| ▲ | stared 4 hours ago |
| See a wider perspective on how energy sources shape geopolitics: "The pivot" by Charlie Stross https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45621074. And yes, solar energy is not only greener (less CO2, less PM2.5), but also frees us from dependency on other countries. The future can be less centralized. Some countries (Russia included) will lose their bargaining chip. Other countries (USA included) will lose the incentive to 'democratize' the Middle East. |
|
| ▲ | sieabahlpark 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| [dead] |
|
| ▲ | remarkEon 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| >but also frees us from dependency on other countries It does not. It moves the dependency to the manufacturing source of the panels. That is China. No thanks. Can we please just build more reactors? The insistence on solar is becoming a cargo cult (thanks, Elon Musk). |
| |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | China can't stop you from using solar panels you've already installed and you could manufacture new ones somewhere else. Solar actually makes a lot of sense for a significant fraction of the grid. It's specifically excellent for electrifying transportation, because most cars are stationary at an office park during the majority of sunlight hours. Install chargers there and you solve the problem of people in apartments not having them at home and you don't have to worry about the intermittency because you're literally using it to charge batteries. Solar is cheaper at the cost of intermittency, so for the things where intermittency doesn't really matter it makes obvious sense. When it sucks is when you need reliable power in winter at night. Which is what nuclear is good at. But then... you can use both, each one for the thing it's better at. | |
| ▲ | triceratops an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is gas brain thinking. Solar panels are not gas. You don't burn them to make energy. There is no dependency on solar panel manufacturers. Once you install a panel it's going to make electricity for the next 25 years. At least. After that you can recycle it and use it another 25 years. Reactors on the other hand require fuel that is consumed. Unless you can mine it yourself, you're just trading an oil dependency for a uranium dependency. | | |
| ▲ | remarkEon 26 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | And this is two dimensional thinking. PRC has spent the better part of the last two decades gobbling up the supply chains that feed into solar panel manufacturing. Suppose you and I, being experienced technologists and enterprising individuals, decided tomorrow that we were going to start a solar panel manufacturing company. Surely this will be a growing, potentially high margin business because demand will be high if we're electrifying everything because of the aforementioned energy crisis. We are going to run head first into a wall of raw materials supply that is controlled by ... China. So my point is that if you want to flip the energy generation to "green" and solar on some aggressive timeline, you are going to be dependent on China to do so. There are very obvious geopolitical reasons for why this is a very dumb idea. One of the ways I gauge how serious someone is about moving energy generation in the United States to solar is if they are okay with opening up closed mines so we can produce the rare earths, here, that are needed to manufacture the panels themselves. If they're cool with that, great, let's get stared. If they aren't, then they're not serious and are bandwagoning. | | |
| ▲ | triceratops 20 minutes ago | parent [-] | | And I'm saying the US doesn't need to bother with rare earth mining as long as China is happy to export their panels. Buy as many as they sell. Build up a strategic panel reserve. If they ever stop, use the reserve and gas plants to backstop. Spend the next 20 years developing domestic PV manufacturing capability, safe in the knowledge that your current panels are good for at least that long. | | |
| ▲ | remarkEon 16 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Okay, thanks for letting me know you are not serious. | | |
| ▲ | triceratops 12 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I'm not sure you understand much if you can seriously write > Surely [PV manufacturing] will be a growing, potentially high margin business because demand will be high I'm not aware of it being a high margin business now for any Chinese company, and that's with their aforementioned advantages in labor and mining. This is a product whose price has fallen 99% in the past 2 decades. What margin? If you still want to re-open rare earth mines in the US knowing the economics, and you can follow American environmental and labor standards, then be my guest. It doesn't strike me as a lucrative opportunity but what do I know. |
|
|
| |
| ▲ | asdff 30 minutes ago | parent | prev [-] | | There is a dependency considering these are evidently valid targets for missiles | | |
| ▲ | triceratops 28 minutes ago | parent [-] | | I don't know what you're referring to. Do you mind rephrasing? | | |
| ▲ | asdff 21 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Energy infrastructure has been targeted in the Iran-Israel-US conflict. Solar is just as liable as petroleum infrastructure has been. People think petroleum has some unique risk here. Really it is energy being targeted by military means. Doesn't matter how a nation or economy sources its energy, it will be a high value target. Consider if the entire world was solar powered today. Iran targets solar plants in the gulf states instead. Gulf states target iran solar plants. Prices of panel materials surge just like oil prices surge today in response to the demand brought on to the supply chain. Maybe Iran wants to twist the knife, sends submarines to target solar supply chain networks directly either in shipping at sea or to be closer to shelling or missile striking mining or production facilities. The world is all too easy to disrupt in the very same way it is being disrupted in terms of oil today, thanks to the asymmetries brought on by drone and missile warfare in this new era. | | |
| ▲ | triceratops 15 minutes ago | parent [-] | | As terrible as the human cost would be if Iran and the other Gulf states were to target each others' solar plants, it would be contained to tha region. India, and China, and America, and Africa, and Europe's PV would continue to generate electricity. Compared to what we have now, where a war in one part of the world makes energy expensive everywhere else. Not to mention: PV generation is way more distributed than drilling oil and gas. Commercial PV generation facilities are smaller and more spread out. And even if the enemy bombs them all in a war, you can disconnect your rooftop solar panels from the grid and keep your house going. Do you have an oil well and refinery in your backyard? |
|
|
|
|
|
|
| ▲ | OneDonOne 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| And how will renewables like solar and wind wirk with Class 8 trucks, shipping, aviation or process heat or as feedstock? How have they worked in Germany, which has shut down her nuclear plants and Russian hydrocarbons? Please - tell us. |
| |
| ▲ | Valgrim 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm gonna be the annoying guy who points out the obvious thats being repeated again and again for the last 50 years... For transport, trains! Trains of different sizes, shapes and designs, solve most of the transport issues. The fact that western countries are behind on this doesnt mean it's too late to start. For heat, better insulation and heat pumps do wonders! For feedstock maybe feeding animals is simply bot the way we should move forward. And I say all this as a person who drives a gas car 70 miles every day, lives in an old house with bad insulation and eat meat several times a week | | |
| ▲ | OneDonOne 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | By feedstock, I mean the hydrocarbons that are required for the bulk chemicals, fertilizers, plastics, rubbers, detergents, pharmaceuticals etc. that we take for granted. And you still need trucks for last mile haulage. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse an hour ago | parent [-] | | Class 8 trucks are solved. Volvo, Freightliner and Tesla all make electric semis. They're not a large percentage of the installed base yet but there is nothing that needs to be invented, only adopted, and the latter will pick up as the battery costs continue to decline. Chemical feedstocks are only a small percentage of the petroleum market. The large majority is fuel. If you stop burning it there is plenty of supply and you're not worried about whether you can get any from Iran. |
|
| |
| ▲ | stared 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Please - tell us. No need of sarcasm here. Or going the route of a false dichotomy. Again, not all dependencies can be eliminated. But it is better to have less dependencies. Closing nuclear plants in Germany was a disaster, and here we agree. | | | |
| ▲ | gpm 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > Class 8 trucks Half of the "heavy duty vehicles" (which I believe is roughly similar to the classification you are using) sold in China in December were electric. Between rapidly improving batteries and maturing technology for swapping batteries as a refuelling strategy electrification of trucks is the obvious and inevitable future. They are simply cheaper to operate. | | |
| ▲ | AnthonyMouse an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > maturing technology for swapping batteries as a refuelling strategy This seems like a non-problem to begin with. There are electric semis with a 500 mile range, which at 60 MPH is over 8 hours of driving, i.e. the legal maximum in most places. The same trucks can also add 300 miles of range in 30 minutes, which adds five hours of driving in the time it takes for a typical lunch break. Why do you even need to swap the batteries? | |
| ▲ | OneDonOne 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Good for the Chinese. The rest of us do not have the upfront capital to purchase these trucks. And there is still the matter of fertilizer, concrete, bulk chemicals etc. And solar panels. There is a very good reason why solar psnel factories (like JinkoSolar run off coal or hydro and not solar power. | | |
| ▲ | rickydroll 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That's one of the wonderful things about automotive infrastructure. You can make gradual incremental changes and slowly improve the entire system. It may not be fast enough or cheap enough, but you can still make it happen. | |
| ▲ | jemmyw 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > The rest of us do not have the upfront capital to purchase these trucks. We can afford what we can do. We don't need to do what we can afford. If we wanted to build and deploy electric trucks enmasse like China then we could do it, regardless of upfront capital. |
| |
| ▲ | hollerith 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >They are simply cheaper to operate. We don't know that. Beijing might have been investing in them as insurance against its not being able to get enough diesel fuel to run an all-diesel fleet of trucks, so countries that are self-sufficient in oil shouldn't just blindly imitate Beijing's move. | | |
| ▲ | gpm 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | We know that because we know how much they cost, how much they cost to operate, and the same for diesel trucks. The technology here isn't a bunch of state secrets. | | |
| ▲ | hollerith 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Here you're just repeating the assertion I called into question ("they are simply cheaper to operate") -- or more precisely you are implying it. Does your not repeating it outright mean you mean to slowly distance yourself from it? If you have evidence that there is a fleet of electric trucks anywhere (big enough to make a dent in China's transport needs) whose actual total cost proved to be less than a fleet of diesels doing the same work would have cost, then share it. If all you have to offer is words to the effect that "an examination of the relevant technologies by any competent analyst will of course find that the battery-powered fleet would be cheaper", then I repeat my assertion. | | |
| ▲ | gpm 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | I was not in fact repeating the prior assertions. I was explaining why we know they are cheaper to operate. Because we know the costs of both them and the alternative. No fancy deductions needed where we're arguing "well electricity is cheaper than diesel but we don't know how much they use" or something. I am certainly not backing down from the claim that "they are simply cheaper to operate". That is an absolutely trivial claim that is entirely obvious to anyone even remotely familiar with numbers in this space. I would note I was discussing trucks that swap batteries - and thus the "paying drivers to wait around while trucks recharge" step doesn't exist. I'll also note all the other costs you are listing are capital costs not operational ones. Broadly speaking for most uses we appear to have crossed the threshold where the total cost of ownership is lower for most tasks, but for some niches (like "ice road shipping") I doubt the buildout is worth it (yet). | | |
| ▲ | maxglute 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | To attach some rough numbers, TCO of PRC electric truck (which cost 2x diesel) went from paying for itself in 4-5 years at $60 barrels to 2 years at $100. Diesel increase to $150, it pays for itself in 1 year. | |
| ▲ | hollerith 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | OK, then can you name one deployed fleet of trucks anywhere that uses swappable batteries? According to an unreliable source that gives fast answers to my questions, U.S. freight companies spent approximately $32 billion to $36 billion on new diesel Class 8 trucks in 2025. Now are we to believe that these companies and their investors are foolish? That they didn't do calculations and consult experts before spending this money? Are we to assign more weight to comments here on HN assuring us that electric trucks are cheaper in total cost of ownership than diesel trucks? -- comments that cost the writers nothing but a few minutes of time? Countries dependent on the Persian Gulf's remaining open to international shipping trade shouldn't just blindly copy U.S. freight companies here: for those countries, any extra cost for an electric fleet might be worth the peace of mind of knowing they will always be able to deliver food, medicine and other essentials to their populations. France for example takes all aspects of its national security seriously and relies almost completely on imports for any fossil fuels it uses. In response it is electrifying as much of its economy as practical (and continuing to invest heavily in nuclear electricity production and renewables). | | |
| ▲ | defrost 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The 23 Janus trucks hauling cement in Australia - they're likely doing a few more by now. That's been going on for three years now, so they'd have some data. Addendum: Found battery change footage from a year past- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj9pdB9cYVQ Rio Tinto (runs fleets of 100 tonne+ haul paks at many global sites) is running EV heavies in China and Australia with an eye to expand that usage: * https://australianminingreview.com.au/news/rio-drives-electr... * https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20251204183951/en/BHP... Mobile electric shovels for loading haul paks straight off the blasted shelf have been a thing for 50+ years now: https://www.komatsu.com.au/equipment/electric-rope-shovels | |
| ▲ | gpm 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | CATL via it's subsidiary QIJI is one example... with well over a thousand operational stations swapping batteries. Considering your persistent rude tone and denial of basic facts that you could simply google this is probably the last time I'll respond to you. Edit: PS. Real nice expanding your comment from one line to four paragraphs after I responded. | |
| ▲ | maxglute 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Many major close loop operations, i.e. mines, heavy industrial clusters, ports where trucks stay on location with ~100% utilization rates have been electric for a few years now, trial started in ~2020. Started with something like 10 pilot cities, now standardized around CATL #75 pack and been mass rollout last few years, there are literally 1,000s of fleets running on battery swap now. Goal is something like 80% of highway freight done by swap stations by 2030. >Now are we to believe that these companies and their investors are foolish? That they didn't do calculations and consult experts before spending this money? Or you know smart investors/planners making peace with stupid US energy policy the precludes freight electrification which is vastly more economical if there was state capacity to deploy it economically. |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
| ▲ | triceratops an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | If electricity is cheap enough you can synthesize hydrocarbons. For aviation, and shipping, and even trucking if EVs and trains can't do it. |
|
