Ban on new thermal cars in 2035: Germany changes its mind!

[phil59]

Did you know that one of the sectors using the largest tonnage of cobalt is the refinery sector?
Indeed, cobalt is a catalyst used in the refining process to help remove sulfur from petroleum that is refined into diesel or gasoline. Some of the cobalt catalyst ends up dissolved in refined petroleum, making it a contaminant found in gasoline and diesel. As these fuels are burned, the dissolved cobalt eventually ends up as an airborne contaminant that cannot be recovered or recycled. In a lithium battery, the cobalt remains in the battery throughout its life and is recoverable and recyclable when the battery reaches its end of life.

Extract of https://roulezelectrique.com/lutilisation-des-metaux-rares-dans-les-vehicules-a-essence/

So yes, electric has advantages, but it's going to be complicated to do it for everyone, and there's room for different technologies, everyone's happiness!

[Janic]

Extract of https://roulezelectrique.com/lutilisati ... a-essence/
phil

So yes, electric has advantages, but it's going to be complicated to do it for everyone, and there's room for different technologies, everyone's happiness!

technologies have no "conscience", a knife can cut a product just as well as kill.
The development of technologies has taken little or no account of the side effects which only appeared late and which caused people to become aware.
To impose a brutal explosion of electricity in the field of travel is to fall back into the same rut as that which accompanied the explosion of thermal engines because of the low cost of fuel. But, there again, it is a characteristic phenomenon of the rich countries, not of the poor countries.

[Ahmed]

NCHS, you write:

Wanting to tumble from top to bottom the automotive industry will cost users dearly, but isn't this voluntary on the part of environmentalists who have devoted 60 years of fierce hatred to this symbol of the "consumer society"?

In the 70s, many had actually realized the aberration of the generalization of this means of transport, but today these decisions are in no way the result of such a critical will, it is in fact a matter of instrumentalization of ecological discourse (relayed primarily by those who make a career out of it) to reform the economic system and thus attempt to temporarily overcome its current crisis.

[phil59]

technologies have no "conscience", a knife can cut a product just as well as kill.
The development of technologies has taken little or no account of the side effects which only appeared late and which caused people to become aware.

Well yes, a little anyway.

[Janic]

phil

Well yes, a little anyway.

Oh yes? For example?

[Ahmed]

I come back to this part of the quote that I commented on earlier in a fairly general way, neglecting this very interesting point:

Wanting to tumble the automotive industry from top to bottom will cost users dearly.

My remark does not only concern this sector, but can extend to the whole of the economic transition; what is the underlying logic? We are facing a set of unprecedented problems, not because of their nature for some, but because of their synergy.
To understand what I mean by that, you have to imagine that it goes from the climate crisis to the crisis of governance, via biodiversity and the environment, this in a context where the trajectory that had been put forward (sold!) was that of an ever-increasing mastery over all the conditions of the functioning of the human species (although seriously restricted from the Western point of view and its "disciples") and a triumph of " universal comfort" linked to science and economy. However, in the current context where the most decisive factor, which is the economy, is experiencing yet another crisis, a consensus is emerging among leaders to hope to reuse old recipes for overcoming contradictions by a "dialectical" leap, as was produced several times in the past. Except that there is a profound ignorance of the previous mechanisms where the mobilization of ever greater quantities of living labor (as well as fossil energy and materials) through innovative processes and over an ever-expanding geographical space had succeeded in overcoming these crises and therefore to restore the conditions for the accumulation of abstract value.
From now on, this schema comes up against an unprecedented conjunction which is the growing eviction of living labor in favor of dead labor (living labor petrified in machines), thus breaking with the possibility of future accumulations, especially since the World is already saturated (hence the fascination with utopian extraterrestrial industries). It is in this situation that the industrial transition must be considered: there is no other solution and if this option is devoid of any real logic, its existence counterbalances its vacuity, vacuity which is not intuitive and which therefore suffices for the moment to create an illusion.

[Ahmed]

Without value creation, the middle class is doomed and those below are very... concerned about an idea, such as universal income, which would seem to overcome this challenge, cannot succeed in the long term. As there is no question of really calling the economic system into question, these various technologically partially innovative solutions (partially, because they are closely linked to very traditional industrial configurations) are conceptually deficient.
The prospects for the rise, very much linked to the news, of the arms industries, as a temporary and above all rapid substitute, do not provide adequate bases for the social crisis since its consumption is very detrimental to its "consumers"... But remains consistent with more authoritarian states; the very people who showed so much hesitation, inexplicable reversals, have already shown themselves to be perfectly intransigent during the yellow vests crisis.

[sicetaitsimple]

You are certainly right!
But the question asked on this thread is that in 2035 (it's not far) it will be better in Europe to produce and supply locally produced electricity to electric vehicles than thermal vehicles supposedly powered by "e -fuels" supposed to come from very sunny or windy countries produced from gigantic factories?
Knowing that in 2035 we should (I think?) still need "a few" individual or utility vehicles.
Edit: I was trying to reply to your previous post, not the last one.

[Ahmed]

We can rephrase it another way: do these policies that are luxurious in relation to the real possibilities, which restrict themselves, allow such fantasies, needs or not?
All these redesigns, whether in one or the other case, assume to achieve the objectives either the scrapping of vehicles that are still functional (normative obsolescence) and massive productions of materials for new electric cars, or the same constraint for new (gigantic) e-fuel factories... Hello coal!

[sicetaitsimple]

... suppose to achieve the objectives either the scrapping of vehicles that are still functional (normative obsolescence)...

I don't think so, at least I've never read anything on the subject. Existing vehicles would remain until their end of life.
This is also a real question, would there not be a rush on thermal vehicles before a possible deadline for switching to electric? Certainly not easy to manage for builders.