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American electric vehicles are big because American cars are big.
The auto industry’s shiny electric future is beginning to look a lot like its bloated present.
This spring — around the same time the Tesla Model Y was becoming the world’s best-selling vehicle — General Motors announced the demise of the Chevy Bolt. The small EV with starting prices in the high $20,000s (even lower with tax breaks included) was the closest thing Americans car buyers had to an affordable electric vehicle. After 2023, however, GM will end Bolt production to make way for bigger, more expensive EVs. The automaker plans to retool its Michigan factory to crank out electric versions of the Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks, and promised its new Ultium electric vehicle platform would soon lead to the launches of the Blazer EV and Equinox EV crossovers.
If this sounds familiar, it should. Back in 2018, before the big car companies went seriously electric, Ford killed its trio of normal, everyday, affordable cars — the long-running Fiesta, Focus, and Fusion. The move was ostensibly made to cut costs, and came with token corporate quotes about simplifying the brand’s lineup. But the bigger reason for the move was that Ford could replace its cars with the crossovers, SUVs, and trucks that Americans wanted and were increasingly willing to overpay for.
Ford’s shift was one of the biggest in the auto industry’s decades-long march away from affordable car-shaped cars. Five years later, does the death of the Bolt signal that the electric car market is headed in the exact same direction?
To be fair, the Bolt was far from perfect. Most notably, a widespread battery problem forced a recall in 2021 of more than 100,000 Bolts in the U.S. and caused a long, revenue-draining production hiatus while GM fixed the problem. Nevertheless, Chevy sold lots of Bolts: more than 38,000 in 2022, trailing only Teslas and the Ford Mustang Mach-E on the list of top-selling electrics. The plucky EV and EUV proved Chevy’s electric business and carried GM to take second place in the American EV market behind Tesla.
Now that its electric effort is on surer footing, though, the automaker sees its future in bigger vehicles with bigger price tags. The EV versions of the Chevy Blazer and Silverado will start in the $40,000 range, at least ten grand more than the plucky Bolt. Don’t forget the company’s battery-powered GMC Hummer, an ostentatious assault vehicle whose price easily slips into six figures. That vehicle is perhaps the fullest realization of where the EV revolution had led: Heavy, powerful EVs sold on testosterone and sex appeal that have supplanted the little electric car built for the sensible shopper or environmentalist driver.
Without the Bolt, the options for those who want an affordable EV that isn’t a bloated crossover are a little slim. The Mini Cooper EV carries a sad 114-mile range, rendering it useless as anything but a cute city car, just like the electric Fiat 500 that came before it and then disappeared from American roads. (Better versions are coming. Mini promises a 200-mile EV for 2025; so does Fiat for a relaunched electric 500.)
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The second-generation Nissan Leaf is a prettier car than its potato predecessor, but one that has gotten stale since its launch in 2017. The BMW i3 rounded-cube-on-wheels has bitten the dust, replaced by big, pricier sedan EVs like the i4. Rumors continue to swirl over a possible Tesla “Model 2,” a compact EV that would presumably be smaller and cheaper than the Model 3. But with Elon Musk’s penchant for enjoying the whooshing sound that deadlines make as they fly by, that EV won’t happen soon, if at all.
Affordable electrics still can be found. However, they depend upon customers being savvy enough to navigate the shifting landscape of tax breaks. Tesla, like GM, at one point saw its federal incentives phased out. But now that all of its models qualify for President Biden’s $7,500 tax credit, the price of a new Model 3 can reach down into the low $30,000s — and even under $30k in states like Colorado that offer their own credits and rebates. Meanwhile, many bargain EV shoppers have turned to leasing, because a loophole in the Biden infrastructure law allows EVs that don’t qualify for a tax credit when purchased outright — like Hyundai’s excellent Ioniq series — to qualify for the $7,500 benefit when they’re leased.
The supersizing of the American EV was unavoidable, since it stems from the confluence of a few factors. New electric startups like Rivian or Lucid need to make lots of revenue right away, so they start their business with expensive, large luxury models. Americans in general have shown they want bigger vehicles of every kind, and are willing to pay for them, a fact that has incentivized bloated vehicle sizes and motivated car companies to sacrifice economy models to make way for SUVs and trucks. With electric vehicles, there are physical limitations at work, too. It’s easier to put a giant battery with more range in a big vehicle; and only so much battery you can cram into a Mini Cooper.
Even so, the trend lines are troubling. If the only goal of electrification is to move all Americans from gasoline to EV, then selling electrified copies of what people already buy is no problem. It’s probably smart, in fact, since plenty of people who wouldn't buy a Nissan Leaf would buy an electric truck.
But it’s not that simple. A 3,000-pound EV is better for the world than a 6,000-pound one: It uses less energy, it’s easier on our roads and highways, and it’s a lot less likely to kill a pedestrian or another driver in an accident. EVs already tend to be heavy because of the giant battery they carry around; selling Americans nothing but a new generation of EV tanks exacerbates our growing problem of growing vehicles.
The small EV is not necessarily doomed. Battery advances should make it possible to store more energy in smaller spaces, improving the driving ranges of smaller electric cars. When the time comes that most Americans are buying electric, there could be space in the market for smaller EVs that don’t generate as much profit per vehicle as, say, a $100,000 Hummer.
In the meantime, the future looks a little grim. Having killed its budget EV, GM will offer as its entry-level EV the electrified Chevy Equinox — a crossover that’s heavier, longer, and several thousand dollars more expensive than the Bolt. While EVs may have started as pure green machines for the eco-minded, then morphed into Silicon Valley’s idea of a spaceship, they are about to complete their final evolution.
For better and worse, the new crop of electric vehicles may be just as dull, unremarkable, and needlessly overpriced as the rest of the silver SUVs currently clogging American roads.
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Add it to the evidence that China’s greenhouse gas emissions may be peaking, if they haven’t already.
Exactly where China is in its energy transition remains somewhat fuzzy. Has the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases already hit peak emissions? Will it in 2025? That remains to be seen. But its import data for this year suggests an economy that’s in a rapid transition.
According to government trade data, in the first fourth months of this year, China imported $12.1 billion of coal, $100.4 billion of crude oil, and $18 billion of natural gas. In terms of value, that’s a 27% year over year decline in coal, a 8.5% decline in oil, and a 15.7% decline in natural gas. In terms of volume, it was a 5.3% decline, a slight 0.5% increase, and a 9.2% decline, respectively.
“Fossil fuel demand still trends down,” Lauri Myllyvirta, the co-founder of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, wrote on X in response to the news.
Morgan Stanley analysts predicted Friday in a note to clients that this “weak downstream demand” for coal in China would “continue to hinder coal import volume.”
Another piece of China’s emissions and coal usage puzzle came from Indonesia, which is a major coal exporter. Citing data from trade data service Kpler, Reuters reported Friday that Indonesia’s thermal coal exports “have dropped to their lowest in three years” thanks to “weak demand in China and India,” the world’s two biggest coal importers. Indonesia’s thermal coal exports dropped 12% annually to 150 million tons in the first third of the year, Reuters reported.
China’s official goal is to hit peak emissions by 2030 and reach “carbon neutrality” by 2060. The country’s electricity grid is largely fueled by coal (with hydropower coming in at number two), as is its prolific production of steel and cement, which is energy and, specifically, coal-intensive. For a few years in the 2010s, more cement was poured in China than in the whole 20th century in the United States. China also accounts for about half of the world’s steel production.
At the same time, China’s electricity demand growth is being largely met by renewables, implying that China can expand its economy without its economy-wide, annual emissions going up. This is in part due to a massive deployment of renewables. In 2023, China installed enough non-carbon-emitting electricity generation to meet the total electricity demand of all of France.
China’s productive capacity has shifted in a way that’s less carbon intensive, experts on the Chinese energy system and economy have told Heatmap. The economy isshifting more toward manufacturing and away from the steel-and-cement intensive breakneck urbanization of the past few decades, thanks to a dramatically slowing homebuilding sector.
Chinese urban residential construction was using almost 300 million tons of steel per year at its peak in 2019, according to research by the Reserve Bank of Australia, about a third of the country’s total steel usage. (Steel consumption for residential construction would fall by about half by 2023.) By contrast, the whole United States economy consumes less than 100 million tons of steel per year.
To the extent the overall Chinese economy slows down due to the trade war with the United States, coal usage — and thus greenhouse gas emissions — would slow as well. Although that hasn’t happened yet — China also released export data on Friday that showed sustained growth, in spite of the tariff barriers thrown up by the Trump administration.
All of the awesome earth-moving and none of the planet- or lung-harming emissions.
Construction is a dirty business, literally and figuratively. Mud and gunk and tar come with the territory for those who erect buildings and pave roads for a living. And the industrial machines that provide the muscle for the task run on hulking diesel engines that spew carbon and soot as they work.
Heavy equipment feels like an unlikely place to use all-electric power in order to ditch fossil fuels. The sheer size and intense workload of a loader or excavator means it has enormous energy needs. Yet the era of electric construction equipment has begun, with companies such as Volvo, Komatsu, and Bobcat all now marketing electric dirt movers and diggers. One big reason why: Full-size machines create the opportunity to make construction projects quieter and cleaner — a potentially huge benefit for those that happen in dense areas around lots of people.
Volvo, for example, appeared at last week’s Advanced Clean Transportation Expo in Anaheim, California, primarily to tout its efforts to reduce emissions in the trucking industry via hydrogen-powered semis, electric trucks, and technological refinements to reduce pollution such as nitrous oxide from traditional diesel. But the Swedish brand also trotted out its clean power dirt movers.
The L120 electric loader that is now taking reservations has a lifting capacity of 6 metric tons on pure electric power, making it useful for job sites such as recycling centers and ports. To see such a beast in person — and displayed on pristine convention-center carpet as if it were this year’s Ford Mustang, no less — is an odd and humbling experience that elicits a little-boy level of glee at beholding a big machine. Its bucket, large enough to carry a basketball team, seems to exist on a scale that is too big for battery power, yet Volvo claims the L120 can match the performance of its diesel brethren.
Volvo also brought an electric excavator, the machine used for shoveling out huge bucketfuls of earth. The EC230 Electric is based on the diesel-powered machine of the same name, but with a stack of batteries adding up to 450 kilowatt-hours of capacity and 650 volts of power give the excavator seven to eight hours of runtime on clean electric power.
“Going to the 600-volt battery packs with similar power density that we’re using in [semi] trucks allowed us to take that into the larger construction equipment,” Keith Brandis, VP of policy and regulatory affairs for Volvo North America, told me. “A big breakthrough for us was making sure that the duty cycle — the vibration, the harshness, the temperature extremes — was proven. We have coolant that runs throughout that battery pack, so we precondition the temperatures for very cold starts as well as during very hot temperatures.”
Indeed, the two big boys on display in Anaheim expand Volvo’s lineup of electric construction machines up to seven. The new full-size offerings also take battery power up to a scale needed for serious projects, where it could cut the noise and pollution that emanate from a site. Volvo says its e-machines are already at work on the restoration project in New York City’s Battery Park, at the southern end of Manhattan, where the local government made quiet and clean construction equipment a priority.
Volvo is not alone in this space. Komatsu builds a slate of electric excavators in a variety of sizes leading up to the 20-ton PC210LCE, which the Japanese brand introduced in 2023.
At the smaller end, Bobcat now builds battery-powered mini-loaders and compact excavators. Caterpillar made an EV dump truck a couple of years ago, and more heavy-duty electric machines for industries like mining are on the way.
Although electric loaders and excavators have begun to match the capability of their combustion-powered cousins and have reached a battery runtime that spans a full workday, Volvo and other heavy equipment manufacturers face a few hurdles in convincing more construction companies to go electric. Just like with passenger cars, there is the matter of price. Battery-powered equipment costs more up front, so companies must be convinced that the savings they’ll reap via reduced fuel and maintenance costs will make the electric equipment less expensive in the long run.
And just like with passenger cars, incentives play an outsized role in affordability. Brandis noted that municipalities often have fixed budgets for equipment replacement, which is inconvenient when clean, electric equipment costs substantially more. “We typically rely on purchase incentives or infrastructure incentives, grants, or vouchers that are available,” he said, such as California’s HVIP voucher for zero-emission heavy equipment.
Then there is the construction version of range anxiety, simply ensuring there is enough electricity at any job site to recharge a division of electric loaders. At locations where sufficient electrical infrastructure is already in place, Volvo is helping electric buyers install switchgears, meters, and EV chargers built to talk to the big machines. “It eliminates one other problem point for the customer because we’ve already proven that the operability is there with the equipment,” Brandis told me.
The problem with construction, however, is that sometimes it takes place in remote locations far from easy connections. At ACT, Ray Gallant of Volvo construction equipment said this is the point at which the power has to come to the customer. Volvo recently acquired the battery production business of Proterra, which, among other things, would help the corporation develop battery electric storage solutions that it could deploy remotely — at a far-flung job site, say.
“When we’re in remote sites, we have to take the electrons to the electric machines,” he said.
The lawmakers from opposite parties discussed the Inflation Reduction Act and working together to pass legislation at Heatmap’s Energy Entrepreneurship 2025 event.
Will Republicans’ reconciliation bill successfully gut the Inflation Reduction Act?
A Democratic and Republican senator speaking last week at Heatmap’s Energy Entrepreneurship 2025 event predicted that it will not.
A proposal effectively killing the IRA “wouldn’t make it through the House,” Senator John Curtis of Utah, a Republican, said flatly at the event.
“If you believe that democracy does follow representation, those House members from those states are going to fight like hell to maintain those credits,” Senator John Hickenlooper, a Democrat of Colorado, agreed. He argued that 70% of the credits and benefits in Biden’s flagship climate law go to red states.
“I think you’re going to find enough Republicans push back on the value of these credits that there will be a thoughtful discussion and very careful review of each one. And as you know from the number of people that have spoken up on this, I think we’re in a good place, but that doesn’t mean they won’t be pushed and poked and prodded,” Curtis added, referencing the Republican signatories of letters sent to party leaders urging the preservation of the credits. Curtis and Hickenlooper both were optimistic about the chances of the credits surviving the budget reconciliation underway.
Consensus, not compromise, was the name of the game at Heatmap’s D.C. Climate Week event, which saw Heatmap executive editor Robinson Meyer sit down with the senators to discuss their approach to climate policy and bipartisan collaboration.
Robinson Meyer, Senator John Curtis, and Senator John Hickenlooper.Taylor Mickal Photography,
Curtis and Hickenlooper have worked together on the Co-Location Energy Act, which ensures that wind and solar projects can be developed on land already leased for other types of energy projects, and the Fix Our Forests Act, which emphasizes wildfire mitigation and forest health.
Thursday’s discussion also touched on working with the Trump administration on climate and energy policy. Curtis revealed that he spoke to all of Donald Trump’s nominees, including Chris Wright, about his work in the House on the Conservative Climate Caucus. “They all knew about it, and they all supported it,” he noted, adding that EPA administrator Lee Zeldin was a member of the Caucus when he served in the House.
“I think it's very important for me, for Coloradans, for me to have Chris Wright's cell phone number and be able to talk to him,” Hickenlooper stated, emphasizing that he’s willing to work with the Trump administration to achieve Colorado’s climate goals.
The Co-Location Energy Act was “common sense,” according to Curtis. The act was introduced back in December by himself and Congressman Mike Levin, a Democrat from California. “Two thirds of [Utah] is owned by the federal government, and if you say that’s off the table for development, that’s a huge problem,” he said.
Fix Our Forests, which passed the House in January after being introduced by Congressmen Scott Peters, a Democrat from California and Bruce Westerman, a Republican of Arizona, “is a case study in how we can get things done,” Curtis noted. The key to speaking to conservatives about climate change, he said, is avoiding divisive language, comparing the wrong approach to a coercive time-share presentation. “The salesman says to you, ‘do you love your kids?’ and you feel like you're backed into a corner,” he explained. “I think the way we approach this oftentimes puts Republicans on the defensive.”
Hickenlooper agreed, “You never persuade someone to change their mind about something that really matters by telling them why they’re wrong and why you’re right.”