Growth of electric buses in China:
In China, the buses generally weigh less, cost less, and they have access to all the materials to make an electric bus locally and for cheap prices. On top of that there is always upwards pressure on fuel and gas in China, meaning electric is the better alternative. This argument means little. They also have a bus guideway which runs on dedicated above ground track. They have monorails and stuff. China is the land of throwing anything and the kitchen sink at any problem. Surely we aren't going to follow China in adopting their building practices.
Why not just put up wires in cities?
In modern developed countries, such a concept is do damn difficult, we've lost the ability to do such a thing. It's crazy how there was a day and age where the trolley or tram was seen as a solution to move poor people in and out of the city. I mean, what happened? By this argument, nobody would put solar panels on their roof either. Think about the installation cost of this, for just one roof. I mean, a tram line carries F tonnes of passengers, whilst your solar panels just allow you to run your dryer during the day.
I mean, society has crumbled to dust the moment we can't hang a bunch of cables through the street. I mean, we're digging tunnels for billions of dollars, and your saying hanging cables is out of question? The grid is already there man, it's not like you need to run new transmission lines all the way into the city for it. In Vietnam they have so many cables running around the city it's not funny. They have no problem, I just think that as a society we are like Rome, we've become obese on the luxuries of life and our republic is failing because we simply can't use any vision. Batteries are never going to solve any of this planets problems, but running cables down every street which could have renewable energy in them could be the best option.
I mean, tell me, which to you is a better vision, every person on the face of the planet owning a $20k battery that lasts 10 years before having to dispose of it, or every street having cabling. The true vision would be every driver driving a dodgem car down the street and overhead cables above every lane, and at an intersection the entire roof is like those dodgems. I mean, how cheap are dodgem cars to operate?
Batteries use slave labour!
Mate, I think the real issue here is there isn't a viable option for disposal of batteries. You imagine the size of the plants making these batteries, and in China, they are literally only able to recycle maybe 16%. And they dispose of them dangerously, they just let the gases escape into the air. I mean, if China can't recycle this shit, nobody can. All of these batteries are tomorrows generations problem. And I'm going to tell you, as someone who has been exposed to lithium badly, it's a really shitty industry to work in, I wouldn't wish this type of future for any of my children. Batteries are a problem, they are stockpiling them somewhere next to the solar panels and inverters from previous moronic generations of idiots who bought into the green wave.
You have a dream of a brighter future, but it's full of idealism like carbon neutral. The worst of humanity is on display with these batteries. You know how many times a single lithium battery ends up burning down a recycling facility? We are 20 years behind fixing our past mistakes, which include solar, wind farms, batteries and we'll never fix the planet from all of that Teflon crap we are still pumping out into water systems all around the world. There's no where on earth where you can find a single living organism that doesn't have Teflon byproducts.