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The expected increase in mass manufacturing of lithium-ion storage should help drive battery prices to as low as $70 a kilowatt hour by 2030, BNEF said. Battery packs averaged about $208 a kilowatt hour in 2017, squeezing profit margins and representing some two fifths of the total costs of electric vehicle.
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said Colin McKerracher, transport analyst at BNEF. "If battery material costs keep rising sharply this could push back the crossover point."

GM also expects a cost of US$100 per kwh by the end of 2021.
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Statistics:Posted by vishvak — Sat Oct 20, 2018 4:28 am

This clash of privacy and value has been a long time coming.
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Many are realizing that their privacy is a high-value currency — critically assessing how, when and where they’re willing to spend that currency. If they do spend it, they’re continually assessing whether brands are truly delivering on what they promised in return.

Statistics:Posted by vishvak — Fri Oct 19, 2018 3:13 pm

Statistics:Posted by chetak — Thu Oct 18, 2018 8:04 am

"We want to have prohibitions on data localisation to ensure that there's free flow of information, free flow of data across borders, disciplines around countries requiring companies to give up their source code, permanent ban on taxation or duties on digital transmissions," Dennis Shea, Deputy US Trade Representative and US Ambassador to the WTO, told

Statistics:Posted by vishvak — Sun Oct 14, 2018 10:45 am

Exit SAARC, enter BIMSTEC

Imran will turn on the charm to convince Modi, or at least Sushma, to attend a SAARC summit in Pakistan. Neither should and neither will.


17th September 2018


By Minhaz Merchant

Early mornings in the three-bungalow complex at Lok Kalyan Marg, which serves as PM Narendra Modi’s residence and personal office, are tranquil. There, Modi reflects on the day’s schedule, does yoga and devours the morning papers along with a light breakfast.

On his mind will be the packed international calendar: the UN General Assembly speech will again be given by External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj. Modi has other priorities than the annual bickering at the UNGA between India and Pakistan that no one outside the subcontinent pays attention to. The PM’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in October is a more pressing engagement given the diplomatic tightrope India has to walk between Washington and Moscow.

But the real problems lie closer at home. Following a successful India-US 2+2 dialogue earlier this month, India has achieved three geopolitical objectives. First, naming Pakistani terror groups like the Lashkar-e-Tayyiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad in the joint statement at the end of the dialogue between the foreign and defence ministers of the two nations. The wording is significant: The US has for the first time used the term terror groups operating from areas “under Pakistan’s control” rather than “Pakistani territory”. The shift in nuance is not an accident. The US accepts that Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) is not sovereign Pakistan territory.

As the India-US joint statement pointed out: “The Ministers denounced any use of terrorist proxies in the region, and … called on Pakistan to ensure that the territory under its control is not used to launch terrorist attacks on other countries. … They called on Pakistan to bring to justice expeditiously the perpetrators of the Mumbai, Pathankot, Uri and other cross-border terror attacks. The Ministers welcomed the launch of a bilateral dialogue on designation of terrorists in 2017, which is strengthening cooperation and action against terrorist groups, including Al-Qaida, ISIS, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, Jaish-e-Mohammad, Hizb-ul Mujahideen, D-Company and their affiliates.”

This is also the first time an official US statement has been so explicit about Pakistan’s complicity in sponsoring proxy terror against India. Despite the US tilt towards India, the region’s problems will have to be solved by regional initiatives. A key shift in India’s regional strategy is allowing the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) to remain comatose. India, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka boycotted the last SAARC summit scheduled to be held in Pakistan. The summit was aborted. Islamabad is desperately keen to host the abandoned summit in November 2018.

Pakistan’s new PM Imran Khan will turn on the charm to convince Modi, or at least Sushma, to attend. Neither should and neither will. Without India, a SAARC summit is a non-starter. Pakistan knows this. A second consecutive snub will play badly with Pakistan’s establishment that craves equivalence with and respect from India. It doesn’t qualify for the former and does not merit the latter.

Meanwhile, India has other irons in the fire. It is developing BIMSTEC (Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation) as a substitute for the mothballed SAARC. The BIMSTEC comprises India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, Myanmar and Thailand. The first five are also part of the eight-member SAARC. The three SAARC absentees in BIMSTEC are Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Maldives. By giving Afghanistan special observer status, BIMSTEC can entirely replicate SAARC minus Pakistan and the Maldives.

There are precedents for giving non-contiguous countries observer status. For example, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a grouping headed by China and Russia and comprising a smattering of Central Asian countries, gave India and Pakistan observer status before admitting both recently as full members.

The presence of Afghanistan as a special invitee to BIMSTEC will send a terse message to Pakistan whose proxy terror war has turned ordinary Afghans into bitter critics of Pakistan. The appointment of Zalmay Khalilzad as special US envoy to Kabul is significant. Khalilzad is an anti-Pakistan hawk. According to Khaled Ahmed, a columnist with the Pakistan edition of Newsweek: “If you are a non-Pashtun Pakistani in Afghanistan on a business trip, pretend to be from India or you will get roughed up, so offended are the Pashtun Afghans carrying the baggage of rage over the creation of Pakistan that divided the Pashtun nation. With Khalilzad helping President Ghani in Kabul, Pakistan is going to find it difficult to engage with Afghanistan on the lines it is familiar with.”

BIMSTEC is over 20 years old but has only now assumed geopolitical importance. Many of its members are targets of China’s ambitious One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative. Some like Sri Lanka and Myanmar have noted Malaysia’s rebuff to China by cancelling OBOR infrastructure projects worth $22 billion. By using BIMSTEC as its primary regional forum, India can achieve two complementary objectives. One, isolate Pakistan regionally; two, build support against the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (a part of OBOR) that violates sovereign Indian territory in PoK.

The BIMSTEC summit in Kathmandu on August 30-31 has partially restored India’s relationship with Nepal’s China-leaning premier K P Oli. China’s recent decision to allow Nepal use of four Chinese ports has ended India’s monopoly though the 3,300-km distance from Nepal to the nearest Chinese port makes the arrangement impractical. Nepal’s hostility following India’s thoughtless blockade in 2015-16 has however mellowed.

India’s strategic defence partnership with the US gives it an edge regionally. BIMSTEC will allow India to further strengthen its Act East policy. The Indo-Pacific extends from the Middle East to the west coast of the US. India’s strategic impulse, as it prepares for a wider global role, is to have tactical options to both its east and west.

Minhaz Merchant

The author is an editor and publisher

Statistics:Posted by chetak — Wed Sep 19, 2018 11:39 am

Trump wants to stop subsidies to growing economies

President Donald Trump on Friday said he wants to stop the subsidies that growing economies like India and China have been receiving as he wants the US, which he considers as a "developing nation", to grow faster than anybody.

countries that have not matured enough yet, so we are paying them subsidies. Whole thing is crazy. Like India, like China, like others we say, 'oh, they're growing actually'," Trump said.

He said that they call themselves developing nations and "under that category they get subsidies." "We have to pay them money. This whole thing is crazy, but we're going to stop it.

We're going to stop it. We have stopped it.

"We are a developing nation, too, OK? We are. As far as I'm concerned, we are a developing nation. I want to be put down in that category because we are growing, too. We are going to grow faster than anybody," Trump said amidst applause from the audience.
Attacking the WTO, Trump said he thinks that the World Trade Organization was probably the worst of all. "But a lot of people don't know what that is, that allowed China to become this great economic power".

On the trade deficit between the US and China, which has led to a tari
war between the world's top two economies, he said, "I'm a big fan of (Chinese) President Xi Jinping, but I told him, 'we have to be fair'."
"We can't let China take USD 500 billion a year out of the United States and rebuild itself," he added.

The President also said that the US should get paid for securing the wealthy countries from the outside harm.

"I think it's fine, but they got to pay us for this. We're watching the whole world and they take it for granted.

"For years and years we've been protecting these countries. They're making a fortune.

They've had very little military cost. We have the biggest military cost in the world. Most of it goes to protecting outside countries, some of whom don't even like us," Trump said. "We're protecting countries that have -- I got to say, they do have respect for us now, but they didn't have any respect for us, and they got to pay. They got to pay, you know

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