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Comment by Valgrim | Hacker News Reader

I'm gonna be the annoying guy who points out the obvious thats being repeated again and again for the last 50 years...

For transport, trains! Trains of different sizes, shapes and designs, solve most of the transport issues. The fact that western countries are behind on this doesnt mean it's too late to start.

For heat, better insulation and heat pumps do wonders!

For feedstock maybe feeding animals is simply bot the way we should move forward.

And I say all this as a person who drives a gas car 70 miles every day, lives in an old house with bad insulation and eat meat several times a week

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By feedstock, I mean the hydrocarbons that are required for the bulk chemicals, fertilizers, plastics, rubbers, detergents, pharmaceuticals etc. that we take for granted.

And you still need trucks for last mile haulage.

Class 8 trucks are solved. Volvo, Freightliner and Tesla all make electric semis. They're not a large percentage of the installed base yet but there is nothing that needs to be invented, only adopted, and the latter will pick up as the battery costs continue to decline.

Chemical feedstocks are only a small percentage of the petroleum market. The large majority is fuel. If you stop burning it there is plenty of supply and you're not worried about whether you can get any from Iran.

Not only are electric trucks are unprofitable, it means you switch your dependency from Middle-Eastern fossil fuels to Chinese rare earths. At least we can make biofuels from sugarcane

Electric trucks already have a lower TCO than diesel trucks. LFP batteries don't even contain rare earths.

You can also process rare earth concentrates on your own soil, there's no need to offshore that to China and Malaysia other than "No waste ponds in my Backyard".

You don’t burn your batteries though. You build them once and then use them for 20 years. They will just keep working when the next war erupts on the other side of the planet.

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