You do know they are replacing their hybrid system with the BYD system. They have more debt than just about any company in the world. Sales declining, no decent EV. They think the answer to their woes is saturation advertisng of their ICE products. No sure why I am bothering to discuss as Iif I wait 2 years they will be gone.
I know not many are going to bother, but AEMO has substantial modelling available on their website about how this change will realistically be implemented. Itâs forming the basis of industry investment in the sector.
There are good sources of info available here.
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Toyota will be looked back on as the Kodak of car manufacturers.
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Absolutely, they were once a great car company, but they lost their way some time back. Their early adaption of hybrid tecnology was good, but like the other Japanese manufacturers they stopped innovating a long time ago. My belief it is now too late to save most of the legacy car companies, the Chinese products have gone ahead of them and are cheaper to produce. The next few years is going to be very ugly for the Japanese, American and German legacy auto companies.
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Renewables only account for electricity generation and consumption, which is only 25-30% of Australiaâs entire consumption.
And the Vic desal plant only accounted for a 100 gigalitres or so last couple of years and fed into 3 systems. Itâs good to build for a future incontrovertibly imperilled by climate change and impending, if not current, resource motivated wars. Also registering current usage doesnât imply a limit, just current usage.
Donât under estimate the technology change that is still to occur. Renewables are improving every year, to the point that in 5 years time solar, wind, batteries will look different and be much improved. Coal plants will be gone within 10 years, absolute max. Another thing to remember is half the world is working on renewable technology, because they know that a breakthrough means instant billionaire status, no better incentive than that.
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The renewable industry has lied about their true cost for a long time.
Letâs say beforeâŚI donât know exactlyâŚlate 2010âs?..solar panels and wind farms werenât viable. They all needed a subsidy to take away part of their capex and hide it somewhere else. In Australia we had Renewable Energy Certificates doing this. All those solar panels installed, they were all subsidised, and the cost shifted onto the people left on the grid. Plus the massive network requirements for large scale solar/wind - they donât want to mention that in the story about renewablesâŚHence, 25 years of adding âfree electricityâ renewables and our bills are so high that the government is desperately paying them to save votes.
BUT, by letâs say 2020, China has scaled-up so much, that the cost of solar panels (and I assume turbines) has come down MASSIVELY. Doesnât help with the network build that requires Australian services, thatâs probably still a rip-off, but anywayâŚ
But weâve reached a new tipping point, where the economics of renewables falls apart again. Because when you start out with just a little bit of solar, itâs intermittency is subsidised by the depth of the existing pool. Everyone else turns down a tad to accommodate the solar actually generating. But add enough solar, and the subsidy runs out. You canât just tie-in another solar panel. You have to add solar + storage. The capex has step-changed higher again. And the revenue side is â â â â â â until you resolve this, because prices are going negative, and feed-in tariffs are going to â â â â . Renewables are unviable again.
Oh, and the only storage projects with a reliable capex figure will again be batteries manufactured by ChinaâŚAnything that involves tunnel boring machines, or Australian labour, like pumped-storage, are going to be completely wrong on capex.
Aaaand finance costs have risen globally, so thatâs a headwind for renewable project NPVâs with all the capex upfront.
BasicallyâŚexpect to pay a lot more for electricity going forward.
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This is the point to me which is entirely unacceptable and avoidable. We should be using the abundant resources and technologies we already have to significantly bring down the cost of energy for consumers and businesses. Industry in Australia is being quickly eroded due to red tape and high energy costs, this means innovation and technology will follow down the same path.
Wouldnât a better strategy be to facilitate our own environment of innovation and reduce our reliance on China?
We need to find ways to create productivity here in Australia, otherwise we will end up with a whole lot more issues than climate change. Low cost energy is the way to do this.
Plus lets be real. Our impact on the climate is actually negligible, yet weâre going down the path of entirely destroying our economy for brownie points.
Its a â â â â â â â sham.
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AI is a hungry beast and it is going to get a lot hungrier. It may not be possible.
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I agree that this is a risk but I think it will be offset by technology improvements and hopefully AI improvements. What i have seen of Deepseek is that it is far less resource hungry that the other AIâs out there.
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Yeah, great point about Deepseek.
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Aus government banned deepseek use yesterday in its departments.
meanwhile qwen 
Solar prices now arenât really subsidised to any real extent. Feed in tariffs are in the 4-10c per kWh, with power prices at 25-45c per kWh. For commercial scale solar projects there are no controlled prices whatsoever, so they are making returns purely on the live market price.
The large build out of solar, combined with coalâs inability to shut down when not needed means thereâs often negative daytime power prices. That is putting a real crimp on new solar projects, combined with the limitations of existing transmission and the pathetic pace of new network upgrades.
Battery storage has come down in price an enormous amount, to the point where hydro projects cannot compete on price. Batteries are now being installed to play the arbitrage market, charging on low pricing and selling on the evening peak. This will rapidly place a floor on daytime prices, encouraging more investment and also bringing down evening peak pricing.
None of this is scary. Itâs complicated and thereâs some real technical risk, but the path forward is reasonably clear to shift to a coal free supply over the next decade.
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Its not scary, but it wonât be cheap power prices either.
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I guess the question comes down to do you think action on climate is needed? Because it is always cheaper to milk the assets our grandparents built. But the poor reliability of coal of late clearly needs a huge investment to address and I for one donât see that industry as capable of producing the mythical cheap energy that the soundbites keep pointing at.
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âDOWN with new technologies for generating power!â
âUP with AI killing multiple human industries overnight!â
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People donât comprehend what AI is going to do to the workplace. Most office jobs will be replaced by those that can code AI to replace almost all tasks that current staff do.
People also donât comprehend how much power will be required. Microsoft is using an old nuclear power plant to power its AI. Itâs only going to be more power intense going forward.
Extending automation and robots will take care of many manual labour due to reduced cost.
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