Electric vehicles have far fewer parts than gasoline cars — no radiators, exhaust pipes, fuel tanks, fan belts or complicated gearboxes. As a result, many autoworkers, executives and politicians have hypothesized that such cars would require fewer workers, leading to mass unemployment in factory towns and cities worldwide....
I understand the desire completely, though I suspect that being grid-tied is cheaper in most locations:
wind is a lot cheaper with bigger turbines, which don’t make sense for individuals (though community ownership would be reasonable)
grid-tied systems are a lot cheaper than fully disconnected ones in most locations, and need a lot less storage, since they move electricity from where the sun shines or the wind blows to where people are
It’s not just the upfront savings; it’s that it takes truly huge amounts of storage to deal with intermittency in one location. You need a lot less storage in the aggregate if you can move power from one location to another. This makes systems where almost everybody is connected cheaper for society as a whole.
They’re also doing it because the amount of solar China has built is big enough to be on the verge of displacing much of the coal-fired electric generation. The article mentions this in passing as “weak demand” rather than a full description.
What Happened When a German Car Factory Went All Electric (www.nytimes.com)
Electric vehicles have far fewer parts than gasoline cars — no radiators, exhaust pipes, fuel tanks, fan belts or complicated gearboxes. As a result, many autoworkers, executives and politicians have hypothesized that such cars would require fewer workers, leading to mass unemployment in factory towns and cities worldwide....
A teacher promised his 1978 class an eclipse party. He just hosted it. (wapo.st)
Three greenhouse gases, three all-time highs (messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com)
The Method Behind Trump’s Mistruths (www.nytimes.com)
The first all-electric tugboat in the US is about to launch (www.canarymedia.com)
Arizona Reinstates 160-Year-Old Abortion Ban (www.nytimes.com)
What to do if your eyes hurt after the eclipse and how to spot damage (wapo.st)
US Wind and solar capacity projections rose as a result of the Inflation Reduction Act (slrpnk.net)
source
Banks Made Big Climate Promises. A New Study Doubts They Work. Using European Central Bank lending data, researchers said there was not evidence that voluntary commitments were effective (www.nytimes.com)
The U.S. Urgently Needs a Bigger Grid. Here’s a Fast Solution. A rarely used technique to upgrade old power lines could play a big role in fixing one of the largest obstacles facing clean energy (www.nytimes.com)
US EPA mulls tougher limits on new gas plants as 2024 election nears (wapo.st)
In Landmark Climate Ruling, European Court Faults Switzerland | But the European Court of Human Rights ruled as inadmissible two other climate-related attempts to hold governments accountable. (www.nytimes.com)
The Man Who Snuffed Out Abortion Rights Is Here to Tell You He Is a Moderate (www.nytimes.com)
China's top coal province Shanxi to cut output for first time in seven years (www.reuters.com)
Prosecutors Ask Supreme Court to Reject Trump’s Immunity Claim in Election Case (www.nytimes.com)