[nico]

> Gas prices have been "sky high" for a week and people who are under financial stress just decided to ditch their cars and buy a brand new BYD? Are we children now? listening bedtime stories?

Have you actually seen the news and the situation? Gas prices will continue to rise and will stay high for at least 3-5 years, given the damaged infrastructure and how long it will take to rebuild. And that's if nothing else happens, so the situation could get a lot worse

This means 2 things: 1) it might be a better alternative to drive electric (depends on the numbers), and 2) if enough people start preferring EVs, prices for EVs might spike in the next 1-2 years. So buying now could be a good move depending on how things turn out

[fpoling]

Russia has been recovering from Ukrainian drone strikes again oil industries within months. And Ukraine inflicted much serious damage than Iran on Gulf states.

Drones with 100-150kg just not capable of inflicting hard to recover damage. What they are good is striking repeatedly. But judging by numbers Iran is not capable any longer of sustained stacks with hundreds of drones per day.

[nico]

Very interesting take. Not sure about the comparisons though: 1) Russia is a huge powerhouse that can do a lot on its own, I don't think Gulf states have the same capability to recover (at least that's what energy analysts are saying), 2) The US claimed they had completely maimed Iran in the first few days of the war, saying they had fully destroyed their navy and their missile launching capabilities. However, that clearly doesn't seem to be the case, and yesterday Iran even downed an F35, which until then was thought of as an almost impossible feat

I guess there's a lot up in the air right now, so I personally wouldn't bet on things getting better that quickly

[fpoling]

The same analysts predicted that it would take years for Russia to recover from the strikes. And Russia is no longer a powerhouse. They gets most of their equipment from China including the oil and gas industries.

As for Iran just count the number of drones it uses per day. They started from hundreds but now it is below 50.

[caminante]

> Have you actually seen the news and the situation?

Have you seen what's happened to wholesale power market prices? Have you seen that BYD's care sales in 2026 are down y/y?

Trusting anecdotal hype from BYD salesmen and a renewables blog isn't sensible.

[nico]

I wasn't talking about BYD in particular, nor referencing any numbers or quotes from the blog. I was responding to the above comment mocking/doubting people's decisions about EV purchases and showing how that contrasts with the current macro situation

Feel free to expand on the wholesale power market prices you are referring to though, not sure what your take is

[caminante]

> I wasn't talking about BYD in particular,

You quoted the parent's mention of BYD.

[mbgerring]

Wholesale power market prices are responding to shocks in the natural gas market from two wars that disrupted those supply chains. Solar and batteries have been and will continue to he the cheapest source of power, and globally, deployment is accelerating.

Not so much in the US, where our braindead political culture is intent on ignoring the obvious economic advantage of renewables, but definitely everywhere else in the world.

[caminante]

> Solar and batteries have been and will continue to he the cheapest source of power, and globally, deployment is accelerating.

I think storage is great and solar has a place, but this is not true unless you discard reliability and other features, which should be in the price. Solar plus storage for baseload power matching requires huge overbuilds. Even in the last few years, before the AI hype, installed utility scale renewables costs went up in the US. It's not just the hardware or national politics.

And if you can't get renewables interconnected in a couple years, then the install rate won't lower the carbon of the existing grid mix charging your car.

[mbgerring]

Why would you need to “discard reliability”? What do you think storage is for?

People have been saying that solar will never work for my entire life, and my entire career in clean energy, as I have watched it grow and grow and grow and grow.

You’re right that the interconnect queue is broken. Many, many people are working on this problem. Believing that an extremely tractable bureaucratic hurdle means that solar can’t work is madness.

[caminante]

No, solar reliability requires overbuild and storage to compare accurately on LCOE. Hybrid and overbuild = expensive, so not "cheap/er", which you said.

A lot of people have this misconception about solar even with awareness of the duck curve.

[mbgerring]

Is this still true after a bunch of natural gas infrastructure got blown up this week?