My experience of the interiors of luxury US SUVs is that they are nowhere near as quality as, eg, a Merc or BMW.

Komo is not a separate hotel from Shambhala. And the Komo Shambhala has exactly the private pool next to your bed that you mentioned with the Dorado beach.

An East Beach plunge at the Dorado Beach does not begin to compare to a Pool Villa at Como Shambhala. It’s much smaller (92sq m vs 235sq m), the outdoor space is meager, the quality of the fittings is massively lower, etc. The Pool Villas at Como are substantially cheaper than the East Beach Plunges at Dorado.

https://www.comohotels.com/bal...
https://www.ritzcarlton.com/en...

I’ve stayed in plenty of hotels of all types and am confident about what I’ve said here.

This is entirely my point. The things I listed aren’t some kind of “supreme moral ground” — they’re minimal reasonable stances for any functioning member of society. Don’t be anti-science and don’t be a fascist is a code that hundreds of millions of people have been able to live by for decades in which we built the best societies humans have ever lived in — as opposed to fascist societies and pre-scientific societies which were horror shows.

They just chose not to take it.

Things I’m confident I’ll never do: fight against vaccines, climate science, support racism or misogyny, rail against wind turbines like a loon, support fascism, forget that I have been very very lucky in some respects and that others haven’t. It’s not that fucking hard, tbh

BYD is being very explicit about its intent to expand global manufacturing capacity.

The Ioniq 5 has a hatchback rear door. But if you mean a small hatchback like a Renault 5, then you’re correct

This is the car for you, then! Although you’ll struggle to get your hands on one

https://www.caricecars.com/

The thing about American “luxury” SUVs is that they’re incredibly expensive but they’re not at all luxurious inside. The standard of fit and finish is poor, with cheap materials abounding, the ride is uncomfortable and pillowy, the tech is at least 10, often 15 years out of date. They’re like a pastiche of luxury, rather than actually being luxurious. It reminds me of the faux-Eiffel Tower in Vegas or an American hotel room in Chicago or San Francisco at a “luxury” brand like Ritz-Carlton, compared to, say, a room at the Datai or Komo Shambhala.

I think there will be a number of opportunities for companies to profit from the removal of the rules for as long as the rules are gone. For example, manufacturers may turn to cheaper, high GHG feedstocks over the next couple of years.

In the end, this is being done by a bunch of old scared men shouting at the future, and they will die and leave the rest of us alone. But they can certainly make things shittier until they’re gone

It's a dynamic situation, because solar and battery costs have fallen so dramatically across Africa and thus imports have shot up across most countries, lots of it for domestic installations. This is a last-two-years phenomenon, really.

On the latter point, I think it's important to recognise that the pathway for families in relation to mobility is not two legs to four wheels. It's bikes, then motorbikes, then cars. And bikes and motorbikes benefit from electrification, and can be charged at home more readily than an EV from a domestic solar & battery setup in a typical African household.

Yup.

A quick scan of the Nature article didn’t seem to show anything for the rise of sodium batteries. Strikes me that pretty obviously, small sodium 4 wheelers will be a big winner in driving down costs for EVs in Africa. Both BYD and CATL now have sodium in production, and both are predicting substantially lower cost batteries as a result. Doesn’t work for the premium segments, where consumer demand long range, but African consumers are focused on affordability above all.
   

1. You’ve ignored the importance of solar & batteries, both domestic and community microgrids. These are central, just like mobile cell masts were central to why Africa largely skipped over landlines
2. Reliability is higher for EVs than for ICE, because of mechanical simplicity. You don’t need to maintain an electric motor, it’s sealed and is going to last and last.

You’re thinking in American terms. For people living in African countries, the calculus is completely different. For example, for an American, solar & battery is always an optional choice, because grid connections are just there for you, and are more or less reliable. For many people across Africa, grid connections are rare and the grid itself is completely unreliable. So the value of solar & battery is dramatically higher, and the comparator costs includes kerosene lamps and generators — both the fuel costs and also the impacts of living with noise, fumes and maintenance.

For the cars themselves, the key constraint is affordability, “what can I afford to buy today?”, not monthly payments.