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Chinese technology companies are paving the way for a world that will be powered by electric motors rather than gas-guzzling engines. It is a decisively 21st-century approach not just to solve its own energy problems, but also to sell batteries and other electric products to everyone else. Canada is its newest buyer of EVs; in a rebuke of Mr. Trump, its prime minister, Mark Carney, lowered tariffs on the cars as part of a new trade deal.
Though Americans have been slow to embrace electric vehicles, Chinese households have learned to love them. In 2025, 54 percent of new cars sold in China were either battery-powered or plug-in hybrids. That is a big reason that the country’s oil consumption is on track to peak in 2027, according to forecasts from the International Energy Agency. And Chinese E.V makers are setting records — whether it’s BYD’s sales (besting Tesla by battery-powered vehicles sold for the first time last year) or Xiaomi’s speed (its cars are setting records at major racetracks like Nürburgring in Germany).
Not sure about that.
Nuclear energy is safer than ever.
We even have small nuclear reactors that can use spent fuel from the larger ones, thus solving in part the disposal of it.
Furthermore, significant advances have been achieved on fision power.
Clinging to oil is like refusing to replace your horse with a car.
Do we? Last I heard there aren’t any in service.
We’ll need a hell of a lot more advances before fusion is even close to powering a grid.
Are you guys taking about fusion? Aren’t all nuclear powerplants using fission reactions?
Corrected, thanks!
When you have plug-in hybrid tanks or nuclear powered strategic bombers oil will see a diminish in it’s strategic relevance as a resource.
Fusion is nowhere near being in industrial use or being profitable. In the future, maybe, pending more breakthroughs.
Whether nuclear is a good idea to cling to going forward or not, it takes time to deploy. Those small reactors don’t just come off a shelf, ready to be turned on. Oil, however, can generate power TODAY, anywhere you can ship it.
The question isn’t whether it’s a good idea to keep burning oil – it definitely isn’t – the question is whether oil is still a hugely important energy commodity and the answer is a resounding yes. Notably, the article mentions that China’s oil use hasn’t even peaked yet. China does not use a small amount of oil.
This is a HUGE reason to push for progress. Oil is critical to so much of modern life and we have no substitutes for all too much of it. We need more progress where we do have options (eg. EVs) so we can start growing out of our dependency before it becomes a crisis
I think we should also focus on using less energy overall – e.g. replace short to medium persinal car trips with walking, bicycles and public transport, medium to long travel with trains, eliminating unnecessary travel that can’t be accommodated by those modes of transport. Environmental solutions like replacing fossil fuel powered cars with emissions free, but equally dangerous and still inefficient EVs for personal use will keep us burning oil even longer by tying up investments in highways and hostile, car based infrastructure.
Things like rethinking infrastructure, labor, economy and housing would have been more achievable and, for most, felt more like progressing towards a better future than straighup sci-fi level efforts to continue the status quo without as much oil. But it’s the latter we get, they’re putting carbon capture machines on Norwegian oil rigs as we speak.
For sure we should reduce overall travel.