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by bgnn 524 days ago
China had 3 big goals for last 20+ years or so in their 5 year economic plans: getting rod of fossil fuel dependency, becoming a knowledge economy, increasing the share of service economy. Every government organization is working on to realize these. All the subsidies for EVs are there because they don't want to rely on gas and coal since it's not sustainable. Germany was lobbying to EU on the benefits of "clean diesel" till recently.
3 comments

> the subsidies for EVs are there because they don't want to rely on gas and coal since it's not sustainable

China doesn't want to rely on gas because they have to import it. They're fine relying on coal, which they can produce reliably, which is why they keep building coal-fired plants.

So does Germany. They are facing a recession due to over reliance of Russian gas not playing out well.
> So does Germany

Germany has the same reliance but Europe broadly hasn't done anything about it, substituting piped gas from Russia with shipped gas from America. (Which, unfortunately, is their only option absent re-firing coal or turning on nukes.)

Nuclear is the best option for Germany, which they use a lot, buy buying electricity from France.
Most EVs sold in China are actually hybrids which is why the category is called NEV, i.e. new energy vehicles.
I can't find any data to support this, just the figure that NEVs account for ~40% of new sales, no further breakdown. Do you have a reference, I'd be very curious to see the breakdown -- my view is biased by the high pure EV penetration in cities like Shenzhen.
> A total of 2.62 million passenger cars were sold in December, meaning the NEV penetration rate was 52.6%.

> Between January and November, BEV share was 58%, while PHEV share was 42% in China.

https://carnewschina.com/2025/01/08/early-data-shows-record-...

And they missed all of them. And their PR pieces got peddled in the west by journalists, to keep the remainders of the "green" revolution going in the west in increments, by generating virtual progress of a imaginary opposition. Goto keep up with the Johnsons halfway around the world, whos house may or may not be cardboard. Well meaning, but in the end, even well meaning lies destroy your megaphone.
I don't know what journalista say, I don't read newspapers.

My source on thus is international institutions like IEA and World Bank. The energy transition is going good according to the World Bank https://documents.worldbank.org/en/publication/documents-rep...

I ve read the report: https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/1628416385085972...

It does not quote its sources, but that sources seem to be the chinese government. Which then reports the progress of its provinicial governments- who miraculously always meet the set goals, by shifting goalposts and faking it. So, that fluff peace this aggregated into up on an hill high, does mean nothing.

During the great leap forward the chinese government statistics reported record harvests, enough to export grain to the sovjiet union. Meanwhile on the ground: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward#Deaths_by_f...

So, just because some provincial government buys scrapped solar cells to put them up unconnected some not used fields, buy a sattelite picture and doctor a report, while actually depending on coal plants that are planned and built. https://globalenergymonitor.org/projects/global-coal-plant-t... i do not believe that nonsense.