Do you think it's that simple? Every drug or medical device that is invented has to go through a process where they prove to the FDA that's is safe and won't kill or cripple you. I wouldn't take any drug unless I knew it was safe, and I'm not taking the word of a Billion dollar company that it is. It's called regulations, and any product that has the potential to cause harm is regulated to make sure it doesn't. Doesn't always work, but most of the time it does

 

Contagion is a movie, not reality lol

 

I was going to say that, but decided against it

 

Correct, my point is things like this happen all the time. Private sector.

Our government couldn’t run a successful hot dog stand in Times Square.

 

Mostly true. Look what happened to NASA they got so bogged down in red tape they stopped putting any payload into orbit it took private enterprise to make launches affordable. But in some cases government is needed, private enterprise won't touch sectors that lose money but some of those sectors are vital.

Back to EV marketshare, if the United States only gets to say 20% EV adoption then it will be the outlier places like China and Europe are way ahead. China will likely be 100% EV before anyone else.

 

Right but China as a nation pollutes so horrendously and carelessly it would make you sick to your stomach, if you don't consider a SULEV in 2004 clean enough over here.

 

The LS430 isn't/wasn't SULEV...

And private industry can't be trusted when it comes to infrastructure. The role of government is to act as the adult in the room, because unchecked the private sector will always prioritize margin over doing what the average person would agree is the right thing. They're not building roads without tolls, they're not delivering mail to remote locations, and they're not keeping beautiful places beautiful if there's even a hint of something valuable in or underneath those beautiful places.

And government money is absolutely responsible for medical and scientific advances, even those later monetized by private industry. I'm the father of an immunologist with a PhD in molecular medicine who is researching things like CRISPR and ways to trigger the human immune response in cancer cells. And much of the funding for the research lab, like many if not most research labs, is public.

 

In movies, sure.

 

The west already went through their industrial revolution polluting with abandoned. China will eventually clean up their act at least I hope. But don't blame just China, we are the ones that bought all the crap produced there.

 

China's pollution is the perfect example of an unregulated enterprise. And you are correct, China went through a similar industrial revolution like we did, and will eventually clean it up. I was just reading that China invested $7.7B Green energy project to power Beijing, with 6GW wind and solar, and 3.4GWh energy storage. They already dominate the Solar panel supply chain. As far as EV adoption, they are growing 46 percent YoY. They have a 37 percent plug-in share, and 25 percent BEV share

 

Government turns a blind eye, their policy or lack of is burn as much dirty fuel as possible to reach their goals. But as usual the devil is in the details
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/p...energy-stacked

Per capita U.S. uses way more energy. Canada is even worse. Translated, we demand a high standard of living and don't care how much energy it takes to maintain it.

 

Guys…you’re going to wind up getting yourselves booted from the thread…

 

likely because the government mandated catalytic converters. of note, in 'big govt' europe they didn't do that until much later for a few reasons:
- it would raise the cost of cars disproportionately affecting poor people
- cars were tiny and gutless back then and a cat would make them more gutless
- euro govts pushed diesels there because of the higher fuel economy despite the horrendous emissions
so yeah, euro cities back then were hell holes in terms of fumes/emissions.

worth noting government wasn't 'not there' when the u.s. had FAR worse pollution. consumer action usually spurs change including govt regs. if there's enough protest about pollution of one kind of another, a politician will eventually take up the cause. there's also straight up boycotts of products and services by consumers. the big driver for change is education and knowledge. but govt can play a useful role in many areas. what i object to is govt enacting what it claims is 'responsible legislation' that either doesn't change anything, or reduces choices or freedoms that don't involve a person putting risks on others. car seat belts and motorcycle helments are good examples. do you become a better driver by using them? no. are you an idiot not to use them? yes, but should the govt mandate them? imo, no. i believe people should be free to be idiots.

but education is key, because when lake erie was literally catching on fire (70s?) it was because of flammable waste being dumped in huge quantities there i believe. of course if the public doesn't know about it, then that's a problem. govt is usually 'late' to these kinds of problems, finding ways to fine companies for wrongdoing even in the past. govt policies are all about incentives to do the 'right' thing, and penalties to be dissuaded from doing the 'wrong' things. of course there's arguments over what's right and wrong but some things are obvious. unfortunately though a lot of things aren't obvious, including to organizations that sometimes don't even realize they're doing the wrong thing.

what i've seen in places with heavy handed government regulation and taxes is starting or growing a company becomes very difficult due to the burdens imposed. many entrepreneurs end up giving up or taking their ideas elsewhere. california is experiencing some of this.

german car makers have been forced to take their manufacturing elsehwere (like south carolina [bmw] and alabama [mercedes] ).

anyway, government isn't always the answer but isn't always the problem either.

 

Drop the debate content and politics or do not post.

You all already know this, don’t get booted from the thread

 

The AMG-only, electric GT 4-door replacement has been spied. Can't wait to see more of it: