China was no good at cars. Then EVs came along.
After the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and ’70s crippled China’s economy, the country began to open its markets to the outside world. The aim was to bring in technological know-how from abroad that domestic firms could then assimilate. By the early ’80s, foreign automakers were allowed in on the condition that they form a joint venture with a Chinese partner. These Chinese firms, by working with foreign companies, would eventually gain enough knowledge to function independently.
Or so the theory went. Chinese-produced cars subsequently flooded the market, but they were largely cheap copycats—they looked like foreign-made cars, but the engines weren’t as good. Car makers in the US and Europe had too much of a head start for China to catch up.
The only way to outdo the rest of the world, then, was to bet on a whole new technology. Enter electric vehicles, which require less mechanical complexity and rely more on electronic prowess. A Chevrolet Bolt’s electric engine contains just 24 moving segments, according to a teardown performed by consulting company UBS. In comparison, a Volkswagen Golf’s combustion engine has 149. Meanwhile, China already had an electronic manufacturing supply chain in place from its years of producing the world’s batteries, phones, and gadgets.
Now the Chinese government is embracing the shift from combustion to electric engines in a way no other country can match. It’s made electric vehicles one of the 10 pillars of Made in China 2025—a state-led plan for the country to become a global leader in high-tech industries—and enacted policies to generate demand. Since 2013 almost 500 electric-vehicle companies have launched in China to meet the government’s mandate and to cash in on subsidies designed to generate supply.
Read more at Why China’s Electric-Car Industry Is Leaving Detroit, Japan, and Germany in the Dust
Global coal demand is expected to grow again in 2018, driven by “strong” fuel burning in China and India, the International Energy Agency (IEA) says.
The IEA’s Coal 2018 report finds that global coal demand grew by 1% in 2017 after two years of decline. 2 The rise was chiefly driven by global economic growth, it says. Despite recent growth, demand is still below “peak” levels seen in 2014.
Demand is likely to “remain stable” until 2023, the report authors say. This is because falling demand in western Europe and North America is likely to be offset by increased demand in a host of Asian countries, including India, Indonesia, and Vietnam.
Read more at IEA: China and India to Fuel Further Rise in Global Coal Demand in 2018
If we fail, it won’t be just the president’s fault.
This week is the third anniversary of the Paris climate agreement. The Trump administration marked it by working with Russia and Gulf oil nations to sideline science and undermine the accord at climate talks underway in Katowice, Poland.
While I was in New Delhi this week, where I met with solar energy advocates, a comment made thousands of miles away by the journalist Bob Woodward almost jumped off my iPad: The president, he said, “makes decisions often without a factual basis.” This isn’t a mere personality quirk of the leader of the free world. It is profoundly dangerous for the entire planet.
Scientists tell us we must act now to avoid the ravages of climate change. The collision of facts and alternative facts has hurt America’s efforts to confront this existential crisis. Ever since Mr. Trump announced that he would pull America out of the Paris accord, those of us in the fight have worked to demonstrate that the American people are still in.
But the test is not whether the nation’s cities and states can make up for Mr. Trump’s rejection of reality. They can. The test is whether the nations of the world will pull out of the mutual suicide pact that we’ve all passively joined through an inadequate response to this crisis.
Read more at John Kerry: Forget Trump. We All Must Act on Climate Change.
Delegates to the UN climate conference in Poland have reached agreement on how to implement the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, which comes into force in 2020.
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Climate change chimes with young people in a way that is sometimes missing with older people, who make up the bulk of negotiators here.
The sense that perhaps this UN process doesn't quite connect with the modern world was summed up best by Mohamed Nasheed, the former president of the Maldives and now their lead climate negotiator.
"Almost 10 years since I was last at these climate negotiations, I must say, nothing much seems to have changed.
"We are still using the same old, dinosaur language. Still saying the same old words.
"Still making the same tedious points."
It would be hard to argue with this view given the shenanigans that played out at the end, when one country, Brazil, held up progress at the talks on one issue for a couple of days.
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Perhaps the most memorable image of this meeting was that of 15-year-old Swedish student Greta Thunberg.
This teenager who has organised school strikes in Sweden held daily press conferences here to drive home her message that platitudes and warm words just aren't enough anymore.
Her message was sharp and succinct.
"We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis."
Read more at Climate Change: Five Things We've Learnt from COP24
![[Sources: (Battery Plans) Bloomberg ; (Top EV Companies) Inside EVs ; (Moving Parts) UBS] Click to Enlarge.](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMmVYUa9uj3rOGCNMnAzpmr783Rnt9Ya0Dv1iKkRRKJX9-bIdo-tcQH4FJECX5-2zRsgld4zaCEI7uOBYRqOfc6ieVRBpDs4hMk5FSISRzPd8KWNfP-jmMHo86dybhsIM15IMLK1H6UWU/s1600/car-data-1.png "[Sources: (Battery Plans) Bloomberg ; (Top EV Companies) Inside EVs ; (Moving Parts) UBS] Click to Enlarge.")
