[theluckycountry]

Reuters
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'C')HENGDU, China - On the outskirts of this city of 21 million, a showroom in a shopping mall offers extraordinary deals on new cars.
Visitors can choose from some 5,000 vehicles. Locally made Audis are 50% off. A seven-seater SUV from China’s FAW is about $22,300, more than 60% below its sticker price.
These deals – offered by a company called Zcar, which says it buys in bulk from automakers and dealerships – are only possible because China has too many cars.

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AdamB', '
')

[theluckycountry]

Imagine you bought a Toaster, but it cost twice as much as any other Toaster and had a big battery inside so it didn't need to be plugged in to use it. But after you had made two slices of toast you found out the battery was flat! And you had to then plug it back in and wait perhaps 30 minutes or an hour before you could make more toast. This is what an electric car is like. Also imagine you left your new Toaster plugged in, then came back to find your house had burned down. Electric cars will do that. They will also Blow up under you while you are driving along. Imagine making Toast in the kitchen when all of a sudden the whole kitchen is on fire! You only have a few seconds to run for your life.

A rechargeable Toaster with a battery in it may seem smart if you have breakfast before the sun comes up and can then recharge your toaster later in the day, but is it really worth it? Is it worth all that extra money, danger and headache when you can just plug a normal Toaster into the wall and have as much toast as you want, all day long and all night long? That's what it's like having an oil powered car, you can fill it up quickly 24/7 almost anywhere and then drive for hours and hours without the fear of it blowing up while you're in it. Most people have figured this out now but it took a lot of smacks upside the head for the message to get through.

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('theluckycountry', 'I')magine you bought a Toaster, but it cost twice as much as any other Toaster and had a big battery inside so it didn't need to be plugged in to use it.

[theluckycountry]

What's Missing In This Picture?

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he report on the “Electrotech Revolution” was produced by Ember, “an independent energy think tank that aims to accelerate the clean energy transition with data and policy.” According to the core message of the document, “electrotech” will inevitably overtake fossil fuels in their role as our primary source of energy supply and use. This will not only solve our climate predicament, but will also make us more efficient, affluent and prosperous. What’s not to like? Well, just take a good hard look on slide number 10, and try to guess what’s missing from the picture:

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('theluckycountry', '[')b]What's Missing In This Picture?

[theluckycountry]

Ask yourself... Why has Battcar sales turned down, all across the planet? I'm talking real Battcars here, not the hybrid half-breed cars that are now popular with the dimwitted public, who want their cake and still eat it. But the real "Transition to Clean Electricity" type cars, the Tesla etc. Did the sale of autos turn back 100 years ago just as that transition was ramping up? Did people start to switch back to horses in droves? of course not. That transition was unstoppable, and within just a few decades the only horses on the road were those the Amish drove. The simple reason Battery powered cars have failed is because they failed to live up to the promises made about them.

Even if you believe they give you and energy saving (money saving) over their lifetimes, which I don't! The downsides of battery degradation, high cost, long recharging times and Range RANGE! Especially in Winter, make them look like a Horse compared to a Gasoline powered car. After every day of use they have to be put in the stall and fed, essentially "rested" for hours and hours. Oh sure you can buy an expensive Tesla Powerwall and faster charger, at GREAT expense, but those still don't bring it up to the level of a conventional vehicle. Personally I hate the term ICE. It's a sales term for EV marketing, nothing more. It's a derogatory term to me, Ice Age cars

That's why I use Battcar, instead of EV, it's more honest. Do you have a fan at home. What do you call it? If it needs to be wired into the house circuits to work it's an Electric fan isn't it. And if you have to charge it, so you can use it anywhere else, it's the "Rechargeable fan" or the "battery powered fan." I would think POV would be a better acronym for our conventional vehicles. Petroleum Only Vehicle. That turfs out all the wannabe novelty half-breeds the people are flocking to now. The cars that will lose half their power in a decade or less when the battery component dies.

All long haul trucks in service (aside from a few novelties by Elon) are POV, for obvious reasons. All farm equipment too, and the Lion's share of Mining, and all serious 4x4. How about Motor racing? Is there a division of NASCAR for the Battcars yet? They are very good at racing BTW, providing the race doesn't last too long. They are making inroads into Drag racing and that's somewhere they would certainly excel. Just like they took over model cars and planes. Anything short duration, where the cost is sort of irrelevant. But in the real world of Bill and Jenny, two people on average wages, where Bill commutes 100 miles to and from work a day, and can't afford the LongRange package, and has to recharge at home, after dark, the battcar is a non-starter. And Never will be.

That's not to say poor people don't buy them! But they buy the old worn out used ones, the ones with batteries with only a couple of years life left in them. It makes them feel important to have a flash looking "modernish" car in the driveway, and no one knows but them that it can barely get across town and back on a charge. Some days they go a little Too far, and have to crawl back, eyes glued on the charge meter, coasting every chance they get. Hardly compares to a POV does it?

That's why Battcar sales are in the toilet, and as we know, those high rates will never come back. And for the same reasons they are being rejected now, they simply don't make economic sense, and they simply can't compete with petroleum Only vehicles for range and ease of use, and warmth in Winter. Winter's coming to America and Europe now, expect sales to fall even further.

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('theluckycountry', 'A')sk yourself... Why has Battcar sales turned down, all across the planet?

[theluckycountry]

We're well past peakEV now, lets take a look back.

A Year and a half ago.
How EVs became such a massive disappointment
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')esides being too expensive for the average buyer, selection is limited in terms of body style, said Corey Cantor, an industry analyst... Then there’s the continued lack of public charging. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory, part of the US Department of Energy, estimates that the US will need 182,000 fast chargers for electric vehicles by 2030. There are currently fewer than 40,000...

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('theluckycountry', 'W')e're well past peakEV now, lets take a look back.

[theluckycountry]

Buffett Rings The Register After Making Billions On BYD
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'B')uffett has long preached “never bet against America,” but when it came to cars, it seems even the Oracle of Omaha knew better. Berkshire Hathaway has sold its final stake in BYD, closing the book on a 17-year partnership that propelled the Chinese automaker into the global spotlight and delivered one of Warren Buffett’s most lucrative investments

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AdamB', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('theluckycountry', 'W')e're well past peakEV now, lets take a look back.

[theluckycountry]

Is The American Dream Still Alive?
U.S. adults are losing faith in the American Dream.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')t least, that’s what a poll by ABC News and Ipsos says, conducted in early January 2024. Where in 2010 an average of 50 percent of U.S. adults aged 18 and up said they believe the American dream still holds true, that figure had nearly halved to just 27 percent by last year. Meanwhile, 18 percent of respondents in 2024 said it never held true, up from just four percent in 2010.

[theluckycountry]

Ok... I'll put on my Kub hat.

Advances in AI will boost productivity, living standards
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')rtificial intelligence (AI), like many technologies before it, offers the potential to improve people’s living standards. Such advances can be approximated by changes in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita over time—the rate of change in the amount of output per person.

Chart 1 shows GDP per capita from 1870 to 2024 along with scenarios, some of them extreme, depicting what could happen to living standards between now and 2050.

[theluckycountry]

The Lie So Dangerous Tesla Engineers Are Quitting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ltU9q1pKKM

[theluckycountry]

Tesla (TSLA) insiders have sold more than 50% of their shares in the last year
Fred Lambert | Aug 18 2025
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')Tesla insiders have been unloading their shares at an impressive rate. Excluding CEO Elon Musk, Tesla executives and board members have sold more than 50% of their TSLA shares over the last year. And that might only be part of the story. Public companies are required to report insider trading by key executives and board members. In recent years, Tesla’s number of key executives has dwindled to now only three:
Elon Musk
Tom Zhu
Vaibhav Taneja

There are also some specific examples of non-board members liquidating their stakes. Tom Zhu, who has led Tesla’s manufacturing efforts and was at times seen as Musk’s number 2 at Tesla, reduced his stake by 82% in a single year. This happened while Musk claimed that Tesla will become the most valuable company in the world and roughly 10x its current stock price due to autonomous driving and robots, a claim most unbiased analysts have been highly skeptical about.

I’m not in the business of predicting Tesla’s share price. I think it trades mainly on gullible Tesla retail shareholders believing Musk’s lies. But I believe that Tesla will likely face several challenging quarters in the next few years and may even start incurring losses. I think many executives also see this coming and don’t believe that autonomy and humanoid robots will have a positive financial contribution for a few years, as Musk claims.

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('theluckycountry', '[')b]The Lie So Dangerous Tesla Engineers Are Quitting

[theluckycountry]

Tesla stock drops after Europe sales collapse over 20% in August
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-st ... 06630.html
20% is a lot actually.

Tesla’s decline in China continues despite throwing everything at it
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')s for the most important EV market in the world, China, the results are already in, and Tesla saw an even steeper decline. Tesla’s deliveries in China, the world’s largest EV market, were down roughly 4% in the first half of the year. In Q3, Tesla’s deliveries in China decreased by 8%, and they are now down 6.4% year-to-date, based on insurance data.

[careinke]

Elon time is getting shorter. FSD 14 is dropping this Monday. I'm very excited to try it out, only two days later than promised. Supposedly ROW-Bs compute will increase by 10X and resolution will be down to leaf size in realtime.

My criticisms of Version 13, was pretty much the same as every owner who used FSD Supervised. The rumor is most have been addressed in this version. Here is the list in order of my annoyance:

1. She sucks at parking to the point she will give up and ask you to take over, or sometimes take up two spaces.

2. She does not slow down quickly enough or early enough for school zones. Right now, I manipulate the speed in those zones. Can't do that with unsupervised FSD.

3.Same as #2 only around school busses.

4. She needs a larger vocabulary for her speech recognition especially in navigation.

5. I should be able to teach her how to navigate my driveways, including backing up to her power.

Elon claims this version will "Feel" sentient, I'll let you know.

Oh Lucky, EVERY car/truck Tesla makes, make a profit on it's sales, most continue to provide profit to Tesla for the life of the vehicle. So don't count on Tesla going bankrupt anytime soon. Afterall, it is a capitalist company in a capitalist country.

Peace

[theluckycountry]

Thanks for your honesty inke