Quote:
Originally Posted by iggy_oi
Meanwhile others are saying that if the free market consumers hadn’t been manipulated into believing fossil fuel use wouldn’t inevitably need to be greatly reduced there would have been a greater demand for better technology sooner which would have lead to more private money being invested into research and development, which ought to have lead to less government involvement. Free market only works flawlessly when greed and external influences aren’t a factor.
I don’t disagree that governments are doing an exceptionally poor job of handling this. Setting total emissions targets without any practical road map to achieve those targets is pointless. What they should be doing is promoting and expanding the use of existing greener technology and infrastructure that we know work so that people can more easily afford and more practically actually use those things. Will that make it so they hit their targets? Probably not, but it would actually reduce fossil fuel use which is more than I can say about most of their current plans which likely won’t result in their targets being achieved anyways.
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This is just garbage.
There are approximately 1 BILLION passenger vehicles (cars and light trucks) in the world. The potential profits, for designing new batteries (and every other technical item) required for bringing EVs to market at a reasonable price, are incalculably astronomical. I mean, Tesla alone was valued at over $1T not too long ago.
There is PLENTY of motivation to bring new technology to market.
This hasn't been a 'those nasty oil companies keep lying to us' problem, this has been a 'we simply haven't been able to get it done yet' problem.
Have the oil companies been guilty of providing information to support their position? Of course. But that happens everywhere, in every industry. Demand for new and better technology are inexorable. But the demands have to actually be achievable.