If you are an optimist or even a glass-half-full kind of person, sometimes it can be hard to miss the good news among all the doom and gloom that social media promotes. The story of our energy transition to renewables is surely good news. Chiefly because it will help us alleviate climate change, but there is another under-reported and under-appreciated aspect of the energy transition.
As energy production becomes decentralized and in the hands of individuals and small communities it smashes the power of centralized top-heavy states, authoritarians, and autocrats.
Some people have nightmare visions of the future where humans are reduced to powerless serfs. However if you can live in a world where you can generate your own energy off-grid, and AI can provide for many of your other needs, perhaps with robotics helping with local and personal food production - then who the hell is going to want to be a serf-slave in some horrible Hollywood sci-fi dystopia that we know from movies?
Chinese companies often get accused of copying Western technology, so it's unusual to hear the CEO of such a major Western company bucking that assumption by calling on Western companies to copy China.
What Jim Farley is saying about cars is equally true about 21st century energy infrastructure. There is no doubt that China is the global leader in innovation there too.
Meanwhile in many Western countries, debate still centers around persuading some people that the energy transition to renewables is real and the age of fossil fuels can't end quickly enough. Hostility to renewables, EVs and the energy transition gives China the edge.
Next up we can expect China to race ahead in robotics.