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darklycan51 | 2 years ago

Germany is legit the one country in the western hemisphere doing the most damage to the future, and I am surprised how nobody calls them out on it.

1)Turning off nuclear and cancelling plans for new plants because literally their party, the "green party" originated as an anti nuclear party, so of course they don't care and just do it for political reasons.

2)E-Vehicles from US and China threatening Germany's old guard that refuses to adapt? who cares about the environment then.

Remember them falsifying reports and getting away with a slap in the wrist?

discuss

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WorldMaker|2 years ago

Germany's old guard manufacturers are definitely behind Chinese EV companies, but they seem much more publicly willing to adapt to EVs than US' old guard car companies. Neither Ford nor GM have committed publicly to an "EV or bust" date, but VW Group and Mercedes-Benz both have publicly committed to selling nothing but EVs starting in 2025. (They seem to be on track for that, too. So far.) BMW is the odd duck left in Germany still on the EV fence (and also still flirting with hydrogen fuel cells [in partnership with Toyota] as recently as 2022, lol), but also represent a fraction of the sales of VW Group and Mercedes-Benz brands.

> Remember them falsifying reports and getting away with a slap in the wrist?

The EPA settlements were much more interesting than a "slap on the wrist". They paid for the vast majority of America's second largest EV charging network (Electrify America). They are also a big part of the "catch-up" R&D funds behind why both VW Group and Mercedes-Benz believe they will make nothing but EVs starting around 2025. VW Group's now heralded MEB platform, especially, is somewhat directly a product of US EPA financial engineering and maybe doesn't exist without the EPA settlement requirements.

It's almost too bad US manufacturers weren't caught cheating in the same way/at the same time to have the EPA also require them to do similar things in a similar way.

borissk|2 years ago

Don't think they are doing most damage. Their CO2 emission per capita are a lot lower than US. They didn't recently have a president speaking about "clean coal". They have a huge amount of solar and wind power generation. A lot of modern renewable technology came from German companies and engineers. They don't build new coal power stations.