their EVs in Mexico, like responsible American companies!
I’m really tired of republicans calling anything democrats do “radical” or “extreme” when they’re just pushing for the most mild stuff. I would die for some actual radical left ideas.
That’s weird, because my Ford PHEV was assembled in Kentucky.
It’s not even less profitable.
Jesus, what a stupid fucking hill to die on. Republicans never cease to amaze and appall.
If only they actually would die on that hill. They won’t, because they’ve conditioned their base to support them no matter what. Instead, they’ll rot the hill and move on to the next once the one they’re on can’t be salvaged.
Yeah, I don’t get it. I understand wanting to reduce or eliminate subsidies (they’re just a cash handout to dealers and manufacturers imo), but there’s no logical reason to be against EVs.
Here’s my proposal: allow tax credits for private sales. Perhaps add some requirements to certify that the seller owned the car more than a year or something to qualify to prevent flipping.
they’re just a cash handout to dealers and manufacturers imo
The US government subsidized $750B for the oil industry in 2022. The EV tax credit amount to peanuts compared to that. If you want a green energy and green transportation industry in the US, subsidies are absolutely necessary.
Their oil interest overlords are giving them their marching orders; it has nothing to do with logic (as usual) and everything to do with greed.
but there’s no logical reason to be against EVs.
There is, if you get paid by the Koch mafia.
Here is my reasonable argument against EVs. EVs only really solve the emissions part of the equation. They dont solve the massive amounts of paved surface, private ownership of thousands of pounds of steel and plastic, they still use massive amounts of energy to move that steel and plastic and building cities for cars is largely ineffecient and expensive to maintain.
We could do a lot more for the environment than EVs. Id rather see their subsidies go to things like electrified transit, cycling infrastructure or walkability improvements.
Don’t forget that subsidies also swing in the other direction to fossil fuels companies. If we want to eliminate subsidies, then why not for both players so the playing field is even again? Otherwise, giving EVs subsidies might actually level the playing field more than not.
I absolutely agree! I think we should eliminate fossil fuel subsidies, increase taxes on roads so road users (not income taxes) fully fund them, etc.
But if we’re going to subsidize used cars, it should apply to the private market and not just the dealerships.
There’s already a solid market for used cars, unless you mean EVs, so no use for an incentive there.
The point of an incentive is a temporary tool to accelerate the transition to less polluting technology. While EVs are new they naturally are more expensive, there’s temptation to import from cheaper countries, but the incentive makes them less expensive to buy, plus incents growth of local industry. I’d also vote to phase out the incentive after that transition has happened: fossil fuel incentives should have been gone half a century ago.
If you’re specifically talking the used EV market, the most important factor is time. The more new EVs there are, the better the used EV market will be in a few years. It doesn’t help to try to increase sales of used EVs when there are so few. If you are looking used, please be patient: let’s do what we can to accelerate the growth of new EVs, and one of the benefits will be a strong used market in a gpfew years
There is a logical reason to be against forced adoption before the technology matures. For a lot of the country they are not a viable replacement for ICE yet. They’re improving, but not as fast as ICEs are being phased out and that leaves a lot of places where a dwindling used market will be the only option for many people.
Hybrids: am I a joke to you?
What are you talking about? Pretty much the only thing I see on the used market are ICE vehicles. Do you live somewhere where they’re legitimately hard to find?
Are we in a “free market” or we not? The answer is “depends on what lobbyists want.”
Free market goes to the highest bidder.
Free market involves pluralism of systems and distribution of power as important preconditions. Lobbyism requires monoculture of systems and power being sufficiently centralized to be controllable.
Also, the free market is a tool, not a utopia. It optimizes for whatever the people setting the limits of it make it optimize for.
Hence things I said. Otherwise the wheel is free for taking for the worst people.
Free for me and not for thee.
To play devil’s advocate for a moment, is it really a free market if we are incentivizing one technology over another?
It’s too late. We’ve already hit the tipping point. Many of my neighbors have EVs now. They’re everywhere in my city and I’m not in a major city. They’re just plain better cars and now people know it. It’s too late.
Never underestimate the Republican ability to turn things into a culture war. My very conservative neighbor has an F-150 Lightning that his work provides him. When he first got it, he loved it and drove it everywhere. He truly seemed to believe that EVs were a better way to drive.
Then a few months ago he started making comments from the Fox News bubble. Things like, “the power grid just can’t support all these EVS” and “these EVs are so heavy that they’re destroying our roads” (note he has one child, and he bought his wife a 5,800 lb Yukon, so don’t tell me he honestly cares about vehicle weight).
Recently he bought a new ICE vehicle (a Bronco). I truly believe that he was this close to accepting that EVs have many advantages over ICE vehicles, but then he consumed enough right wing news to prevent him from making the switch long term.
Conservative brain rot. Seen it many times.
We need to do some reverse psychology to remedy this
Is Elon playing some 4D chess?
…nah he’s just a massive douche.
This is literally the one upside to that oxygen thief.
There’s a load of right-wing knuckle-draggers who view him as real-life iron man and therefore everything he touches is cool by default to them.
Tesla being the EV of choice for selfish idiots because of him still means fewer ICE vehicles on the road, at least
EV weight is a legitimate concern both in terms of road and tire wear. However, this is a problem more generally given the current market trend towards driving a siege tower around to go grab some groceries.
If he cared about the grid he’d put solar panels up.
Many decades ago, the US decimated parts of cities and a lot of railway infrastructure to make way for cars. It’s never too late to ruin something
Abortions were pretty popular for awhile too but the GOP still uh finds a way. Never underestimate the power of angry idiots in large numbers. Have you seen who is a serious contender for the presidency this year?
What’s the plan if we run out of oil? I mean seriously, it’s gonna happen eventually. Even if you want to ignore the science on climate change, you can’t ignore basic laws of the universe that oil is a finite resource. If we don’t have a plan for when it runs out, there will be utter chaos.
There’s not going to be a moment when the world suddenly goes from having oil to having no oil. Some oil reserves are relatively cheap and easy to extract. Other, very large reserves are currently so difficult and expensive to extract that doing so isn’t profitable. As the easy oil gradually runs out, the supply drops, the price rises, and sources of oil that were not profitable at the old price become profitable. This maintains the supply of oil and stabilizes the price.
Eventually oil will become so expensive that alternative technologies will be cheaper than it. This will happen with plenty of hard-to-reach oil left. So it’s true that the amount of oil is in principle finite, but that limitation isn’t really relevant.
Eventually oil will become so expensive that alternative technologies will be cheaper than it.
We’re already there. If you remove the subsidies for oil and tariffs for Chinese EVs, driving a EV would be the cheapest solution.
So prices will go up until you and me will get around with rickshaw. Whoever is poorer pulls the other. And while we bump forth; we wont have to worry about continued plastic pollution. Our rickshaw is made of metal and wood.
Carbon prices and other incentives and disincentives can help accelerate this, and renewable tech and green(er) manufacturing will play into this too. I suspect (and hope) the decline in oil usage will happen well before we run low on it.
We will move on. As it turns out there are billions if not trillions of dollars in that industry.
you can’t ignore basic laws of the universe that oil is a finite resource
TLDR - oil might be a finite resource but gasoline is not oil and it can be renewable. But it’s also a rapidly shrinking market.
The stuff can literally be grown on trees. It’s cheaper to pump it out of the ground, but it’s actually not much cheaper. Fuel from plants, which we farm in bulk for human consumption, can absolutely be used to create gasoline. It’s also net-zero — because the plant takes carbon out of the atmosphere to create the oil and then it’s simply returned to the atmosphere when your burn it.
Most gasoline in the USA contains at least 10% biofuel, and some is up to 85%. The latter requires an engine tuned to run on it, however it’s possible (and is an area of active research) if you’re willing to spend a bit more money to manufacture 100% pure biofuel that can run on unmodified engines. Porsche in particular has started selling a biofuel that is specifically designed to run on classic cars that were manufactured decades ago. They plan to produce something like a million gallons a month of the stuff, and it will work in basically any car. And if you have a classic car (designed for gasoline that contained lead) then it will work better than the fossil fuel you can buy at a gas station
The thing is though, battery powered vehicles are way cheaper than doing any of that. And if you really need a fuel based approach (e.g. batteries are just too heavy for large aircraft), then Hydrogen is a better option than any biofuel.
So - while gasoline can technically be environmentally friendly and is a usable source of energy for the foreseeable future, in reality it’s destined to follow horse drawn carriages and steam engines, a technology some people only use for their own personally enjoyment or to preserve our history.
Growing crops to make ethanol is not particulatly green. In fact, in most existing production loops we would be better off environmentally to just burn pure gasoline than produce the ethanol to mix into it, unfortunately. Too much water, too many tractors and trucks, and way too much electricity into ethanol production to be worth what we get out of it. And the bit of carbon the crops sequester doesn’t overcome it. Electric vehicles are by far the greenest option right now.
Not to mention ethanol (what the previous person kept referring to as “gasoline”) is far less efficient, can only be used in high quantities on certain types of engines, and creates excessive smog during warmer months.
Don’t forget that every acre of corn grown for ethanol is one less acre of food grown and when you increase from 10% ethanol to 100%, you’re going to need 10x the amount of land to grow these crops all so we can pay top dollar at the pump to live in smog filled cities and get 10MPG in our vehicles.
If we keep burning oil then our civilization won’t have to worry about it at all, whatever’s left will be for Immortan Joe
Synthetic. It has profit margin and purpose. Nothing we can’t fix without adding more bad things to the air…
Die. We will die. The only crutch that props up our massive jump from 1 billion pre industrialized society to our current 8 billion human beings on this planet, has been cheap and plentiful fossil fuel. Notably, it is the only thing that has allowed us to practice agriculture on a scale that supports our population growth. When it’s gone, there is nothing to replace it, short of a miracle fusion revolution.
The average carbon cost to produce an electric vehicle is about 6 tons on average, not including the battery, about the same as an ICE vehicle. Where does the energy for auto manufacturing come from? Primarily coal and natural gas, with a sliver of insubstantial wind and nuclear power. About 7 barrels of oil go into each and every tire on the road (between expended energy and actual petroleum products in the tire). Charging the battery? Coal, natural gas, and the same trickle of alternative sources mentioned above.
Speaking of those alternative energy sources, what do we use to make them? Building a nuclear power plant is likely the most carbon intensive process ever devised, from the machinery that moves the earth, to the foundry that makes the steel. As much as I’ve always wanted to believe in a cozy eco future, every time I squint a little I can see that it’s all just a coat of green paint over the same old oil field. The people trying to sell you on oil, and the people trying to sell you on alternatives to it, are doing the same thing. Selling you something. That’s all that matters to them.
There is no feasible alternative that changes the outcome. There is no replacement for what has allowed us to create wonders and horrors beyond our ancestors wildest dreams, and sustain a population far beyond anything we could have achieved without fossil fuels. When oil finally becomes unproductive, so will the mechanisms that hold our current civilization together, and we will wind up back in 1810 if we’re lucky, or 400ad if we aren’t.
Call me a doomer and downvote me or whatever. It doesn’t matter.
Yeah I was heavily into peak oil once, too.
Don’t underestimate the power of literally everyone on the planet really really wanting to avoid that situation. Life finds a way.
I don’t hold your hopium against you at all, I would love a positive outcome. I’m not holding my breath though.
You’re getting too anxious about what every little thing costs the environment. Yes, you’re right, there’s no silver bullet that makes anything magically sustainable, but there also doesn’t have to be.
Pay more attention to the overall environmental cost, or the change in environmental cost. Of course we’ll never get to zero, but it’s quite possible to get to a sustainable level. The big example is always an EV: sure, it costs the environment a little more to make an EV than an ICE car, but looking at overall costs, you’ve already made that up after only two typical years of driving on most places. And that will only get better as manufacturing gets more efficient and power production gets more green
with a sliver of insubstantial wind and nuclear power
Dude, come on. Looking at US electricity production, yes, natural gas is the biggest. But nuclear production is about the same as coal. And renewables are about the same as coal. And coal is dropping like a rock while most new electricity production is renewables. Nuclear and renewables together are pushing 40%. Despite short sightedness from some of our corporate politicians, it’s way more than a sliver
In a statement, Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman accused President Biden of being “willing to sacrifice the American auto industry and its workers in service of its radical green agenda.”
If you look up the 10 most “Made in America” cars, the top 4 slots by a huge margin are Tesla Model 3,Y,S,X , which are all EVs, and they are at near 100% (or 100% for some models). There isn’t another American car brand on the list. So when Coleman is talking about sacrificing American auto workers, who’s he talking about? A car that is 40% American because all the parts are made in China or Mexico and there’s some final assembly done in the USA?
P.S. Musk is an idiot, though I’m not sure that needs to be said anymore as its so obvious.
the top 4 slots by a huge margin are Tesla Model 3,Y,S,X
Is that true? I saw recently that 95% of Tesla’s cars are the Model Y. I assume a huge chunk of the remaining 5% is the Model 3, leaving very few Model S and X cars on the road. I’d be very surprised to hear that either one of them is in the top 4 best selling American made cars.
Edit: Just looked up this article of best selling cars in 2024, which includes non-American made cars.
Removing those, it looks like it’s:
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Ford F-Series: 152,943 units sold
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Chevrolet Silverado: 127,563 units sold
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Tesla Model Y: 109,000 units sold
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Ram Pickup: 89,417 units sold
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GMC Sierra: 68,597 units sold
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Ford Explorer: 58,465 units sold
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Jeep Grand Cherokee: 54,455 units sold
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Chevrolet Equinox: 54,185 units sold
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Tesla Model 3: 42,000 units sold (Looks like my 95% number was way off)
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Ford Transit: 39,890 units sold
I’d be very surprised to hear that either one of them is in the top 4 best selling American made cars.
I said nothing about top sales. I said “most made in America”. As in: of all cars sold in the USA, what are the top 10 which contain the most American manufactured parts and labor".
Oh gotcha, I misunderstood. Yes they are very much made in America. Seeing people complain about them and acting patriotic because they drive a Ford cracks me up.
how was that figured out? most evs have a less complex manufacturing process and rely on a shitload of electronic components that aren’t manufactured domestically. i’d be interested to see the methodology!
i’d be interested to see the methodology!
You’re welcome to read this 158 page PDF from the CBO https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/97th-congress-1981-1982/reports/1982_08_16_domestic.pdf
The main legislation comes from the Automobile Information Disclosure Act.
i meant the claim that teslas are the top made in america cars. i looked and found cars.com’s list of the most made in america cars and their dubious Made in America Index and that’s about it.
i also want to just throw an electronics manufacturing industry scoff at the CBOs methodology. i used to work for an electronics manufacturer that did mostly pcb assembly. a bunch of the work was government contracts or prestige stuff that had to say “made in USA” on it as opposed to the more clear symbol of a hollowed out manufacturing sector, “assembled in USA”. every day truckloads of parts from china would get soldered to PCBs from iirc taiwan and that was enough to earn made versus assembled.
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I like it much better when Republicans stick to pushing for things that are just useless rather than destructive.
Fuck them
Have they tried helping Lower Gas Prices or are they just trying to make owning EVs Illegal like TRUE Small Government, Free Market Leaders would?
So there are politicans who really believe that climate change is a conspiracy? Or they just don’t care for the future?
They’re bought by the oil industry
Remaining rich depends on them not believing climate change
Electric cars aren’t going to fix climate change
It’s gonna help. There’s not an all out 1 solution.
But don’t you see, unless there is one magical silver bullet solution that fixes everything then it’s all worthless and we should go back to dumping CFC’s into the atmosphere.
We should defintely still make EVs, overall they are going to be better than ICE. We just shouldn’t force/subsidize everyone to have to buy and drive an EV like we did with ICE cars.
Yes, but an easy target.
Who says EV are going to fix climate change?
I don’t think it matters whether or not they really believe it.
Those who don’t, believe in money.
NEWS FLASH: GOP Still Shameless Liars!
Congratulations, Elon. This is who you hitched your ugly Cybertruck wagon to.
Republicans don’t pull out
lol, looks like Elon Fuck’s brown nosing has failed miserably.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Republican lawmakers are attempting to overturn the twin pillars of the Biden administration’s climate platform: tax credits for electric vehicles and the Environmental Protection Agency’s new rules to curb tailpipe emissions.
The effort involves new bills introduced by members of Congress, as well as lawsuits filed by state attorneys general, all with the goal of rolling back the minimal progress made by the Biden administration to reduce the share of planet-warming carbon emissions produced by the automotive sector.
Last month, 25 Republican attorneys general filed a lawsuit intended to overturn the EPA’s recently finalized tailpipe rules aimed at slashing greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2032.
In a statement, Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman accused President Biden of being “willing to sacrifice the American auto industry and its workers in service of its radical green agenda.”
In the final guidance, some automakers that have EV battery packs with imperceptible trace amounts of minerals like graphite that originate from China or other “foreign entities of concern” now have a two-year extension to fully adhere to the Inflation Reduction Act.
During the run-up to the November election, Republican politicians, led by former President Donald Trump, have seized on electric vehicles as a wedge issue in the ongoing culture wars.
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