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Eh, the war in Ukraine has kind of proven that the Europeans are not all that capable of action. There has been an enormous incentive to have been getting rid o

Eh, the war in Ukraine has kind of proven that the Europeans are not all that capable of action. There has been an enormous incentive to have been getting rid of oil dependency for 4 years now.

zejn 6mo ago
The problem with getting rid of oil is that cars currently in use will be usable even when over 20 years old, replacing them with EVs is expensive, and the good enough and economically accessible EVs are only now starting to get to market. It's really hard to quickly replace millions of vehicles.
- lostlogin 6mo ago
  Raising the price of fuel will do wonders for solving that.
  - throwawaytea 6mo ago
    In California my electricity to drive my Chevy Volt is more expensive than gasoline, if gasoline is less than $5 a gallon. So for basically the last 100k miles I've owned it, electricity was more expensive. The same goes for many plugin hybrids. Luxury EVs still win out because luxury sedans usually only get 25 mpg mixed max.
    - fc417fc802 6mo ago
      I knew the CA grid was in a bad place but wow. What are you paying per kWh?
      - throwawaytea 6mo ago
        $0.44 A first gen Volt takes 10.3kwh. It also uses electricity to cool the batteries while charging. If you leave it plugged in one a hot day it will cool the battery just for health overall but I'll ignore that. Then, add in the losses on the charge conversions. It easily takes 11kwh to charge a Volt. It'll go about 35 miles in the summer on that charge, and more like 28 in the winter. It also gets 35 mpg on gasoline, while providing free heat in the winter from the gas engine heat, and for most of the last few years was doing this for $3.50-$4 a gallon. There are people on Southern California/San Diego that pay more. Over there people say the Prius Prime is WAY cheaper to operate on gas because it gets 50mpg gasoline. I've even heard people running their home off gasoline because it's cheaper but that would require an impressive gas generator to do long term.
    - lostlogin 6mo ago
      US fuel is so cheap compared to the rest of the world. If my maths is correct, we are paying US$6.10 a gallon here in NZ.
      - nicoburns 6mo ago
        In the UK the average price is (by my math) ~US$7.50
      - jopsen 6mo ago
        In Denmark fuel is so expensive they sell it by litre :)
  - fc417fc802 6mo ago
    That won't "solve" anything. Car prices will rise, many people can't afford the switch regardless, too much new EV demand could destabilize the grid in population centers, and throwing away vehicles that are already on the road by replacing them with newly manufactured ones is terrible from an emissions perspective.
lostlogin 6mo ago
> the war in Ukraine has kind of proven that the Europeans are not all that capable of action. It’s revealed a fair bit about America too. And this oil crisis is a fairly incredible screw up too. What did the US think would happen?
- strken 6mo ago
  The US is a net exporter of crude oil and is positioned to meet an oil crisis better than nearly anyone else. What do you think the US government expected from this?
  - lostlogin 6mo ago
    > What do you think the US government expected from this? That they’d beat Iran and have some friendly dictator installed in short order. Are you arguing that this is going how the US planned? When was the last time the US had this much trouble getting its allies to follow it into war?
    - strken 6mo ago
      I think civil servants and military planners in the US were aware of the threat of a global oil shock if Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. This is a well-known enough scenario that the Battlefield games have maps on Kharg Island. Everyone knows it's Iran's greatest leverage. They even threaten to close the Strait regularly. The administration would have been informed of the risks to the US, which are relatively minor in comparison since the US is a net exporter of crude, and ignored them. If the risks had been greater, they would not have ignored them, and would have at least had an actual plan to keep the Strait open. They might even have informed their close military allies using something other than Truth Social. I am not arguing that they planned this, even though it should have been obvious that it would happen. I absolutely do believe they were warned it was a possibility and didn't care.
  - fc417fc802 6mo ago
    Being positioned to eat shit better than anyone else is still eating shit. Our economy isn't independent of the rest of the world. Datacenter investment is currently a noticable fraction of US GDP. That's as globalized as it gets, we aren't even remotely self sufficient on that front. What happens to our economy if that segment crumbles overnight?
leonidasrup 6mo ago
Germany has switched from one gas supplier to different gas suppliers. The past Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck famously once sad: “Nuclear power doesn’t help us there at all,” “We have a heating problem or an industry problem, but not an electricity problem – at least not generally throughout the country.” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/12/german-says-nuclear-would-do-little-to-solve-gas-issue https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/12/german-says-nuclear...

Eh, the war in Ukraine has kind of proven that the Europeans are not all that capable of action. There has been an enormous incentive to have been getting rid of oil dependency for 4 years now.

zejn 6mo ago

The problem with getting rid of oil is that cars currently in use will be usable even when over 20 years old, replacing them with EVs is expensive, and the good enough and economically accessible EVs are only now starting to get to market. It's really hard to quickly replace millions of vehicles.

lostlogin 6mo ago
Raising the price of fuel will do wonders for solving that.
- throwawaytea 6mo ago
  In California my electricity to drive my Chevy Volt is more expensive than gasoline, if gasoline is less than $5 a gallon. So for basically the last 100k miles I've owned it, electricity was more expensive. The same goes for many plugin hybrids. Luxury EVs still win out because luxury sedans usually only get 25 mpg mixed max.
  - fc417fc802 6mo ago
    I knew the CA grid was in a bad place but wow. What are you paying per kWh?
    - throwawaytea 6mo ago
      $0.44 A first gen Volt takes 10.3kwh. It also uses electricity to cool the batteries while charging. If you leave it plugged in one a hot day it will cool the battery just for health overall but I'll ignore that. Then, add in the losses on the charge conversions. It easily takes 11kwh to charge a Volt. It'll go about 35 miles in the summer on that charge, and more like 28 in the winter. It also gets 35 mpg on gasoline, while providing free heat in the winter from the gas engine heat, and for most of the last few years was doing this for $3.50-$4 a gallon. There are people on Southern California/San Diego that pay more. Over there people say the Prius Prime is WAY cheaper to operate on gas because it gets 50mpg gasoline. I've even heard people running their home off gasoline because it's cheaper but that would require an impressive gas generator to do long term.
  - lostlogin 6mo ago
    US fuel is so cheap compared to the rest of the world. If my maths is correct, we are paying US$6.10 a gallon here in NZ.
    - nicoburns 6mo ago
      In the UK the average price is (by my math) ~US$7.50
    - jopsen 6mo ago
      In Denmark fuel is so expensive they sell it by litre :)
- fc417fc802 6mo ago
  That won't "solve" anything. Car prices will rise, many people can't afford the switch regardless, too much new EV demand could destabilize the grid in population centers, and throwing away vehicles that are already on the road by replacing them with newly manufactured ones is terrible from an emissions perspective.

lostlogin 6mo ago

> the war in Ukraine has kind of proven that the Europeans are not all that capable of action. It’s revealed a fair bit about America too. And this oil crisis is a fairly incredible screw up too. What did the US think would happen?

strken 6mo ago
The US is a net exporter of crude oil and is positioned to meet an oil crisis better than nearly anyone else. What do you think the US government expected from this?
- lostlogin 6mo ago
  > What do you think the US government expected from this? That they’d beat Iran and have some friendly dictator installed in short order. Are you arguing that this is going how the US planned? When was the last time the US had this much trouble getting its allies to follow it into war?
  - strken 6mo ago
    I think civil servants and military planners in the US were aware of the threat of a global oil shock if Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. This is a well-known enough scenario that the Battlefield games have maps on Kharg Island. Everyone knows it's Iran's greatest leverage. They even threaten to close the Strait regularly. The administration would have been informed of the risks to the US, which are relatively minor in comparison since the US is a net exporter of crude, and ignored them. If the risks had been greater, they would not have ignored them, and would have at least had an actual plan to keep the Strait open. They might even have informed their close military allies using something other than Truth Social. I am not arguing that they planned this, even though it should have been obvious that it would happen. I absolutely do believe they were warned it was a possibility and didn't care.
- fc417fc802 6mo ago
  Being positioned to eat shit better than anyone else is still eating shit. Our economy isn't independent of the rest of the world. Datacenter investment is currently a noticable fraction of US GDP. That's as globalized as it gets, we aren't even remotely self sufficient on that front. What happens to our economy if that segment crumbles overnight?

leonidasrup 6mo ago

Germany has switched from one gas supplier to different gas suppliers. The past Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck famously once sad: “Nuclear power doesn’t help us there at all,” “We have a heating problem or an industry problem, but not an electricity problem – at least not generally throughout the country.” https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/12/german-says-nuclear-would-do-little-to-solve-gas-issue https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/12/german-says-nuclear...