this post was submitted on 17 Jun 2024
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I was thinking about that lately. Japan has a load of nuclear power so a lot of electricity. You’d think it would be more beneficial to use that than import all this petrol.
Probably like most other countries, there's a sensible way to do things if the country is governed well.
Then, there's the ridiculous way that occurs when different sections of a country are pulling in opposite directions, without being well guided by the governing power.
If car companies can make more money short term by not switching to EV, they will. They don't care that consumers and the country would have a cheaper time with EVs. Also there's all the fuel companies that stand to lose a lot of money when we make the switch to EV.
Japan is... an odd place when it comes to progress. They're a nation of youth with the lowest youth voter turn out rates, so they're governed by the elderly. They can update insanely quickly when there's the will, but will drag their feet on anything official. The youth probably aren't the biggest market for cars in the first place. The youth cares, but have no real buying power for cars anyway.
The birth rate is absolutely abysmal and the median age is nearly 50, only Monaco skews older. They barely have any youth, thats why the elderly are governing.
A while back, I did see a static that showed that Japanese "youth" have the lowest voter turn out rate of any developed nation. That's by percentage. The low birthrate is partly the cause of that. Why bother to vote when your demographic isn't statically relevant anyway? It causes a feedback loop. The other issue is that they're barely surviving mentally. It's just grind and grind and grind. Who has time for relationships or activism?
Reminds me of Kurosawa's Ikiru.
because one of the largest, Toyota, put all its coins into hydrogen being the car of the future and its looking dim. its going through its hardheaded asian dad moment about accepting the eventual result.