Electric vehicle breakthroughs in China, Tesla’s ongoing rollercoaster ride – News of the week

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It’s been a busy month and it’s actually been a few weeks since my last Cleantech News of the Week update, so this is a two-week roundup of some of the key news we’ve seen and commentary we’ve written.

Clean energy

The world is moving toward a clean energy future, there’s no doubt about that. One data point that tells us this is the fact that the world is investing almost twice as much money in clean energy as it is in fossil fuels this year. Likewise, projections about how much clean energy will be installed in the coming years keep having to be revised upwards.

In the United States, almost all of the new electricity capacity added this year came from renewable energy sources.

We just passed the second anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act, and research shows that “red states” (mostly Republican states) have received the most investment, even though they actually have a much smaller population than blue states. (Remember, the Inflation Reduction Act was passed by Democrats when they controlled Congress, without any support from Republican politicians.)

Perhaps in a similar context, Tina Casey discusses how well agrivoltaics and community solar energy fit together.

Steve Hanley also spoke about the growth and success of solar energy in Germany, the UK and Texas.

On the topic of wind power, the U.S. Department of Energy has released three new reports on our growing wind energy future.

Unfortunately, some people still waste their time researching new nuclear power plants – not because of radiation or similar reasons, but for economic, practical and financial reasons.

But let’s end with something fun – walkable photovoltaic floors. Okay, this might not be the most efficient use of photovoltaics, but it’s a fun option to try.

Electric cars

350 mayors in the US have committed to electrifying at least 50% of their municipal fleets by 2030 and increasing their electric vehicle infrastructure by 500% by 2035. The commitment was made on the second anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act.

We have a fun new monthly report from Jose Pontes where he gives a “market overview” of the world’s major countries and their electric vehicle sales trends. Those of us who like numbers fun will absolutely love this.

Colombia is not one of those big markets, but we also have a report on this booming young market where electric vehicle sales have recently increased by 240%.

But it’s not just about new electric vehicles. The good news for the majority of people shopping in the used car market is that used electric vehicle prices have dropped tremendously in recent months – down 20.5% year-on-year in Q2.

On the topic of Tesla, we talked about what to expect in the future from an improved Tesla Model Y, which was recently spotted undercover, as well as a much stripped-down and cheaper Model 3 for Mexico.

What is disturbing is that Tesla’s popularity among Democrats has dropped from 39% to 16% in just 6 months of this year! There are some predictable reasons for this, but they go a bit deeper than we probably realize, because

On the positive side for Tesla, it received a relatively low tariff of 9% on top of the 10% base tariff on electric cars produced in China and shipped to the EU. This should help protect the company from a major drop in sales in Europe.

In China, EV startup Zeekr has now set a new bar for charging speed for electric cars (available on the market today) and has just achieved 300,000 cumulative sales.

Chinese electric vehicle companies Zeekr, BYD and NIO are also continuing their rapid expansion in markets around the world, most recently in Japan, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the United Arab Emirates.

Domestically, China has launched a new “Cash for Clunkers” program to boost sales of electric vehicles and get more old, polluting cars off the roads.

We’ve also written a few more general articles about China’s leadership in electric vehicles – how long-term vision and 20 years of policy initiatives have led to China dominating the clean energy and electric vehicle market. At the same time, too many in the U.S. – including those in power in the market or in politics – have been complacent, demanding and afraid of change. In this regard, GM and Ford have unfortunately followed the short-term, anti-community and short-sighted leadership of Jack Welch – and it’s not ending well.

Staying with the challenges in the US, the latest news is that the rollout of Tesla Supercharger adapters for non-Tesla brands is not going well – it’s going very slowly, as Tesla is inexplicably producing these adapters at a snail’s pace. Hopefully that will change soon.

A Georgia police chief explains how he went from being an electric car skeptic to an electric car enthusiast. It’s a funny story.

Many opponents of electric vehicles like to say, “They’re not as environmentally friendly as you think.” But that’s nonsense. And in this context, the U.S. Department of Energy points out that “a small electric SUV with a 300-mile range produces 52% fewer greenhouse gas emissions over its entire life cycle than a comparable gasoline vehicle.”

George Harvey wrote a fun little thought exercise about what will happen as we approach the end of the fossil fuel age.

And from Kenya, we received positive news that the government there is purchasing 1,000 electric vehicles for its employees – a growing trend of strong government policy towards electric vehicles in Africa.

Robot taxis

Maybe these should be in the section above, but I’ll give them their own category.

The biggest news is that Waymo tripled its weekly paid robotaxi rides in just 3 months!

In addition, the company has just launched a new 6th generation self-driving system that can operate in more extreme weather conditions, is cheaper than ever, and has been developed faster than ever before.

Other

The 2028 Los Angeles Olympics are reportedly set to be car-free. That’s hard to imagine in one of the most car-dependent cities in the world. But that’s exactly the goal. As part of that, we expect there to be electric air taxis at the 2028 Olympics! In fact, the more ambitious goal is to have these electric air taxis in operation at the 2026 World Championships in the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco.

As for electric air taxis, the key company behind the above plans, Archer Aviation, has also just sold 116 of its electric Midnight aircraft to Future Flight Global.

In view of the upcoming presidential elections in the USA, I also discussed something that I would much rather not discuss – how the Trump administration plans to destroy climate action, progress on clean energy, and even basic things like the National Weather Service and the Department of Energy if Trump is re-elected. This is part of a Project 2025 agenda developed by dozens of former Trump administration staffers and people very close to Trump and JD Vance, and essentially aims to “drow the government in the bathwater,” as Grover Norquist once advised.

OK, I’ll end on another negative note. I recently pointed out in an opinion piece that, ironically and unfortunately, the people who are most afraid of immigration to the US (a country built by immigrants) are also the people most likely to ignore the underlying climate crisis that is causing much of that immigration. Ugh.

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