This is so stupid that it reads like a funded hit-piece. To take a few choice quotes: "its battery is a half-a-ton electrochemical machine with thousands of pa

This is so stupid that it reads like a funded hit-piece. To take a few choice quotes: "its battery is a half-a-ton electrochemical machine with thousands of parts and welds, along with wiring, electronics, and cooling. It’s every bit as complex as—and far more expensive than—the combustion-mechanical drivetrain that it replaces." Microchips are the most complex objects on earth, and also the most reliable. Lack of moving parts is why. "Manufacturing automotive batteries is surprisingly labor intensive. Tesla’s gargantuan battery factory in Nevada produces about 1,000 propulsion batteries per year per 12 workers. Meantime, a modern engine and transmission factory produces about 1,000 mechanical-propulsion systems per year per four workers." Uh, so a 100 year old industrial process is only....3x less labour intensive than a less than 20 year old industrial process. Colour me surprised. "coal and natural gas still account for 70 percent of electricity generation." In the US, sure. But France has been generating the vast majority of its power without fossil fuels for decades. Carbon-free electricity is now price competitive with fossil fuels. "Embracing batteries at automotive scales would lead to an unprecedented global expansion in mining" I'm sorry, what is it we've been doing for the last 200 years since the industrial revolution? Can't even be bothered to go through the rest. This is a shill piece, no question.