The figures quoted here are old, since EV sales have gotten a massive boost from spiking oil prices. The actual figures aren't out yet but anecdotal evidence at least in Australia suggests sales in March (across all brands, not just Tesla) doubled from February.
That said, for Tesla this is only a bandaid, since they have absolutely nothing in the consumer pipeline beyond the current increasingly uncompetitive offerings. Chinese brands like BYD, on the other hand, are laughing all the way to the bank.
Obviously the oil spike, while not a relatively massive price hike historically, is clearly accelerating the pace of electrification, similarly to how COVID accelerated the use of zoom and other remote work platforms. But also similarly, it will probably be the case that gas is still used for some needs, just not nearly as many as today. People still do prefer their gas ranges, and its not as if natural gas is a great pollutant. But electricity is easier to manage than ever now, given battery capacity.
Induction requires your cookware to sit flat against the surface or it won’t heat up (and the range will shut off after a certain time). With natural gas the flames rise through convection and wrap around the contours of the pan. This means many traditional pieces of cookware with round bottoms simply will not work on induction but work fine on natural gas.
Induction also requires the cookware to be ferromagnetic. This rules out a lot of traditional cookware materials such as clay, copper, brass, and stone. Many of these traditional materials are also accompanied by traditional shapes (round bottoms, gently sloped sides) that take advantage of the convection properties of open flame cooking.
Many recipes rely on these traditional vessels for optimal cooking performance. Woks, for example, work much better with a round bottom so liquids can pool in the middle, letting you use less oil for stir frying but still allowing ingredients to spend time in the pooled oil.
The temperature profile of a round-bottom wok over gas flame is also superior to a flat-bottom wok on induction: the traditional wok has a bright hot spot at the bottom (where all the oil is pooling) in addition to heat up all around the sloped sides, for rapidly reducing liquids that come out of foods and cooking sauces (soy sauce, shaoxing wine) with an arc-splash technique. The flat-bottom wok on induction has a uniformly hot surface on the bottom but the sides remain cool, causing all liquids in contact with the sides to run down to the bottom and begin boiling, just like when you try to stir-fry in a frying pan.
Candy-making is another cooking process that benefits greatly from the convection of natural gas combustion, since molten sugar will crystallize around the sides of a pan if they are not hot enough. Traditional candy-making is done in thin-walled, tin-lined copper pans. These pans don't work at all on induction (no ferromagnetic materials) but even if placed on a ferrous plate they would not perform well due to lack of heating of the sides.
There's a misconception that Chinese food requires a 50,000 BTU burner causing "wok hei" to be right. The truth is that Chinese cuisine is huge and varied. Some regional dishes do actually require that. Most do not and can be cooked at home.
An equivalent induction stove would be around 5000W, which I think exists. The problem with inductioning a wok is the tossing motion removes the wok from the heat, unlike over a big flame. It probably doesn't matter, but maybe it does.
The main difference is that the gas instantly turns off, whereas with induction, the stove surface the pan sits on is just as hot as the pan, because the pan heats it up via contact, so it's almost like electric in that way. I kind of doubt this matters except in certain specialty things like candy making. I'd consider myself a very proficient chef at the level of a new culinary school graduate (minus the restauranteering modules), and in practice any stove type is just fine. I'm not going to rip out my gas stove though; it came with the house and adds resale value.
I mean, if you are looking at unventilated kitchens, you are going to get bad values cooking. Pretty much period. Yes, by products of burning gas are bad. But by products of cooking are already bad. Ventilate your kitchen.
Induction is also faster to boil water, easier to clean since it's just flat glass, and safer since an induction stove without a pot/pan stays room temperature (in fact, they usually can detect if a pot/pan is present and automatically turn themselves off)
Induction is also particularly nice for certain types of cooking because many induction stoves can be set to a specific temperature instead of just to a power level.
Just reported, yes, that's globally and throughout the past 12 months so that's a 10% work force reduction overall.
In the same period they're posting record sales, it's possible that's mostly a reduction in bleeding edge sales promotion staff, influencers, etc now they have better recognition.
Two press takes on likely the same company press release material.
Mostly unrelated (my surprise that BYD had nearly a million employees) - but a fun vibe coded game would be to give a company, maybe some stats about it, and then you try to guess the number of employees.
I posted two links that both say that, of course both appear to mirror the same primary source.
You'd have to drill into both cleantechnica and the BYD presser for the exact details and caveats that come with all such reporting.
Revenue and deliveries reach new highs
BYD reported 8039.6 billion yuan (1,123 billion USD) in revenue for 2025, alongside 4.60 million vehicle deliveries, according to the NBD. Overseas deliveries reached approximately 1.05 million units, according to Sina reporting, marking the first time the company surpassed the 1-million-unit mark in exports.
Could be. People are not very logical and schools don't teach math anymore.
It is somewhat complex subject. Taking in account actual use, cost of fuel and maintenance and then comparing it to purchase price and depreciation is bit of a work. And I don't think too many people do that when they should.
Well, it's being reported as a surge in interest, whether that is followed by increased sales or not will be seen in the next month or two once these cars are delivered. But anecdotally, second hand EVs which were flooding car lots everywhere have substantially thinned out. There are still some, but a lot less than a month ago.
Also lol, you're funny implying that ICE cars aren't overpriced tablets on wheels either. It's all cars nowadays. And UK's cheapest car right now happens to be a pretty decent EV anyway, a Dacia Spring.
Part of China's "new" coal capacity is modern, efficient coal plants with lower emissions being built to replace old, inefficient, highly polluting ones.
Not trying to be offensive or throw shade, but I wouldn't be surprised if the older plants were built fast and cheap and have issues; emissions, efficiency, maintenance, safety.
The hijackers were Saudi nationals, but the operation was in no way sponsored by the Saudi state, which is a staunch US ally. Which is why the US proceeded to (attempt to) flatten Afghanistan instead.
> the operation was in no way sponsored by the Saudi state,
We do not know this. There are plentiful evidence to suggest direct involvement of the state itself, and the bin Ladin family is certainly hard to untangle from the Saudi state. That is just from what we can know from unclassified sources.
The current Taliban are an almost completely different organization despite there being continuity from then to now. A good comparison point is the church of England in 1520 vs 1620.
Yeah, though some posts a free. I think real problem is that he decided to start a Mars blog two weeks before SpaceX announced they are now focusing on the moon instead, and prior to that merging with xAI, effectively cancelling any Mars plans.
It's not just "broken people", everybody has their cross to bear. Some are outwardly visible, but many are not.
As a high schooler, there was a girl in my class who seemed to have it all: smart, gorgeous, popular, you name it. Then one day, she confided in me her deepest, darkest secret: at the age of 17, she had gone to a neighboring country to get liposuction on her thighs, because she was deeply distressed about not having the "thigh gap" demanded by beauty standards at the time. (This was also the first time I had heard of the existence of such a thing.) Now it's easy to dismiss this as shallow, but to her this was debilitating to the extent that she was willing to put up with the cost and pain of surgery to get it fixed.
That said, for Tesla this is only a bandaid, since they have absolutely nothing in the consumer pipeline beyond the current increasingly uncompetitive offerings. Chinese brands like BYD, on the other hand, are laughing all the way to the bank.
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