- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
Chinese technology companies are paving the way for a world that will be powered by electric motors rather than gas-guzzling engines. It is a decisively 21st-century approach not just to solve its own energy problems, but also to sell batteries and other electric products to everyone else. Canada is its newest buyer of EVs; in a rebuke of Mr. Trump, its prime minister, Mark Carney, lowered tariffs on the cars as part of a new trade deal.
Though Americans have been slow to embrace electric vehicles, Chinese households have learned to love them. In 2025, 54 percent of new cars sold in China were either battery-powered or plug-in hybrids. That is a big reason that the country’s oil consumption is on track to peak in 2027, according to forecasts from the International Energy Agency. And Chinese E.V makers are setting records — whether it’s BYD’s sales (besting Tesla by battery-powered vehicles sold for the first time last year) or Xiaomi’s speed (its cars are setting records at major racetracks like Nürburgring in Germany).
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I wonder if the prediction that China will hit peak oil in 2027 will come true. This will have a massive impact on oil markets.
You reckon they will just promise Trump to buy lots of oil but then do nothing like their soybean promise?
I don’t think they’ll bother, they get oil from the russians at a massive discount relative to world markets.
Oil prices are already plunging.
Supply is about 5 million barrels per day more than demand.
they are shutting down refineries all over the country because people aren’t buying as much gas as they used to
I saw an IEA (i think it was ) estimate that China reduced oil consumption by 1.6 million barrels a day already becase of their EV rollout (cars and buses).
I imagine electricity generation is also transitioning away from diesel
I don’t think anyone is using diesel for electricity generation except remote locations.
And backups.
Getting under $60/bbl has been a big deal. But a lot of that has just been the economy slowing.
He’s a corrupt moron.
It’s like he wakes up every morning and asks himself “What can I do to make sure China owns the 21st century?”
They’re bribing him and his daughter to do so.
Bribery is how the US political system has operated for the bulk of the country’s history
But, for the most part, the bribery was intended to increase private profits. Rarely have we seen industry bribe the feds in an act of self-sabotage.
Thats because he’s stuck in the 80s. It’s common for people with dementia to fall back to a time they thought was good and for him, it was the 80s when oil was king.
Oil is still king. It’s not by a long shot about to lose it’s value as a strategic resource.
King eh? Well I didn’t vote for yah!
We are long past peak oil. Look I’m not saying we’re not going to need oil long into the future and its use for aviation is currently unsurpassed but the argument is our reliance on oil is waning as newer technologies have come into play, especially in the power generation and automotive sectors. Chemical and plastic production is still vital and that can’t be done without oil. We’re not getting away from using it for a long tine but it’s past it’s peak.
What Dumpy forgets is supply and demand (because he’s one of the worst business people ever) and releasing more oil into the market from his imperialist acquisitions means a drop in value - even the oil execs were apprehensive as to whether the takeover of Venezuela and being told they need to fix up their processing was a good thing as they don’t want the market flooded as that will cause the cost of oil to plummet.
As far as I’m aware peak oil production has not been recognized to have happened yet.
Over the last century, many predictions of peak oil timing have been made, often later proven incorrect due to increased extraction rates.[9] M. King Hubbert introduced comprehensive modeling of peak oil in a 1956 paper, predicting U.S. production would peak between 1965 and 1971; his global peak oil predictions were predictive through the 1990s and 2000s but eventually were deemed premature due to improved drilling technology.[10] Current forecasts for the year of peak oil range from 2028 to 2050.[11] These estimates depend on future economic trends, technological advances, and efforts to mitigate climate change.[8][12][13] Peak oil, Wikipedia
It is still assumed that global oil consumption scales with economic growth and under 2025 consumption increased.
Global liquid fuels consumption increased by an estimated 1.2 million b/d in 2025 and is forecast to increase by 1.1 million b/d in 2026 and 1.3 million b/d in 2027. Consumption growth rises next year as global economic activity picks up pace. Based on forecasts from Oxford Economics, our forecast assumes global GDP will grow by 3.1% this year and 3.3% in 2027. Short-Term Energy Outlook, EIA (U.S. government)
Consumption is still growing, but the ‘oil’ in Venezuela is just tar, the ‘oil’ in the United States come from fracking. The days of sweet crude are behind us.
Not sure about that.
Nuclear energy is safer than ever.
We even have small nuclear reactors that can use spent fuel from the larger ones, thus solving in part the disposal of it.
Furthermore, significant advances have been achieved on fision power.
Clinging to oil is like refusing to replace your horse with a car.
When you have plug-in hybrid tanks or nuclear powered strategic bombers oil will see a diminish in it’s strategic relevance as a resource.
Fusion is nowhere near being in industrial use or being profitable. In the future, maybe, pending more breakthroughs.
Whether nuclear is a good idea to cling to going forward or not, it takes time to deploy. Those small reactors don’t just come off a shelf, ready to be turned on. Oil, however, can generate power TODAY, anywhere you can ship it.
The question isn’t whether it’s a good idea to keep burning oil – it definitely isn’t – the question is whether oil is still a hugely important energy commodity and the answer is a resounding yes. Notably, the article mentions that China’s oil use hasn’t even peaked yet. China does not use a small amount of oil.
the question is whether oil is still a hugely important energy commodity and the answer is a resounding yes
This is a HUGE reason to push for progress. Oil is critical to so much of modern life and we have no substitutes for all too much of it. We need more progress where we do have options (eg. EVs) so we can start growing out of our dependency before it becomes a crisis
I think we should also focus on using less energy overall – e.g. replace short to medium persinal car trips with walking, bicycles and public transport, medium to long travel with trains, eliminating unnecessary travel that can’t be accommodated by those modes of transport. Environmental solutions like replacing fossil fuel powered cars with emissions free, but equally dangerous and still inefficient EVs for personal use will keep us burning oil even longer by tying up investments in highways and hostile, car based infrastructure.
Things like rethinking infrastructure, labor, economy and housing would have been more achievable and, for most, felt more like progressing towards a better future than straighup sci-fi level efforts to continue the status quo without as much oil. But it’s the latter we get, they’re putting carbon capture machines on Norwegian oil rigs as we speak.
For sure we should reduce overall travel.
- To the extent people still work from home: we do. On days when I work from home I generally don’t use a motor vehicle for anything
- to the extent we order online, we do. I rarely goto stores besides the grocery. Sorry retailers and local shopping advocates but a dedicated delivery vehicle is more efficient that you taking yours
- I’ve seen gradual progress in train buildout from the 2022 infrastructure bill. It’s very slow, piecemeal, not dramatic but there are more transit options
We even have small nuclear reactors that can use spent fuel from the larger ones, thus solving in part the disposal of it.
Do we? Last I heard there aren’t any in service.
Furthermore, significant advances have been achieved on fision power.
We’ll need a hell of a lot more advances before fusion is even close to powering a grid.
Are you guys taking about fusion? Aren’t all nuclear powerplants using fission reactions?
Corrected, thanks!
Frankly you’re giving him too much credit. If oil is really still king it won’t need his help. He might be able to claim he was just being fair if he had only removed subsidies, but he was and still is actively sabotaging adoption of electric vehicles, like by terminating the USPS contract to buy all those electric mail trucks or removing already installed EV chargers at federal sites.
Oil is king but you can still make some sweet sweet bribe money. - Trump
This is one of those situations where the venn diagram of Trump’s handlers becomes a circle.
You have the billionaire Oil executives that want to continue using all their existing infrastructure and wasy access to continue printing money like they do now. Meanwhile, those companies all see the writing on the wall and know it’s running out so they’re investing in or buying technologies and companies working on alternatives. They’re playing both sides because they’re not idiots.
And then you have the manipulators like Putin (who we know Trump idolizes) with their goals of destroying American power across the board. Having America not only abandon new technologies but even propping up the old ones past when they should be phased out to focus on century-old priorities while the rest of the world continues to move on, helps that overall goal.
Cheney had an international oil/security conglomerate they keep renaming. uh, uh, haliburton. had to look it up. gravy train is moving out.
Halliburton hasn’t ever changed their name as far as I know. Are you thinking of Blackwater/XE Services/Academi/Constellis?
Not that Trump is right but, how will we charge said batteries…?
I charge my BYD Han and my wife’s Tang with Solar. No issues there.
That is excellent and cost effective, however what then when there’s no sun out or it’s cloudy? Will you not travel?
This is one of the concerns I have watched with interest ……
- with the first mass market push to wind “grid won’t be stable with any significant amount”
- as wind and solar became more popular “renewables can only be 30% without destabilizing the grid
- this past summer “with today’s renewables and storage technology, the cheapest most stable option is 95% of the grid”
Your concern may be technically and historically valid but is rapidly disappearing
That’s about right. I have product tío and storage at a 115% of my consumption, which translates to actually using some grid because the sun is not always out (although you would think it is where I live, lol). That allows me to finish the year with an excess credit of about 200 dollars with the electric company, but I still use some of the grid during hurricane season and very rainy periods of 3 or more days, which rarely happens.
however what then when there’s no sun out or it’s cloudy?
You’re not going to believe this, but solar panels will still work even when the light is reflected or partially blocked by clouds. Rain actually helps to keep your panels operating efficiently by washing away any dust or dirt. If you live in an area with a strong net metering policy, excess energy generated by your panels during sunny hours will offset energy that you use at night and other times when your system isn’t operating at full capacity.
That’s crazy. I never would’ve guessed. Did you also know solar panels have a theoretical limit of 33%, which is diminished even more when sunlight is further blocked? Wow! That means they’re horribly inefficient and even more so when less light comes in! Who knew! So really we’re talking about pennies on the dollar at the end of the day when something like supplying a grid at a larger level would mean nuclear.
Did you also know solar panels have a theoretical limit of 33%
Did you know fractions are predicated on a base value?
So really we’re talking about pennies on the dollar at the end of the day
That’s definitely an aphorism.
That’s what the batteries are for?
Source : I drive an EV on cloudy days.
There’s this really neat thing called nuclear reactors that produce an enormous amount of energy. It’s only been around for ~70 years but they look promising.
Right. And how many countries currently use or are planning to use this In a large scale capacity besides France? Oh yea.
No need to be a dickhead.
Works pretty damn well for France. Maybe we should follow their lead.
I wholeheartedly agree with that. Doesn’t seem like anyone is though unfortunately.
Works great in Finland.
But they can’t work at night!
There was even a car that charged itself with solar, they only ran out of money because there was little interest for an unknown new brand
The cars with solar panels on them are a gimmick. There isn’t enough surface area on a normal car to meaningfully charge the battery.
I think you would be surprised. The problem really comes from the car not being a good shape to put solar panels on. I did the math a while back, and I only needed 200w of panels to cover my weekly driving.
There was never a car that charged itself with solar because it’s practically impossible unless you put the car on a turntable at the equator in July.
solar is Big Nuclear In The Sky - nuclear without the hazard
In my case wind turbines. My local utility produces more wind power in a year than customers use.
Funny thing. Cloudy and rainy days tend to be windier than sunny days. So, with a bit of battery reserve or net metering, it all balances out.
Wind turbines can’t meet the energy demand of the infrastructure unfortunately. Nuclear is the most feasible option however, with the exception of France, no country has really committed to an energy source that can adequately support charging all these batteries albeit oil, natural gas, renewable energy etc. Oil and natural gas still continue to be the cheapest
source: some study from 1990 i assume?
Source: logic
Yeah, conservatives don’t think of the future except through the lens of the present. They can’t imagine a world with EVs and batteries because they have oil brains. They are looking for solutions to problems with an oil first mindset. Sunk cost is everything.
It’s not conservatives, it’s money and power.
it’s not money and power because both are on the side of renewable energy: money already today and power in the future
That’s in part because they see their future through the lens of them oppressing objective developments, so EVs and batteries will never happen in that fantasy. They took a liking to AI for example despite it being relatively new development purely because it helped them in that department. They will only embrace something if it’s ‘their’ idea, and they have a lot of shitty ideas.
Need to remember where they are getting paid from as well. That’s oil money lining their pockets.
Oil companies will probably go the way of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, going broke. They’re continuing to invest heavily in oil infrastructure at a time when the market is shifting and even now there is a flattening of demand for oil products where EVs are becoming prevalent. The trend will start to hit profitability and they will most likely double down.
go the way of the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
Still quoted by facists who pretend it’s a better source than Wikipedia?
Oil companies are not that dimwitted.
They’re already investing in electric products and there’s more to oil than just car fuel.
They’re just not in a hurry but don’t think BP can’t easily put electric chargers in all their gas stations in a pinch if they want to.Not enough demand yet (nor real pressure, a.k.a. governments or other entities massively enlarging grid offers), so they’re just coasting.
Our Danish company Ørsted which produces wind power, has been in a huge legal dispute with the American administration for months over this. He wants oil, even if wind is cheaper:
He wants oil even if the wind is cheaper, the wind farm is almost finished and already producing power
Yeah because it’s not so much “he wants” as “oil and gas corporations are paying him for”.
I’m not sure how true that is. For example, Exxon don’t want to go back into Venezuela.
Beyond EVs, the much cheaper sodium-ion battery is entering mass production in China. We can already buy B-grade cells on AliExpress. This will have implications for all sorts of use cases that could use batteries but don’t due to cost.
much cheaper sodium-ion battery
To my understanding, these aren’t suitable for many use cases we associate with batteries (smartphones, EVs, laptops), but it has the potential to have a massive impact on utility scale battery systems and industrial use cases.
I just replaced my Acid starter battery in my car for a sodium one. 12Kg less weight, double the lifespawn, better low temp performance. All at the same price.
Neither Lithium nor LFP can do that.
If this holds true, Sodium definitely has a place.
Yeah they can’t match top of the line Li-Ion like lithium-cobalt batteries. Neither can LFP, but LFP is good enough for lower range EVs cars as they’re already used in such. Sodium ion has even lower density than LFP but not dramatically so and it’s still early days so their density is likely to improve. Look at these two cells currently on sale:
The first one is a CATL-made LFP. The second is some smaller manufacturer’s sodium ion. The 729Whr vs 713Whr, 1944cm³ vs 2593cm³. If the sodium ones can be made cheap enough, these are already usable in low range vehicles like Nissan Leaf or equivalent. And then there’s buses, trucks, other ICE powered equipment.
EVs alone have major grid balancing potential. You can get home batteries for under $100/kwh in US right now, and cost of EV batteries have always been lower due to bulk/contract purchases. At $100/kwh, even from grid TOU use power, you can time shift profitably for just 1c/kwh before financing costs, but before resilience/backup benefits from batteries.
Solar is by far the cheapest way to charge those batteries, where home solar without monopoly persecution from utilities, as in Australia, can be extra affordable. But even before abundant solar is permitted in our countries, or even net metering, simply having TOU rates that are cheap at night allows for enough arbitrage for when TOU rates are high. Where some EVs are $300/kwh to $500/kwh for the entire car, TOU rates can allow for arbitrage that pays for whole car.
What sorts of batteries are around that price per kwh? Genuinely curious, been thinking about adding batteries but can’t justify the costs I’ve seen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bShGUPU3TQ $120/kwh. There are amazon listings for 20kwh in rack batteries for under $3000. It does take DIY (no soldering kits) to get to $100/kwh. searching youtube for projects/options reviews, and especially the linked author is recommended if you’re interested.
Amazing, thank you. My new obsessive project has been lined up
Batteries, yes. Chinese? Not necessarily for long.
One is an energy and material source. The other is neither and is simply storage.
Why would you compare them?
Because batteries are a point of tension in the adoption of some electricity-centric techs. Electricity production can be done in many different ways already (unless you suddenly decide to 100x the demand for shit and giggles), but a lot of applications requires batteries, which makes them some sort of choke point for adoption. Making them better, more accessible, cheaper, more friendly on the environment ease that.
The comparison is also on one end of the world focusing on the dying down side of things, while the other end is (allegedly) looking forward.
That’s why they’re compared.
That’s nice. Now run a modern civilization of 10 billion (upcoming) with only electricity.
Yeah? That’s kinda the plan? Do you see a particular problem with a mostly renewable (to the scale of our species’ lifetime) source of energy, that can be implemented in various way to accommodate different situations, locations, and use, while trying to make things more efficient?
Because I don’t.
Wow.
