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4g | 1 year ago

This isn't zero sum. You can do both

discuss

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rvense|1 year ago

It sorts of is, actually? If our capacity to make batteries is limited (or make batteries within some fixed, acceptable, level of environmental impact.)

LUmBULtERA|1 year ago

I think I read in Walter Isaacson's Musk biography that when the Model S came out, it was using something like 10% of the worlds supply of Lithium ion batteries. And that was a pretty small number of Model Ss. EVs have scaled up massively since that time and battery quantity has kept up -- my point being, as long as the price of the ebike is able to pay market prices for the batteries, it seems like supply will scale.

ithkuil|1 year ago

Unfortunately that's now how humanity builds stuff.

It's rarely the case that "we all decide that we have this very important thing to do for humanity" and focus on doing just that.

More often the benefits for humanity flow down as side effects from other more basic incentives like making money selling fast sport electric vehicles used to signal that you're rich or whatever