throwaway473825

India is literally following China's "anything but oil and gas", which encourages renewables, nuclear and coal.

In fact, the Chinese coal lobby is partially responsible for the push for electric trucks. The alternatives are diesel and LNG - both competitors to coal.

There's no reason to separate cars from trucks and buses. Everything is getting electrified. In jurisdictions where Buy America Act doesn't apply (i.e. the world outside the US), electric buses are already the default.

Moreover, it takes a lot of oil to refine and transport oil. If there's no demand for road transport, then the corresponding demand for refining and transport will disappear as well.

Finally, coal is already replacing oil in the chemical industry. Not because it's cleaner, but because it's cheaper and more available.

While a good point, it also creates lock-in effects. If you look at the top EV adopters, they barely use gas power. This likely isn't a coincidence.

Now you will have the AI lobby pushing against EVs (so that oil drilling can create gas as a byproduct), as if it wasn't already an uphill battle in the US...

Natural gas can be replaced with coal gasification, and Germany has an endless amount of coal. It would probably even be cheaper, although much dirtier. China is already doing this.

One side being worse isn't an excuse for the other being bad.

Regarding EVs, the US started to fall behind in 2019, and the gap has only continued to widen, regardless of administration:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/electric-car-sales-share?...

Electric buses should be a no-brainer, yet New York comes last among US states in a recent market survey:

https://theicct.org/publication/zero-emission-bus-and-truck-...

Building gas power plants that run only a few weeks per year is very expensive. Just compare prices in Germany (gas) with China (coal) or Finland (nuclear).

A more economical way would be to build nuclear power plants that power electrolyzers most of the time and provide power to the grid when necessary.

In the US, gas power plants make more sense due to ridiculously cheap gas, but even then the capacity factor of those power plants is much higher than 10%.

EVs aren't popular in the US due to the Republicans being beholden to oil and gas interests and the Democrats to unions. The grid was just an excuse.

Gas is ridiculously cheap in the US while it's often the most expensive source of electricity in the rest of the world.

We're currently seeing a bifurcation where Asia bets on anything but oil and gas while the US goes in the opposite direction. Note that anything but oil and gas includes coal, so this isn't about the environment.

I think the main competitor to OpenAI's free tier is Google Search's AI Overview powered by Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite. OpenAI's free tier needs to be notably better than that for people to bother. There's also Gemini 3.6 Flash with a generous free tier.

I definitely wouldn't say that it turned out fine. The push against nuclear transcended into a larger push against electricity, making Germany a laggard in electrification. The car sector certainly isn't doing fine.

It's also funny how air conditioning powered by electricity is discouraged, while air conditioning in ICE cars or gas heating in buildings are at the very least tolerated. It's crazy if you think about it.

A better question is why Germany invested in gas power plants in the first place. Gas has always been the most expensive source of electricity, even before "the gas crisis" (how many of those have we had already?):

https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/merit-order-shifts-and-th...

China is laughing at the prices Europe agreed to buy Russian gas for:

https://asiatimes.com/2026/07/power-of-siberia-2-deadlock-cr...

I get the idea that Germany would buy Russian gas in exchange for not having to spend on the military, but 2014 clearly showed that it didn't work. And Germany still doubled down on gas after 2022.

Now the argument seems to be that Germany will buy American gas so that it can get lower tariffs.

I don't see how Germany can compete with a China that refuses to reject the cheapest forms of energy, whatever that is (both nuclear and coal are cheaper than imported gas).

Sweden is dependent on the American nuclear umbrella. Until that changes, the US will have a lot of leverage on Sweden.

Finland is a cold country that needs cheap electricity for heating during winters. Burning gas isn't an option.

It should be noted that Russian gas was more expensive than any other source of electricity in Germany:

https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/merit-order-shifts-and-th...

Hungary still uses it, and it's not helping (aside from potential kickbacks):

https://www.energy-charts.info/charts/price_average_map/char...

China also stopped importing electricity from Russia since it couldn't compete with China's own coal, renewables and nuclear.

The truth is that Germany was bound to struggle as it decided to phase out nuclear and coal but keep gas.

It depends on the region. The US has shale gas which is genuinely cheaper than coal. Europe doesn't want to use coal for political reasons. China and India barely use gas since it can't compete with coal.

That's still not enough to bridge the gap between coal and gas. See for example this article:

https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/merit-order-shifts-and-th...

The US is an anomaly due to shale gas:

https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2026/05/11/how-much-has-s...

Card fees aren't paid by end customers either. The Swedish iDEAL equivalent, Swish, is more expensive than cards for smaller transactions (below 15 euros). Wero will be like Swish, not Pix.

The EU would obviously benefit from a digital euro, but the banks won't give up without a fight:

https://euperspectives.eu/2026/02/digital-euro-timeline-at-r...

>Private banks are resistant to a digital euro both as a payment method and a store of value. The digital euro is designed to be a free, public payment method, directly challenging fee-based systems operated by banks. This is its key usefulness in terms of sovereignty. But it could also be used as a digital wallet and users may move their money out of private bank accounts to central bank-backed digital euro wallets meaning banks lose out.

So far they have successfully delayed any implementation.

Most likely because your country's banks are heavily lobbying against such initiatives.

It's easy to blame Visa and Mastercard, but the reason why the EU doesn't have this is that the EPP (the largest political group in the European Parliament) answers to European banks, which don't want it.

Sweden has a similar "initiative" set up by a consortium of banks (Swish), as do many other European countries.

Usually these systems raise their fees after being established, sometimes even higher than Visa/Mastercard.

Brazil's Pix is something else. It wasn't created by private entities to make money.

The Swish system is private, which means that the fees are as high as the market can bear. In many cases cards are cheaper.

If the e-krona happens, that would be a better comparison.

Of the big tech companies, Apple is definitely the one that has embraced America First the most. If you live outside the US, you get features later (if at all) and have to pay more for that privilege.

People burn coal to heat their houses. That doesn't mean it's healthy. Gas stoves are known to cause asthma.

Freight will eventually go electric as well. It's crazy how fast it's happening in China:

https://www.electrive.com/2026/01/23/year-end-surge-electric...

Is there anyone using only cameras except Tesla?

Hydrogen was marketed as a stopgap until batteries are good enough. Well, batteries are good enough for trucks now:

https://www.electrive.com/2026/01/23/year-end-surge-electric...

Once you go battery electric, you never go back. It's the most efficient way to move vehicles.

Liquid hydrogen loses 1% of its volume per day due to boil-off. Hydrogen is incredibly difficult to move without huge energy losses.

Buses are already largely electric (with the US as a notable exception), and trucks are quickly getting there:

https://www.electrive.com/2026/01/23/year-end-surge-electric...

Meanwhile, hydrogen trucks are nowhere to be found...

Sweden has very little natural gas in its energy mix:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/energy-consumption-by-sou...

I highly doubt that hydrogen heating was ever considered. It's usually pushed by the gas lobby (since most hydrogen comes from gas), and Sweden doesn't have a strong gas lobby.

The EU will probably wait until the launch of a digital wallet that can do anonymous age verification. Otherwise it won't get enough political support.