{"id":3511164,"date":"2025-03-24T10:34:25","date_gmt":"2025-03-24T10:34:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/?p=3511164"},"modified":"2025-03-24T10:34:25","modified_gmt":"2025-03-24T10:34:25","slug":"tesla-big-oil-have-a-weakness-in-common","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.resilience.org\/stories\/2025-03-24\/tesla-big-oil-have-a-weakness-in-common\/","title":{"rendered":"Tesla, Big Oil have a weakness in common"},"content":{"rendered":"

It must have seemed like a huge week for the fossil fuel industry: as the Wall Street Journal\u00a0put it yesterday<\/a>\u00a0(and you could sense the headline writer\u2019s glee), \u201cThe fossil fuel industry gets its revenge on green activists.\u201d<\/p>\n

The oil-and-gas industry is landing blow after blow against climate activists.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has cranked out approvals of major projects to ship liquefied natural gas from the Gulf Coast and killed a host of climate-related initiatives. Meanwhile,\u00a0Texas billionaire Kelcy Warren<\/a>\u00a0has won\u00a0a nearly $700 million verdict<\/a>\u00a0against Greenpeace that could spell the end of the group\u2019s U.S. presence.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hell, the Trump administration is\u00a0trying to resurrect\u00a0<\/a>coal<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>and in what\u2019s doubtless considered a back-slapping prank around the West Wing it just\u00a0named<\/a>\u00a0a fracking executive to run the Department of Energy\u2019s renewables office. Meanwhile, Musk\u2019s vandals\u00a0fired<\/a>\u00a0the quite brilliant chief scientist at NASA, doubtless because her work involved protecting the planet\u2019s climate\u2014Katherine Calvin was, among other things, the head of Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, so good sport to\u00a0Jackie Robinson<\/a>\u00a0her.<\/p>\n

All of this is deeply stupid and damaging. And yet, despite all that, there must have been a few shivers that ran down the spines of both Elon Musk and oil executives last week when they read a piece of news from China.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the\u00a0story<\/a>, as told by Bloomberg. Chinese automaker BYD (their slogan, at least in English, is \u2018Build Your Dreams\u201d) announced on Tuesday that its new cars\u2014available\u00a0in April<\/em>\u00a0for\u00a0$30,000\u00a0<\/em>if you\u2019re in a place where you can buy one\u2014will recharge in five minutes. Or, roughly, the time it takes to fill your tank with gasoline.<\/strong><\/p>\n

From \u201cmore features for no more price\u201d and \u201csmart driving for all,\u201d BYD can now add \u201ccharging as fast as refueling\u201d to its marketing slogans, potentially helping it to capture more share from legacy automakers and more direct rivals like Elon Musk\u2019s Tesla Inc.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

How did they do this? Here are a bunch of words I don\u2019t fully understand:<\/p>\n

BYD cites its \u201call liquid-cooled megawatt flash charging terminal system.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, to match the ultra-high power charging, BYD has self-developed a next-generation automotive-grade silicon carbide power chip. The chip has a voltage rating of up to 1500V, the highest to date in the car industry.<\/p>\n

In tandem, BYD on Monday launched its flash-charging battery. From the positive to the negative electrode, the cell contains ultra-fast ion channels, which BYD says reduces the battery\u2019s internal resistance by 50%.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a mass-produced 30,000 RPM motor. Luo Hongbin, BYD senior vice president, said the motor \u201cnot only significantly boosts a vehicle\u2019s speed, but also greatly reduces the motor\u2019s weight and size, enhancing power density.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But I can translate it into English. BYD did not waste its time giving Nazi salutes. It didn\u2019t buy a social media platform so it could make obscure marijuana jokes and make fun of poor people. It didn\u2019t devote itself to helping a nincompoop win the presidency and then decide it would be exhilarating fun to fire a bunch of government workers. Instead, BYD did, you know,\u00a0<\/strong>engineering<\/strong><\/em>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It must sting for Musk to watch that kind of progress, especially on a week when he had to\u00a0recall<\/a>\u00a0all 46,000 cybertrucks (and thus disclose for the first time that he\u2019d only\u00a0sold<\/em>\u00a046,000 cybertrucks) in order to keep them from dropping parts on the road. It turns out they\u2019d stuck the trim on the plug-ugly things with the wrong glue\u2014now they\u2019re going to replace it with an adhesive that is \u201cnot prone to environmental embrittlement.\u201d When owners drive their sad vehicles back to the dealers for repairs (not during a rainstorm, because that apparently causes\u00a0rusting<\/a>), they\u2019ll likely encounter one of the hundreds of protests that have broken out across the country. (I confess to being quite proud of my sign at our local demonstration last Saturday)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It\u2019s gotten so bad that even true believers like Dan Ives, one of Tesla\u2019s biggest shareholders, have\u00a0suggested<\/a>\u00a0Musk might want to go back to, you know, work. I mean, Musk has cut the value of his company in half in the last couple of months. But never fear\u2014last night he assembled the company\u2019s workers for a\u00a0pep talk<\/a>. Robo-taxis coming soon! As they have been since 2016!<\/p>\n

But if the BYD announcement was a reminder that Musk is a poseur, the deeper threat probably comes for Big Oil. Because if you can put 400 kilometers worth of juice in a car in five minutes, the last even slightly good reason for buying an internal combustion vehicle vanishes. Yeah, you still need a fast charger\u2014and BYD is building 4,000 of them across China. But it feels like writing on the wall: Chinese demand for gasoline\u00a0dropped<\/em>\u00a0in 2024, and analysts see it\u00a0going down almost five percent a year between now and 2030.\u00a0<\/a>As the International Energy Agency explained last week,<\/p>\n

Electric vehicles currently account for about half of car sales in China, undercutting 3.5% of new fuel demand in 2024… China has been providing subsidy support to purchases of so-called \u201cnew energy vehicles\u201d (NEVs) since 2009, promoting its automotive manufacturing industry, and reducing air pollution. A trade-in policy, introduced in April 2024 and expanded in 2025, continues to drive growth in China\u2019s EV sales. Meanwhile, highly competitive Chinese automakers are also making gains in international markets.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

America\u2019s oil companies decided they could make more money from fossil fuel than from embracing renewables\u2014they\u2019ve decided to let the Chinese win the solar energy battle, reckoning that they can use their political power to keep the world hooked on hydrocarbons. In some ways it\u2019s working\u2014they helped buy Trump his presidency and he\u2019s giving them what they want. In particular, he\u2019s been\u00a0shaking down foreign countries\u00a0<\/a>to buy more of their Liquefied Natural Gas to avoid tariffs.<\/p>\n

But oil is a global commodity, and the perfect example of marginal pricing. If China is going to be using less gasoline\u2014well, the price of oil is going to drop. That\u2019s bad news for American producers\u2014as Trump\u2019s biggest industry fundraiser Harold Hamm\u00a0explained<\/a><\/p>\n

U.S. shale\u00a0needs much higher oil prices<\/a>\u00a0than $50 per barrel, and even higher than the current WTI Crude price in the high $60s, for a \u201cdrill, baby, drill\u201d boom, oil tycoon and Trump campaign donor Harold Hamm told Bloomberg last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of fields that are getting to the point that\u2019s real tough to keep that cost of supply down,\u201d Hamm told\u00a0Bloomberg Television<\/a>\u00a0in an interview.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The fracking revolution is wearing down\u2014wells are sputtering towards empty faster than expected, and if prices are depressed it will make less economic sense to drill baby drill, no matter what our new king demands. As David Wethe and Alix Steel reported his week<\/p>\n

Shale operators are slowing production growth after years of drilling up their best locations. At this week\u2019s CERAWeek by S&P Global energy conference in Houston, executives for some of the largest US shale companies forecast US oil production will peak in the next three to five years.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019m beginning to think you can imagine a world where the U.S. builds tariff walls around its borders, prevents the easy development and spread of technology like EVs and heat pumps, and manages to become an island of internal combustion on an increasingly electrified world. That\u2019s a depressing vision, though nowhere near as depressing as the U.S. imposing that vision on the rest of the world, something that\u2019s going to get harder: if you were any other country (Canada, say) would you tie yourself to the U.S. for\u00a0any<\/em>\u00a0critical product? If you had a choice? And everyone has a choice, because the sun shines and the wind blows everywhere. As the economists at IEEFA\u00a0said this week<\/a>, even the expensive \u201cjust energy transition partnerships\u201d with emerging Asian nations may survive Trump\u2019s desertion.<\/p>\n

Given the current U.S. administration\u2019s\u00a0priorities<\/a>\u00a0and ambitions to \u201cdrill, baby, drill<\/a>\u201d for oil and gas, the\u00a0withdrawal from JETP can be viewed as favorable for the energy transition<\/strong>. The program\u2019s complexities and transformative potential demand the involvement of a \u201ccoalition of the willing<\/a>.\u201d The original countries (including the European Union), private sector partners, and philanthropies still support JETP and want to realize the mechanism\u2019s potential. In the case of Indonesia, Germany has\u00a0quickly stepped in<\/a>\u00a0to fill the U.S.\u2019s vacated leadership role. Japan has\u00a0reaffirmed<\/a>\u00a0its co-leadership role and remains committed to Indonesia\u2019s USD20 billion JETP. Despite the U.S. exit, critical financing and support for the program remains.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here\u2019s a\u00a0great interactive map<\/a>\u00a0from the New York Times of what the solar and wind boom looks like from outer space. It shows the burst of development in China\u2014but also Turkey. And it doesn\u2019t even capture the small-scale home by home and factory by factory spread of solar that seems to be speeding up\u00a0exponentially<\/a>\u00a0over the last year.<\/p>\n

It may even be hard to stomp out all this goodness here at home. Case in point: the Utah (!) legislature this week became the first in the country to (unanimously!)\u00a0pass a law<\/a>\u00a0enabling \u201cbalcony solar,\u201d the small-scale arrays that brought solar power to a million and a half German apartments last year.<\/p>\n

The legislation exempts these systems from several requirements:<\/em><\/p>\n