The Internationalism

Internationalism No. 82, December 2025 Page 13 From the series The world car battle The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society [Marx and Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party ]. The cost of car accidents According to the World Health Organization report of December 13 th , 2023, over 1.2 million people die in road accidents worldwide every year, with car crash casualties outnumbering those of armed conflicts. The Armed Conflict Location and Event Data report, published by The Washington Post on December 12 th , 2024, estimates that at least 233,000 people were killed in wars in 2024. On roads worldwide a massacre is underway—the cost of which, according to the report by the Safety Insights Explorer of the International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP), is $3.6 trillion per year, equivalent to over 3% of g...

Internationalism No. 81, November 2025 Page 14 From the series The world car battle Electrification of Everything – Accelerating Electrification is the title of a document by Siemens AG. For the German electric group, electrification is the necessary step to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. The global grid According to the International Energy Agency, electrification means replacing technologies or processes that use fossil fuels, like internal combustion engines and gas boilers, with electrically-powered equivalents, such as electric vehicles or heat pumps . These replacements are typically more efficient, reducing energy demand, and have a growing impact on emissions as electricity generation is decarbonised. The grid is a single integrated mechanism of continental dimensions, owned by dozens of different companies and managed by operators who balance thousands of producers with different energy sources in real-time. A new electrical devic...

From the series The world car battle If at the beginning of the 21 st century electrification had technological limits in batteries, both in terms of cost and range, these are now partly overcome, because electric cars have a range of 240-450 km, more than enough for 95% of journeys of less than 50 km. The major obstacle remains the construction of a network of charging stations and their integration with the electricity grid. The race between China, Europe, and USA UBS Evidence Lab, a team of UBS bank experts working in 55 specialised labs to provide data on investment decisions, predicts that cost parity between electric and internal combustion cars will be achieved in 2024 [ Inside EVs , October 20th 2020]. By then, the development of car electrification will be self-sustaining without government subsidies. Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), in its report Electric Vehicle Outlook 2020 , estimates that by 2022 carmakers will have 500 different models of electric cars avai...