> The EV producer signed 16 commercial deals totalling more than SAR3.7 billion in February, seeking to localise 45 percent of materials and parts by 2034.
> Ceer is a joint venture between PIF and Taiwanese contract electronics manufacturer Foxconn. German automaker BMW is the component technology provider for vehicle development.
> In June 2024 the company signed an SAR8.2 billion contract with South Korea’s Hyundai Transys for the supply of EV drive systems, which will reduce size and weight while enhancing power efficiency.
> Interim CEO Marc Winterhoff of [majority] PIF-backed US carmaker Lucid Group said in January that full-scale vehicle manufacturing is expected to begin in Saudi Arabia this year, transitioning from assembly only at its facility near Jeddah.
Soap bubble bokeh comes from overcorrected SA. Onion rings and related brightness anomalies/unevenness in bokeh are mostly the result of molded aspheric lenses. Stopping slightly down has not significantly impacted bokeh (apart from apodized lenses) since rounded aperture blades have been invented about fifty years ago.
The iPhone 18 aperture does not have rounded blades (except the tip). Six hooked blades, very truncated hexagon aperture (perhaps exactly a regular dodecagon, it’s a little difficult to tell from the promo images)
> The demand is already there. It's the supply that is the issue.
Somehow many societies are able to power a huge amount of transportation via electrified rail and bus systems. That's an existing solution that requires zero new technology.
And of course there are EVs for places that somehow can't figure out how to do electrified mass transit.
Wrong. Storage is the issue. In my town in switzerland we produce a surplus of solar energy, so much that we can't even sell it back to the electricity company.
But the storage is too limited. The surplus during the summer doesn't translate to the winter months so other types of electricity generation is still required.
And what's great about EVs is that they are also storage. In winter you can buy electricity from places that do have solar potential - it's not far from Switzerland.
That is still demand destruction: under supply of a resource triggers substitution activity which means the demand for that specific good never returns after.
Simple not morbid at all example is me buying an EV instead of a gas car and leaving the heat at 68 instead of 70 this winter. That destroys some demand for oil.
I'm guessing China? China has shown the world that it can tolerate the shock, and it was even a huge boon for them as they are successfully exporting excess EV production. World demand is significant, China alone was expected to increase world oil demand to a breaking point, and that isn't happening, and in fact, China is exporting oil demand destruction.
China has almost certainly been dramatically drawing down their oil reserves. They don’t publish trustworthy numbers on it like western countries do, but their import rates dropped too fast for any other explanation.
That’s not to say they haven’t done a phenomenal job with demand destruction it’s just their own domestic usage is still very high and they have to import unlike other heavy users.
> That’s not to say they haven’t done a phenomenal job with demand destruction it’s just their own domestic usage is still very high and they have to import unlike other heavy users.
They will, just not as much as everyone was predicting a two decades ago. The fact that China isn't really feeling any pressure at all here should be a wake up call (they depend on oil, just less and less as time goes on). It isn't just that though, they basically took Nepal off oil completely, a bit of a special case since they had to import via India, which was always really expensive (and Nepal has lots of hydro). And the rest of the third world which simply can't afford much oil anyways now has a convenient other option.
Likewise, I don't see why ICE lovers are up in arms about people buying EVs. Shouldn't that just mean more oil (and less pricing pressure) for them?
China is the 5th largest oil producer in the world and the 2nd largest consumer. It's not just pulling from reserves that has dropped their consumption: for instance they have been switching very rapidly to electric trucks. At the same time they've been increasing internal production. I'm sure their goal is to balance production and consumption, to electrify enough of their demand that internal production can cover the remaining demand that's more difficult to electrify: jets, tanks, plastic, etc.
Compare the US and China on oil usage. The US is a net exporter compared to China being a huge importer.
And they for _sure_ are pulling from reserves since the US attacked Iran. The volume of imports and usage figures can only be explained that way. The impressive thing is the numbers suggest their reserves were massive and probably bigger than anyone thought.
They are for sure electrifying fast. In many ways the envy of the world on this. But they are oil import dependent and likely going to be more so soon if their reserves draw down too far.
China reducing their oil imports was a huge boon to the entire world. China basically said "look everyone, we're strong, we'll reduce oil imports to help the rest of the world, and that will benefit all of us together, and also we're manufacturing and selling EVs and solar panels".
China is showing the world they have reached the lofty ideal of being a functional society, and I hate that an authoritarian Communist government was how they did it. I don't want to live under such a government, but I can't deny it's looking like a stronger form of government right now.
For the rest of us, if we want democracy to be better than authoritarian Communism, then we actually have to do the "be better" part.
Demand destruction is a specific concept in economics where high prices for something cause a lasting reduction in demand. The other comments explain typical mechanisms for this, like high prices for fossil fuels spurring on electrification of machinery powered by fossil fuels, which then reduces the demand base for fossil fuels. Or the downturn of economies being accelerated by fossil fuel pricing pressure, increasing deindustrialization, and reducing fuel demand (e.g. what europe is experiencing).
Destroying demand is about getting people to not consume the thing. Oil being a knock on everything else and at such a volume would probably starve millions at the very least. This whole thing is a depopulation war. If you're reading this, you're on the losing side.
We as a planet were approaching Peak Oil consumption and this mishap has just acclerated that slightly. In all likelyhood annual oil consumtion will slowly decline or maybe quickly.
Seemed to have been produced a bunch for never making it into production
> A limited production of 250 began by mid 2013 with pricing started at €111,000 (~ £119,000). As a plug-in diesel-electric hybrid, the XL1 was available only in Europe and its 5.5 kWh lithium-ion battery delivered an all-electric range of 50 km (31 mi),[3] had a fuel economy of 0.9 L/100 km (310 mpg‑imp) under the NEDC cycle and produced emissions of 21 g/km of CO2.[8] It was released to retail customers in Germany in June 2014.[3]
And to that point, station wagons tend to have better cargo length than equivalent-capacity SUVs as well. Where the SUV does win is height - but then again, if you regularly transport large boxes, some variant of minivan would be even better.
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