Hydrogen is the future, not BEVs?

Yeah, you may be right. I just don't trust governments and legislators to make the right decisions for the long term.

I quite agree about the power that china wield, it's natural to be concerned by it. As you point out, they already effectively have the power to hold the digital world to random.

EV's are dependent on China to an extent, but we can't asses the pros and cons of a new type of car based on the global political situation in China, that's akin to saying that we can't have any form or modern technology, including petrol cars, 'because China'.

Taking your concerns about China out of the equation, the simple fact is that a battery electric car is head and shoulders above any other technology on the table in terms of lifetime efficiency and cleanliness. Going down the EV route, selling millions of them, is the thing most likely to also deliver us new battery tech that is far less reliant on lithium, or at least lasts so long that whatever rare materials are used become less relevant than today.

But China doesn't in this scenario. Nor to they have total control over the future materials that will replace cobalt and lithium.

We do however live wholly beholden to another nation controlling oil and even our gas market. The price of which not only governs our economic growth but BoE rate policy as we must maintain parity to the USD and our foreign policy where we must cowtow to producer nations.

And consider this, if the U.K. were 100% lithium ion EV today we would not be beholden to any nation at all for lithium as we would have become self sufficient because each vehicle scrapped would be supplying the lithium required for each produced.

So today we are in the nightmare scenario that you posit due to oil but 100% EV would release us from such a prison.

What you can see, quite clearly, is that EVs represent freedom for us in the U.K. They empower a freedom from the USD, freedom from US foreign policy, freedom from bad across such as Russia and freedom from the likes of China who currently hold significant control over key raw materials. All while being an integral part of our drive for freedom of energy self sufficiency.

They represent such a massive gain to the U.K. and competitive advantage that allowing people to just switch when they want to over the next thirty years is actually phenomenally cavalier to the point of being stupid and dangerous. But to do otherwise would not represent our core British values of freedom of choice and supporting the weak.

But I did read what you wrote - it was nonsense.

Your entire stance revolves around us accepting that there has not been a significant battery breakthrough since 1880, but there has. Cars with a real world range of 300 miles are driving around right now, that sort of range covers almost all personal transport needs - it's not perfect but it's good enough to make sense Vs the alternative. How is getting to that stage with batteries not a breakthrough compared to what the earliest electric cars had as battery technology?

Li-ion was a huge breakthrough.

But you have still not understood. To repeat:

"Get over the shortcomings of batteries and EV domination would be unstoppable."

Where does that statement suggest no significant battery technology progress since 1880? Or are you just being pedantic?

I think a lot of people have been deliberately wound up by the media while some even see having use of a particular object as something that bafflingly marks them out as a superior person. And of course the marketing teams of car manufacturers spend very heavily to over promote EVs in the hope that people don't see through the facade to a bunch of s who don't give a flying fk. Politicians see reward in aligning with one product or another and the West gets to rant about China, a nation it created by farming out all its base manufacturing to take advantage of cheap labour and lax regulations.

Meanwhile, in the U.K. we have 35m+ private cars, only about 2m of which are EVs and no national policy telling anyone to buy one, merely offering incentives to those with the means to do so to consider it. Driveways are slowly adding plug sockets for them. Car parks are slowly adding plug sockets for them, businesses are adding plug sockets where it is advantageous for them to do so and more cheap EVs are being offered and the usability of them steadily increases. Each one of us will eventually reach the moment in time when switching is the smarter financial choice but sadly, many will die of old age before that opportunity arrives

For me, the real issue is local policy which has a tendency to not be too down or rational but instead can err towards extremism and malicious targeting of the more vulnerable. Local governments are at risk of being third world in their nature and we can already see within some of these locations there have been policies or attempts to target the least well off motorist while wholly absolving those who have the means to change. But I feel that many people are not making the distinction between logical national policy and prejudice local extremism and zealotry.

Step back a moment. You said 100% EV environment right? At the point at which the U.K. is 100% EVs there would be no dependency upon China for batteries would there? The fleet at this point becomes self sufficient whereby the 2m EVs scrapped every year supply the battery materials for the 2m new EVs.

So what we are actually talking about is the transition period to that point. Well, we are currently 100% reliant on the US and OPEC for the oil and our economic security so firstly, transitioning away from the current imprisonment is a huge gain. Secondly, during this period we can simply change our demand requirements between the two energy stores as geopolitics necessitates, which means the transition period offers greater national security than the current status quo.

So then we have to consider who supplies the U.K. with its cars? Well again here we win massively. Having disposed of our native car manufacturing industry we have no meaningful exposure risk and being affluent we are a primary export market for all global manufacturers of cars, whether they are imported to the U.K. while or as parts for subsidised assembly. So, unlike our economic peers we simply don't give a flying fk where the cars come from any more than we do our fridges or TVs. It's their responsibility to come to us with terms that we are willing to accept.

China doesn't give two hoots about the U.K. in this regard. Their competitors are the US and India. Mainland Europe is not going to be a key competitor for long as we can see by the European manufacturers having to move more factories to China in order to compete.

None of these things are risks to the U.K. because of the rather unique position we actually find ourselves in having de-industrialised 30 years ago and having a geology and global geography that permits an actual freedom from the oppressive yoke of the USD and global oil market which we have been trapped under for effectively nearly 70 years.

Where people should be focussing their attention and where a true risk lies is actually with all cars, regardless of drivetrain as they become more and more IoT objects but with far less security than wife enabled kettles and even our phones. Modern cars are transitioning rapidly into massive data harvesting objects that send this data to the four corners and which is far less regulated and protected than other devices. For example, if you are the user of a new car today how do you stop it from collecting data from other devices, from inside the cabin and from outside? And how do we stop it sending what it collects? Where are the buttons in the car that cede data control to the user? That is the interesting question we should be asking ourselves as our cars connect more and more to our homes, our phones and to third party companies? And as they're fitted with more and more external data collection equipment what questions are we asking as a society as to whether the recipients of this data are suitable actors, let alone whether these companies have ever once in any of their histories ever displayed the slightest inkling that they may be honest let alone have their users' best interests at heart?

The simple fact is that whether ICE or EV, whether VW, Tesla or MG, these devices are capable of harvesting huge amounts of data on a society or nation and handing it direct to individuals and entities are are proven, cast iron s incapable of honesty without enforcement.

If someone wishes to concern themselves over national security then I'd suggest they ponder how they can currently switch off data harvesting on a new car or at least start questioning why, as a nation, we would benefit from all this data being in the hands of nefarious third parties?

None of those are about lithium. One of them is about nickel, which is mostly used for alloys and electroplating - how long have you been worried about stainless steel? How long have you been worried about cobalt for refining petroleum? How long have you been concerned about mining in general? And how concerned are you about the impact of oil extraction? Or is it just electric cars you worry about?

I don't see the point in P. Griffiths post. We in the affluent west lead the lives we do, and usually people in poorer parts of the world have to suffer. It's not right, it's not fair, but always been the way and there's little us ordinary people can do about it.

The EV represents the very latest in consumer technology, in what way is it supposed to change the long standing order of things? It could and should improve local air quality, they could be much cheaper to run for many people, meaning they have the potential to increase the wealth of those already wealthy.

Yes, I looked at them. The "Electric vehicles are stealth rainforest killers!" article contained the claim about "vast amounts of cobalt, nickel, manganese and rare earths that are mined in the rainforests of Africa, Southeast Asia and South America" - in the case of lithium, that's bks. You can easily google where the mines are and look them up on Google Maps - they're not in rainforests, for good geological reasons. It is possible, by the way, to extract lithium in harmful ways, and it's possible not to, one of the Chinese plants has been accused of polluting the local river. The other minerals are sometimes mined in sensitive areas, and that's a problem, but it's not just an EV problem. It points to iron for steelmaking. It could equally well point to bauxite mining for aluminium. The point the petition is making is that what we need to do is get rid of cars, not just get rid of ICE cars. Is that something you want to get behind?

The NBC one points to nickel, and its use in batteries. That mine may be selling its nickel to Panasonic, which is a matter for Panasonic's ESG credentials, but nickel is globally traded and mostly used for alloys and plating.

The foreign policy one is a general one about the impact of mineral extraction in Brazil. There does have to be a debate around how minerals essential to technologies needed for moving away from burning fossil fuels can be obtained responsibly, but the "just keep burning stuff" option isn't viable. The deep green alternative of sitting in the cold and dark eating locally grown turnips and foraged hedgerow weeds and never travelling further than you can walk doesn't work in democracies, so we need to find technological solutions which don't significantly erode the quality of life. Electric cars are low hanging fruit in this respect, we just need to hold the producers to account on their materials sourcing.