“If we want more growth, we need to allow creative destruction so new companies can deliver the productivity we need.”
Octopus energy ceo greg jackson
I really do not like people boasting about how foreign dictatorships are doing everything better while bashing our local democracies. If this guy wants to see an electric truck, he can simply walk onto European streets. They are there. And they are available from those “incubent manufacturers” that he bashes in the article.
Have been seeing e-Atros in Switzerland and Germany daily during my commutes this year, they are everywhere if you keep your eyes open.
There are 50 ton e-trucks available and rolling in Europe? Please, tell me more. That is very interesting.
Electric Trucks are limited to 42 tons in the EU and there are good reasons for that. That really doesn’t change much in this argument - we also do no have those australian road trains and that is also fine
Electric Trucks are limited to 42 tons in the EU and there are good reasons for that.
In the Nordics, the weight limit of trucks is significantly higher than in the rest: 74-80 t on Sweden, 76 t in Finland and still 50 t in Norway.
Regardless, which manufacturers are putting these machines on the market?
Just recently I was talking with a professional trucker, who owns a small fleet, and when mentioned reading on projects to develop such vehicles, he denied even the notion itself. And this is a man being hard pressed to keep his business afloat.
Well, then this guy is not good at his job. You can buy the eActros from Mercedes Benz for example. And most manufacturers have an electric truck on the market. You can see this on the map above: If 18% of new trucks in the netherlands or 7% in Germany are electric, somebody has to produce those vehicles and put them onto the market. If a professional trucker can’t see that, he is really incompetent at buying trucks.
Mercede-Benz eActros, Iveco S-eWay, MAN eTGX, Volvo FH electric, …
Watch the Eletkrotruker on Youtube if you want to know more about it. Channel is in German, he is at moment on a round-the-world trip with an eActros. https://www.youtube.com/@elektrotrucker
He does English dubs for the more popular videos though.
Have you been to China? It’s not a dictatorship.
He’s simply saying Europe is dragging it’s feet and allowing legacy companies to dictate the path to electrification.
Can’t read the graph but seems woeful for non scandi countries. Fact is the EU could be doing way better to stimulate green tech.
Okay I am very impressed at what China is achieving in many fields and it’s truly more than impressive. I have lived in China for a year and I have going back a few times since. It is a dictatorship and you can fuck right off to .ml of you think otherwise
Apologies. Looked it up and you’re right! China is a self described dictatorship. Just a dictatorship of the people.
Is China a Dictatorship?
Given the degree of censorship and control China’s government leverages over its citizens, most political experts would call it a dictatorship. China’s constitution calls its government a “people’s democratic dictatorship.” This may sound like a contradiction of terms to many people. The premise of the “people’s democratic dictatorship” is that the Chinese Party of China and the state represent and act on behalf of the people, but possess and may use powers against reactionary forces. The People’s Republic of China is currently ruled by President Xi Jinping, who also serves as the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, Chairman of the Central Military Commission, the country’s Vice President, the President of the Central Party School, and the 1st ranked member of the CPC Politburo Standing Committee.
Small sample from the US but I’ve seen some all-electric Penske trucks making deliveries to nearby warehouses. Day-cab semis with full 52’ trailers
https://www.pensketruckleasing.com/truck-leasing/leasing-services/electric-vehicles/
True but the batteries in them still are from china.
You have more freedom and choice here than in Europe. Get educated and visit China. And stop regurgitating the western propaganda about dictatorship.
Shall we talk about what China is doing to the Uigurs, what happened on tiananmen square in 1989 and how many people Mao killed? Or about the corruption in the higher levels of the KPCh? Let’s have a free discussion between free citizens here without our governments intervening!
Shall we talk about what China is doing to the Uigurs
Sure. According to the UN, UK, and every single independent investigatory body not currently operated by the CIA, China imprisoned more Uyghurs than necessary in the 1990s and held them in prisons below EU standards but above US standards. At this time there is no evidence of genocide, nor is there evidence of continued discrimination.
what happened on tiananmen square in 1989
Sure, let’s talk about ‘Peaceful’ “college” “students” stealing rifles from a military base and shooting unarmed police, resulting in a militarized response to minimize casualties.
how many people Mao killed?
Lots of people die in a revolutionary war, that is the purpose of them.
Or about the corruption in the higher levels of the KPCh
You are only aware of that because of the anti-corruption policies of the modern CPC; which has resulted in dozens of arrests and executions. Your press calls it “Xi killing non-loyalists.”
For anyone else reading this who isn’t a communist dictatorship lickspittle, read about the Great Leap Forward and the 100 Flowers Campaign for examples of how Mao’s bloodthirst and incompetence killed so many Chinese.
Communist dictatorship is an oxymoron, and China’s governance system tends to rank highest among international poling for satisfaction of democratic representation.
That being said the Great Leap Forward did have mistakes. That’s what happens when you try to modernize a SLAVE AGRARIAN SOCIETY RUN BY MONARCHISTS to a modern country. It also ended the famine cycle that had been common in China for several hundred years. Given modern estimates show 6-10 million deaths during the recovery of one of the largest revolutions and most drastic socioeconomic evolution in world history, that’s a pretty good ratio.
As far as the 100 Flowers Campaign, yeah. That was a good thing and showed why education was more important before freedom of the press could be established. Mao et al naively thought China was immune to propaganda campaigns at that point in the revolution and believed that criticism would come from people that genuinely believed in freedom and progress. And they were right, for a large amount of the criticisms posted, all of which have since been addressed surprisingly enough. But the ‘let’s let the US own us, let’s return to a puppet state, let’s sow racial division instead of national unity,’ propaganda campaigns threatened to split China, which would have resulted in additional western-owned colonial puppet states like Japan.
You’re seriously defending the Great Leap Forward where peasants were made to live in communes and melt down their metal tools in backyard furnaces to make worthless pig iron while the nation starved due to inept and incompetent agricultural practices being enforced on them by the dictatorship? It’s almost laughable if it wasn’t so tragic - yes, farmers, just plant all your seed in a giant pit and it will grow thick enough to stand on!
My older Chinese born coworker who grew up in one of these communes didn’t know who his parents were, didn’t know his birthday, all because of that tyrannical shit. And it certainly wasn’t necessary to “mature the economy” or whatever your joke of an explanation is.
You’re entitled to your opinion, but to anyone else reading, everything he has said is easily disproven drivel. I won’t be replying again.
You’re entitled to your opinion, but to anyone else reading, everything he has said is easily disproven drivel. I won’t be replying again.
Good, better luck next time spreading your propaganda.
You’re seriously defending the Great Leap Forward where peasants were made to live in communes
While this is true, this isn’t inherently a bad thing. The problem was creating an environment where ‘Dirt Emperor’s’ could form without any infrastructure for oversight; as well as the overall lack of education, as mentioned previously. This has been shown and China admits this was a mistake, and communes were used as a part of Deng’s argument for capitalist reform, showing that agrarian society cannot jump to socialism or communism.
However this laid infrastructure that wouldn’t otherwise have been laid, allowing for the reforms and later top-down management from the government to be effective in modernization of regions at a pace that has never been rivaled in human history. Source 1
melt down their metal tools in backyard furnaces to make worthless pig iron
You act like this was a plan from the government, it wasn’t. Again this is down to local corruption, and the reason China now has a strong centralized government. The Steel production quota was based on Soviet successes, but was incorrectly included in all regions as an expectation Cadres could be rewarded for; leading to severe local corruption without oversight. The expectation from the central government was that mines that were shut down due to the war and invasion would be reopened, and newer mines would be prospected.
Instead these regional bosses wanted to cook the numbers to look good, primarily believing they would be rewarded heavily, secondarily believing the new government was ‘just another dynasty,’ and thus would punish them if they failed to meet quotas or had issues or concerns. This was a false belief that lead to tragedy, but was not a consequence of the great leap forward as much as expecting corruption to not be so deeply entrenched in those that had management experience. Source 2
As a fun fact, this is why the current Chinese government system is set up the way that it is, with literally dozen of competing people reviewing any accomplishment of their peers.
incompetent agricultural practices being enforced on them by the dictatorship
This was more of a problem of individuals with the knowledge being essentially too worthless to keep in government. And that sounds odd given the results, but you fail to understand just how corrupt the previous government was. Any possible criticism you have of the Mao-led party, you can say was 10,000 times worse before the revolution, hence the revolution. There is a reason the KMT was a fascist dictatorship until the 1980s when they held their first ever elections for any office.
farmers, just plant all your seed in a giant pit and it will grow thick enough to stand on!
This wasn’t a policy, but what was a policy, and what the tragedy actually was, was eliminating sparrows without understanding their greater effect on keeping pests under control. With more limited seed stock the solution they came to was to eliminate pests that would eat seeds, without any concern or understanding as to what other things those pests might eat that would cause more damage. Otherwise most planting was allowed to continue as it had been.
My older Chinese born coworker who grew up in one of these communes didn’t know who his parents were, didn’t know his birthday, all because of that tyrannical shit. And it certainly wasn’t necessary to “mature the economy” or whatever your joke of an explanation is.
This would be a lie that he told you. The communes existed for exactly 3 years. The broader organization (sectioning the population into 26,500 sections for management) continued until the 1980s, but local communes were dissolved during and post famine. Additionally to this, there is no confidently documented cases of separating children from their parents or eliminating birthdays. There are some anecdotes on far-right websites, but there is no actual documentation of this happening or ever being ordered.
To your broader point with this third-party anecdote, no, it wasn’t tyrannical to try to eliminate local lords and return control to the people. It wasn’t tyrannical to try to implement a communal environment that was largely successful in its wider goal of national unity. It was too much, too soon, based on idealism over the hard reality of what living in a feudal agrarian society does to the human psyche.
Your president is a dictator who has been in power since 2012 after removing term limits. This dictator has declared himself in office for life, as all dictators do. You may be happy with the result, but you do not have the right to choose your highest leader, and are by definition ruled by a dictator.
Why has your map removed parts of Europe?
zealandosis
It’s some weird map, looks to be Schengen with Switzerland removed and Ireland and Iceland added…
Not really. Many of us have known for a long time that electrification was the obvious way forward. The reason others don’t is that the O&G industry are hindering progress through media.
Also the USD was backed by oil. The US would never allow countries to truly decarbonize since it undermines the value of the dollar.
“allow countries” - 😆 that isn’t how world politics works
Effectively it does, we are so dependent on thebus in so many ways, whenever we do something they dont like, they threaten to take something away or increase tariffs. In the end europe caves.
So we don’t have Galileo for example, stopped supporting Ukraine and supported the Iran war efforts of the US like in Iraq?
It’s why we pay tariffs. Why we enforce US anti circumvention laws. Why we allow big platforms to reduce their taxes to almost nothing. Why we don’t tax based on citizenship, while the us does.
That isn’t what “allowing” means. And there is no caving. These are all ongoing negotiations and things keep changing.
deleted by creator
Are you at all familiar with the last 80 years of world politics? Or the function of the CIA?
Back that up with some examples and i would be more likely to believe you
Examples that countries don’t ask for US permission to use non-fossil energy? Look at electrification grids for Switzerland, Norway, France, Germany, Australia etc. Look at their EV usage. Asking for US permission to avoid fossil fuels would be hardcore ridiculous.
My specific claim isn’t talking about the past year or past decade, but the past 50 years to be clear. The technology has existed to taper off of fossil fuels for a loooong time but we never did. Why? And don’t tell me it was too expensive. Everything is too expensive at first but economies of scale, innovations, and technological maturity drop prices. Solar is cheaper than gas and has been for a long time now. Same with wind… that could have happened earlier.
Theres a difference between token usage on your grid, or edge case countries like Norway that are all mountains and Fjords they can easily dam up for cheap power. Most of the countries you listed still consume huge amounts of fossil fuels and are delayed by decades on decarbonization. Why? You’re pointing to exceptions that prove the rule, also EV usage is a recent thing as the US empire is collapsing.
The US has historically obstructed global climate policy. The Senate’s 1997 Byrd-Hagel resolution passed 95-0 against Kyoto-style commitments. It said the US shouldn’t accept binding emissions limits unless developing countries also took on commitments thereby crippling their own economies.
The US never ratified Kyoto, and it has withdrawn from Paris twice. The US also promotes its own LNG and oil exports. They built the world’s largest petrochemical supercomplex in Louisiana. For the past 70 years the US has made money hand over fist by importing cheap shit oil and refining into products it sells back to other nations. Other nations don’t need to invest in refining capacity or deal with crude grades and markets, and the US earns money and a large part of their dollar backing demand by being the world’s refinery.
Additionally members of the International Maritime Organization voted to delay a global carbon price on shipping after the US threatened sanctions, tariffs and visa restrictions on supporters. Sanctions update
There’s also this how can this happen if Europe isn’t beholden to American interests? Why would the EU sign up to be even more reliant on American oil? If the US were instead a leader on decarbonization how do you think things would be different?
Do you need past US presidents to go on public television and say “We are opposed to any country trying to decarbonize” Or is a wealth of circumstantial evidence and direct evidence not enough?
How about you provide actual meaningful examples to support your counterargument. Address each of the claims I’ve made here because I think they’re pretty damning to your argument. Yes, the US doesn’t allow other countries to decarbonize.
Rest assured that one day, I will read that post of yours.
I think that’s a self report. If you read more we wouldn’t be having this conversation 🤣
This article implies that industries such as this are what would need to be creatively destroyed to enable progress in electrification.
“Incumbents crowd out the innovators in many sectors and markets… so many of the big industries essentially have a stranglehold on policy”
Yep, our milkman in the early 70s had an electric truck for making deliveries. Efficient stops and starts, no stink, less noise…all though all the glass bottles jiggling about then seemed louder without engine noise.
Burning diesel is definitely not the best way to dampen jiggling bottle noises.
If we want more growth (…)
We don’t.
More context:
“Incumbents crowd out the innovators in many sectors and markets,” Jackson said. “It wasn’t the Post Office [the U.K.’s public mail service] that invented email. The music industry held back streaming and digital music for 10 to 20 years. What you need is routes to market for new technologies, and I think that can be a challenge in Europe because so many of the big industries essentially have a stranglehold on policy.
“Economists have said that nearly all productivity growth comes from new companies. If we want more growth, we need to allow creative destruction so new companies can deliver the productivity we need.”
I think the target of the “creative destruction” here is the companies holding back growth in electrification.
Does this guy think the post office should be innovating in different technologies? It’s public service. What’s wrong with him?
The population tends to grow. Even if it stays stable, how do you envision the improvement of people’s quality of life without growth?
Redistribution.
Growth is only at all needed, because of a certain group hoarding and wasting everything.
At the current rate, growth will end all life on our planet. Just a few more years of growth, and we’ll be past the ‘no way back’ line.
Can’t ideal communist economies also have growth? Can growth come from efficiency improvements rather than resource consumption increase?
Sure, theoretically, after everything else has been solved and it’s what’s desired. The goal of communism is a sustainable (as much as there can be in a universe with entropy) way of life where no one goes without what they need to live. Let’s figure that part out before exploring exponential growth, instead of the other way around.
Both are possible
The population does not grow in most of the world anymore. Why do we need to improve people’s quality of life all the time? Why don’t we improve the sustainability of the quality we have right now? Because its abysmal and this will (or is it already ?) fuck up everybody’s quality of life for the next 100k years. Resources are limited and unlimited growth is not possible.
Because we dont all have a decent quality of life
how do you envision the improvement of people’s quality of life without growth?
- Tax rent-seekers more, to stop them bidding up the cost of finite resources
- Remove waste (like being required to drive everywhere due to shitty/lack of public transport)
I want new businesses and people fuck vw gatekeeping an industry with mid products
Start killing old people people or change the retirement age to 80 and put very severe wealth caps in place then. The entire retirement system is based on growth, doesn’t even matter if capitalism or not, because it involves a large group of people living off the backs of others. It was fine when the economy and population was still growing, now it’s getting oppressive.
Somehow US media always brings those “why Europe sucks at things” articles, even on topics where the EU is actually holding up substantially better than the US, like electrification of road vehicles of all categories and domestic industries staying in that business. That said, Europe is certainly in a death struggle against Chinese competition but things are not nearly looking as lost as with the domestic US industry in the sector.
“If we want more growth, we need to allow creative destruction so new companies can deliver the productivity we need.”
Octopus energy ceo greg jackson
Well I don’t really want more growth or “creative destruction.”
What if it’s growth in renewables and destruction of the fossil fuel industry?
Well… Yeah, I guess that would be ok.
We don’t have to really pretend like that’s what he means do we? Like being contrarian is fun and all I guess, but we’re all able to see through the bullshit Tech bro PR here aren’t we?
See, I uh came away with a different conclusion. We are chasing endless growth like the naive fools we are. And one day it’s going to wipe humans from the planet like a bad cold.
wipe humans from the planet like a bad cold. And maybe, just maybe, ‘like before’.
(There is some physical evidence out there that we weren’t the first to make this mistake.)
What do you mean?
Why growth? Everything has started to recede. Conservation should be a focus. The Luas is genius compared to trucks. Like it doesn’t have to be used only for public transit either.
One needs to regulate the corporate lobbyists and get rid of the corrupt politicians to allow Green Technology to advance. The last sentence in the article about the Orange Shitstain…LOL! That ain’t happening unless the oil companies change their minds.
Thats exactly the point. It’s like Green Power wants to rise, but all the Fossil-“fossils” are hanging on and dragging it down…
never heard of the OIL/GAS ever changing thier minds. they have done everything to sabotage going green for decades. they use quite obfuscated methods like funding companies that tell you to buy thier eco-friendly products, or fake protestors
Indeed, they also own plenty of patents that would make on planet a lot cleaner.
i was watching some animal videos and people were calling out the owners to stop promoting those eco-friendlyproducts, good thing they listened, because its pretty much antithetical to the channel intention.
We need to change the alignment of control away from shareholders and move it to stakeholders. Regulation by itself is a bandaid over a broken system and we need a systemic overhaul.
I don’t give a fuck what CEOs say
49-ton trucks in China running on batteries.
Sounds as stupid as Tesla Semi.
Yeah, how dare the 100% efficient, highest possible torque drivetrain type be used to move heavy vehicles. Those damn Chinese don’t know anything and are obviously fad chasers.
How dare physics be the same for chinese.
…The physics that enable electric motors to generate more torque with less energy than all other forms of locomotion combined, making electric heavy vehicles the actually wisest implementation of electric vehicles?
I don’t think “stupid” means what you think it means.
Don’t conflate Elon the Idiot, with a viable cleaner transport method.
I dont conflate anything. Elon is an idiot for trying idea that can’t ever work. Every single issue with Tesla Semi is same for this one
What issue is that?
The battery weight kills the capacity. There are legal limits how much weight truck+load can have. Every kilogram of truck weight increase, means a kilogram less for cargo. For Tesla Semi this absolutely killed any notion of of business usecase. Same physics govern chinese trucks.
Except they are in use now. Shorter range than long haul trucks until infrastructure is in place and cheaper per mile. But Tesla understood that issue you speak of that’s why they proposed auto driving 3 in a row so first one creates draft for the other two to increase range. As material science brings lighter weight materials that weight problem will get better.
Battery technology will get better too.
All your arguments are what people said for electric cars, yet here I am in Vancouver area where almost every second car I see is electric.
Well the energy prices of today make electric trucking including long haul demonsterabley worth it financially so I don’t really know what you’re talking about. Tesla just made a bad truck and was late to the market as far as I know.
Diesel i would presume isn’t as expensive over in the US as it is here in Europe but if you think it’ll ever stabilise at a place significantly cheaper than right now I don’t think your projections of the energy market are worth anything.
Energy prices don’t kill this. Work costs, and upfront investment does. If half of the capacity is taken by batteries by default, you need to buy twice the number of trucks, and employ twice the drivers. This is completely infeasible business strategy.
Work harder winning baby. It’s capitalism here.
Yeah and it is telling that you weren’t convinced by an affordable, simple and cheap electric hatchback commuter car, asshole.
