[Full Metal Junkie]

Russia was at its highest economic strength relative to the rest of the word from about 1815 after it defeated Napoleon at Moscow to the 1850s

After that the country was a backward mess, getting trounced in WW1 and set to lose WW2

Not sure what metrics you're basing your evaluations on. Russia has been a backwater agrarian country in the 19th century.
Russian empire share of world's GDP peaked in 1914 at around 5% as the result of industrialization efforts of the previous decades.
After WW2, the USSR share of world's economy remained in 12%-14% range, peaking at 14.6% in the 60's. That was steadily around 1/2 nominal GDP and around 3/4 GDP-per-capita compared to the USA. So nothing to snuff at.
And that's just the economic power comparison. In terms of political influence and military power projection, the USSR had half the globe in its sphere of influence one way or the other.

An yes, today's Russia with its statistical error of an economy standing at ~2% of world's GDP should, in theory, give Russians a hint where they can shove their geopolitical ambitions. But so far, they're not getting the message. Societal imperial ambitions don't just magically disappear overnight. Considering that most people in the Russian ruling elites grew up well into adulthood in the USSR, i.e. there hasn't even been a single generational change, you can start to understand the root cause of the cultural chauvinism.

I expect France has more nuclear weapons capability that Russia today.

You expect wrong.

Infographic source

In addition, Russia regularly demonstrates test launches of its entire nuclear triad. As in, it has fully capable ground-launched ICBMs, aircraft-launched cruise missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
France is currently down to a nuclear diad: cruise missiles and submarine-based ballistic missiles.

So unless you are willing to entertain the unsubstantiated claims that Russia has not maintained its nuclear warheads and none of them are ready to blow, then France>Russia is a dubious claim.

 

[afransen]

And the other half is commercial transportation. Along with marine and rail, that will be another nut to crack. It might depend on 'the next big battery breakthrough' which we have been hearing is 'just around the corner' for about a decade.

Battery prices have fallen by 75% in a decade. I would hardly call that a lack of progress.

Lithium-Ion Battery Pack Prices See Largest Drop Since 2017, Falling to $115 per Kilowatt-Hour: BloombergNEF | BloombergNEF

New York, December 10, 2024 – Battery prices saw their biggest annual drop since 2017. Lithium-ion battery pack prices dropped 20% from 2023 to a record low of $115 per kilowatt-hour, according to analysis by research provider BloombergNEF (BNEF). Factors driving the decline include cell...

about.bnef.com

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

I get the skepticism. But I think it's happening a lot sooner than you think right now. The turnaround from lab to product is insane in China. They went from LFP batteries being a nice cheap fringe idea to half of all car batteries sold globally in five years. The same thing could happen with sodium ion shortly.

Also, I think the North American perspective is ridiculously out of synch with the world. We live in a continent where rail electrification is low and diesel is cheap (vs. global standards). In the rest of the world, where fuel is expensive, they will operationalize new tech and simply change ops to accommodate the new tech and lower their costs. They have to ship less in a truck to accommodate battery weight? A Canadian or American will scoff at that idea. A Chinese or European trucker won't. So I don' think the breakthroughs are as necessary as you suggest. And the pace at which trucking is starting to electrify outside North America certainly seems to hint at that. Increasingly, we're starting to see that if the cost is low enough, practices will change to take advantage.

I suspect we're heading for a world where North America is the new Cuba. Automotively speaking.....

North America (particularly US-Canada) is in some ways heading down the path of Galapagos Effect. The issue will become more acute as the relative weight of the US economy declines.

AoD

 

[kEiThZ]

North America (particularly US-Canada) is in some ways heading down the path of Galapagos Effect. The issue will become more acute as the relative weight of the US economy declines.

AoD

Really is interesting to watch the divergence between North America and the rest of the world. Really is depressing for anybody who takes an interest in this stuff to see us be on the side of stupid, this time.

Not just Americans either. A lot of Canadians are equally clueless. It's an ignorance that can only come out of being an oil and gas exporting country. They have zero clue how motivated the rest of the world is to cut oil and gas imports. I hear all kinds of bashful nonsense from Canadians. Recently I had somebody tell me how poor people in Africa will never drive EVs and use solar panels. The ignorance......

The first evidence of a take-off in solar in Africa | Ember

There has been a major pick-up in solar panel imports into Africa over the last 12 months - a shift that is likely to impact almost every country on the continent.

ember-energy.org

https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/01/climate/pakistan-solar-boom

https://insideevs.com/news/768768/ethiopia-nepal-surprising-ev-boom/

I like this bit from Bloomberg in August:

Those who believe this might want to have a look at the cars and two-wheelers that people are actually buying right now. Far from trailing the rich world in their enthusiasm for battery cars, developing nations are surging ahead.

China (where plug-in vehicles have nearly half the market) gets most of the attention, but neighboring Vietnam isn’t far behind: Pure-play EV-maker VinFast Auto Ltd. accounted for more than a third of car sales in the first half of this year. Turkey’s 13% sales share for fully electric vehicles in the first quarter was about double the penetration rate in Spain and Australia, according to a survey by Strategy&. In Indonesia, the share was about the same as in the US, at 7.4%. In Malaysia, it was 8.6% in the first half.

Those countries all have legacy car industries still pumping out internal combustion engines. Things are moving even faster in nations wholly dependent on imports. More than three-quarters of the value of vehicles brought into Nepal, Sri Lanka and Djibouti last year was purely electric. Import shares in Ethiopia and Laos were 40% and 30% respectively1. Plug-in sales increased by 60% in developing countries as a whole in 2024, according to the International Energy Agency.

The Whole World Is Switching to EVs Faster Than You

Developing nations are surging ahead in their enthusiasm for battery cars.

www.bloomberg.com

Imagine being the government of a poor country and having to choose every day between your foreign currency reserves being used to please the middle class with oil imports or to feed and educate the poor. But if they tell the middle class to buy EVs and solar panels, they can actually save that foreign currency for something else. And it's exactly what they are doing. But try and explain this to the average canuck and they'll say I am some kind of crazy hippie communist. I don't bother discussing this in most forums anymore. Too much wilful ignorance to wade through.

 

[Full Metal Junkie]

A lot of Canadians are equally clueless. It's an ignorance that can only come out of being an oil and gas exporting country.

I am suddenly reminded of my recent trip to Alberta - what I can only describe as The Land of Pickup Truck Nuts.

 

[kEiThZ]

An yes, today's Russia with its statistical error of an economy standing at ~2% of world's GDP should, in theory, give Russians a hint where they can shove their geopolitical ambitions. But so far, they're not getting the message. Societal imperial ambitions don't just magically disappear overnight. Considering that most people in the Russian ruling elites grew up well into adulthood in the USSR, i.e. there hasn't even been a single generational change, you can start to understand the root cause of the cultural chauvinism.

Partly the fault of the West. We really haven't been as forceful as we should be with sanctions and arming Ukraine. The EU is a mess with duplicitous members.

 

[Full Metal Junkie]

Partly the fault of the West. We really haven't been as forceful as we should be with sanctions and arming Ukraine. The EU is a mess with duplicitous members.

Nearly four years into the conflict and this comic strip created in the first days of the full scale invasion holds more truth than ever:

Both in terms of the collective will of the West and in terms of the types of weapons we have provided.

This war could have been over in the fall of 2022 had we actually dared to give Ukraine everything it needed while russian armed forces were caught with their pants down. Instead, we spoon-fed Ukrainians promises, took a year to thoroughly underdeliver on those promises, and gave russians plenty of time to mobilize, rearm, and mine the sh!t out of the grounds they were holding onto.

Now Ukraine has lost all of it's most combat-ready and motivated volunteer forces, Ukrainian conscripts are going AWOL faster than they can be forced into the army, they still rely on hand-me-down outdated western tech of the 70's-80's at best, they are not given deep strike capabilities, and until very recently were forbidden to attack Russia mainland with western missiles.

So yeah, our collective support amounted to sending Ukrainians into a gunfight with a knife and one hand tied behind their back. The results speak for themselves. But our politicians get to sit on their high horses and claim that they are doing everything in their magnanimous power.

 

[Richard White]

The EU is a mess with duplicitous members.

And it may cost those members.

Hungary for example may oust Orban next year.

 

[Mihairokov]

Battery prices have fallen by 75% in a decade. I would hardly call that a lack of progress.

Lithium-Ion Battery Pack Prices See Largest Drop Since 2017, Falling to $115 per Kilowatt-Hour: BloombergNEF | BloombergNEF

New York, December 10, 2024 – Battery prices saw their biggest annual drop since 2017. Lithium-ion battery pack prices dropped 20% from 2023 to a record low of $115 per kilowatt-hour, according to analysis by research provider BloombergNEF (BNEF). Factors driving the decline include cell...

about.bnef.com

China's already begun moving on to sodium-ion batteries.

How electric scooters are driving China's salt battery push

The country is racing ahead of the rest of the world in bringing sodium-ion batteries to the mass market. This time, through scooters.

www.bbc.com

I saw a few of these when I was in Hangzhou. The two-wheelers mentioned in this article are everywhere in China, and becoming more popular here, and sodium batteries seem ideal for their transport over lower speeds and shorter distances than vehicles.

 

[lenaitch]

Battery prices have fallen by 75% in a decade. I would hardly call that a lack of progress.

I didn't say there has been a lack of progress, but those sectors will difficult to transition with the current battery technology and we await the next technology to become commercialized.

Any Panamax-sized ships roaming the seas? Any 22K ton freight trains plying the rails? Any commercial-sized, long -haul aircraft in the air?

 

[afransen]

I thought you were saying commercial transportation electrification was waiting for a forever 10 year away battery breakthrough. It's just a matter of cost, which has been steadily declining. With the right engineering, much of commercial trucking can be electrified. Lazily retrofitting an ICE platform to EV yields sub-par results. We'll start to see a lot of Tesla class 8 trucks on the road next year, and they plan to be able to produce a lot of them.

 

[Full Metal Junkie]

Hungary for example may oust Orban next year.

This looks somewhat likely, fingers crossed. Decent background on the political dynamics in Hungary that may result in Orban getting the boot:

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

This looks somewhat likely, fingers crossed. Decent background on the political dynamics in Hungary that may result in Orban getting the boot:

Though you're still left with Fico and Babis, and Orban has demonstrated the weakness of the EU system of governance.

AoD

 

[Mihairokov]

Though you're still left with Fico and Babis, and Orban has demonstrated the weakness of the EU system of governance.

At least the Dutch booted Wilders this week.

 

[Richard White]

This looks somewhat likely, fingers crossed. Decent background on the political dynamics in Hungary that may result in Orban getting the boot:

My cousins are avid politicos over there and noted the groundswell of support for the Tisza opposition party.

Orbáns path to victory lie in jury rigging the vote. He relied on the elderly, the technologically isolated and small villages to win.

His opposition counterpart is making efforts to visit all the small towns and villages to listen to their concerns.

Essentially, Peter Magyar took a page from Orbáns book and is personable.

I'm voting for him next year.