Mileage tax means tracking your every move, using carbon footprint against you
How a mileage tax in the Biden federal highway bill could mean tracking your every move, not to mention the equivalent of a toll for every mile you drive.
Remote kill switches really about taking your car
Biden’s Move to Put Kill Switches in Cars Tied to Global Agenda
Journalist spends more time charging EV than sleeping
Anti-car policy is now in fashion with policymakers, but not with most drivers, especially not this journalist...
Did you know roads are ‘racist' to our Secretary of Transportation?
Buttigieg: 'Roads are racist' plan to use road funding to make amends for past

electric vehicles

  • Link to article here.

    ‘EV Mania May Be Over’ as Car Production Estimates and Executive Enthusiasm Wane: Institute for Energy Research

     

    Electric vehicle (EV) “mania” might be at an end, or, at a minimum, easing down, according to research, as concerns about supply chains, lithium sourcing, inflation, and more affect production capacities while customer demand decelerates globally, as evidenced by industry leader Tesla cutting prices in order to increase sales.

    In Europe, EV car manufacturers are slowing production due to uncertainties around lithium supply for batteries as well as electric vehicles proving to be expensive for the middle class, according to a Jan. 18 Institute for Energy Research (IER) post. This year, Europe is expected to output 12 million cars, which is a million less than earlier estimates.

    The average price of an EV in Europe during the first half of 2022 was 55,821 euros, up by over 14 percent from 48,942 euros in 2015, according to a report by automotive market research firm JATO. An EV in Europe is 27 percent more expensive than a gasoline car. These factors raise an affordability challenge for the sector in a region where EV-adoption is generally more accepted than in North America.

    The issue of lithium sourcing, as a challenge for EVs becoming mainstream, was highlighted by geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan in September last year.

    “The lithium comes from one place, and it’s all processed in China. So, just building the alternate processing infrastructure … and by the way, we have to invade Russia too … just to get the materials to do EVs at scale is just laughable for the next decade,” he said at the time.

    Meanwhile, in the UK, production estimates for electric cars and vans in 2025 have been reduced from 360,000 to 280,000. Consumers in the UK are worried about the operating costs of EVs since the average cost of charging an electric car has risen by 58 percent since last May.

    In the United States, sales of electric cars rose in 2022 by 66 percent compared to the overall decline in auto sales of roughly 8 percent.

    The IER believes that “the EV mania may be over or at least slowing” down given interest rate hikes, supply chain shortages, inflation, and restriction on tax credits.

    “While some politicians are following in California’s footsteps by banning gasoline-powered vehicles and President [Joe] Biden has a goal for 50 percent of new car sales in 2030 to be electric, those feats may not be attainable due to problems in manufacturing and selling of electric vehicles,” the IER said.

    “Range and performance problems still exist making consumers wary. And with escalating electric rates, operating costs may not be less than those for gasoline vehicles as Europe is seeing.”

    An analysis by The Wall Street Journal in December shows that drivers of Tesla’s Model 3 had to pay 18.46 euros at a Tesla supercharger station in Europe for a 100-mile drive.

    In contrast, drivers in Germany had to shell out a slightly lower 18.31 euros to drive the same distance on a Honda Civic 4-door, which is the Tesla Model 3’s combustion engine equivalent.

    Global EV Sales, Tesla Price Cuts

    A KPMG survey of more than 910 auto executives conducted last year found that expectations of worldwide EV sales have tempered.

    In 2021, auto execs were “very optimistic” about the prospects of global EV sales, expecting the vehicles to capture as much as 70 percent market share by 2030. But in the 2022 survey, the expected market share plummeted to 40 percent at most.

    “The closer the expert is to the customer, the lower the EV share expectations seem to be,” says the report. “For example, U.S. executives say car dealers expect EVs to capture 22 percent of the market by 2030, eight percentage points less than OEMs predict,” referring to the original equipment manufacturers.

    Tesla has cut prices of its cars by up to 20 percent in Europe and the United States in a bid to boost demand. By doing so, the company is sacrificing some of its profits to raise sales volume.

    By reducing prices, some of the lower tier electric car models being sold in the United States will qualify for federal tax credits worth $7,500.

    Restricting EV Sales in America

    In the United States, some states are seeking to restrict the sale of EV’s. In Wyoming, six Republican lawmakers are pushing to phase out the sale of new electric vehicles by 2035 to protect its oil and gas industries as well as to preserve crucial resources.

    In a recently introduced bill, the lawmakers note that allowing the proliferation of electric vehicles at the expense of gas-powered vehicles will seriously affect the state’s economy as well as its communities.

    Moreover, the batteries used in the EVs contain critical minerals needed in many other applications. The domestic supply of these minerals is limited and at “risk of disruption,” the bill stated.

    In addition to that, these critical minerals are “are not easily recyclable or disposable, meaning that municipal landfills in Wyoming and elsewhere will be required to develop practices to dispose of these minerals in a safe and responsible manner,” the bill adds.

    In California, the local administration is pushing for greater use of EVs. However, the state’s poor power infrastructure is raising a question about the possibility of such a transition. In September, California’s electric grid regulator had asked people to avoid charging their EVs so as to avoid outages.

    EVs are also seen as some of the least reliable vehicles sold in the United States. According to the Consumer Reports 2022 Annual Auto Reliability survey published in November that looked at 24 auto brands, hybrid vehicles and mid-sized or large and gas-powered sedans are seen as among the most reliable vehicles sold in the country.

    In contrast, full-size pickup trucks and electric vehicles were seen as problematic. Owners of EVs reported issues with electric motors, batteries, and charging systems. Out of the 11 EV models in the survey, only four had average or better than average predicted reliability.

  • Link to article here.

    Family learns unforgettable lesson when electric vehicle battery suddenly dies, replacement costs more than the car

    By Chris Enloe
    The Blaze
    July 18, 2022

    Climate change advocates push electric vehicles, arguing they help save the planet and save consumers money over time.

    But one Florida family just learned that is not always true.

    What happened?

    Avery Siwinski, a 17-year-old from St. Petersburg, loved her electric Ford Focus. Her parents spent $11,000 on the used vehicle, a 2014 with 60,000 miles on the odometer. Siwinski described her wheels as "small and quiet and cute."

    Then one day, just six months after her parents purchased the vehicle, it suddenly stopped working.

    "In March, it started giving an alert," Siwinski told WTSP-TV. "And then we took it to the shop and it stopped running."

  • Link to article here.

    Horowitz: Study shows electric vehicles are a scam propped up by government
    Op-ed
    SimonSkafar/Getty Images


    With the exception of the COVID shots, there is perhaps nothing in the economy that has gotten more tailwind in terms of government support than electric vehicles. Whether it’s the subsidies, the mandates, the inflation of the cost of gasoline, or the construction of cumbersome electric charging infrastructure, the government has done everything it can to turn a product that is inherently costly and impractical into something accessible to the public. Yet despite it all, a new study shows fueling these cars is more expensive than most gas-powered cars, even with record high gasoline prices, which were induced by policies from the same green energy. Now is the time to end all subsidies and mandates on behalf of this pathetic industry.

    It’s truly hard to quantify the degree to which government has propped up green energy and products that never would have gotten off the ground in the free market. Between making gasoline so expensive and making gas cars more expensive with fuel efficiency mandates on the one hand, and subsidizing electric vehicles and all their required infrastructure on the other hand, electric cars have every reason to succeed. Heck, all blue states are even signaling the end of gas-powered cars altogether, and some are even mandating it. The subsidies reached a tipping point with the “Inflation Reduction Act,” which offers a subsidy of $7,500 per electric vehicle. But a new study shows that it still costs more to fuel an EV after spending so much more for the original purchase.

    “Typical mid-priced ICE car drivers paid about $11.29 to fuel their vehicles for 100 miles of driving,” concluded a study from consulting firm Anderson Economic Group. “That cost was around $0.31 cheaper than the amount paid by mid-priced EV drivers charging mostly at home, and over $3 less than the cost borne by comparable EV drivers charging commercially.”

    Oh, and let’s not forget that time is money. You have to spend an average of $18 per charge and spend 15 minutes per 100 miles traveled. Good luck on your family road trip this summer with the baby screaming in the car who was woken up after finally taking a nap, thanks to the incessant need to stop.

    The only benefit the Michigan-based consulting firm found to fueling EVs over traditional cars was, of course, among the high-end luxury cars used by the elites promoting these products.

    This is astounding given the record-high gas prices this past year, especially for winter months. This means that even after spending more money for the purchase of an EV, you are saddling yourself with a boondoggle to maintain. The problem for the parasitic, venture socialist industry is that the very regressive green policies that are harming the oil and car industries are doing even more damage to the electric grid. Thanks to the war on coal, oil refineries, and pipelines and the stagnation of nuclear energy by the same radical eco groups, electricity prices are skyrocketing even more than gasoline. All that “investment” in solar and wind is not there for us during our time of need. Now we face the prospect of electric grid failures more acutely than even oil and gas shortages.

    Just consider what would happen during these heat waves if we only had electric vehicles. California grid operators warned people during last summer’s heat wave to ease off charging their cars. Now imagine if they had their way and 100% of cars were electric and 100% of the electricity was generated from wind and solar. Well, you’d be stuck at home … which is exactly how they want it.

    Biden’s signature legislation last year handed out over $50 billion to the electric vehicle industry, including $7.7 billion for EV charging stations and $10.3 billion in grid and battery subsidies. But just like money can’t buy you love, it also can’t buy you efficacy, efficiency, or safety. Despite all of the corporate welfare for green energy, it’s still natural fuels from the earth that are holding up Texas’s grid during this cold spell and ice storm in the northern part of the state.

    What was powering northern Texas during the ice storm? As the Energy Information Administration data shows, natural gas was the star player while wind collapsed, despite Texas throwing tens of billions of dollars at it.

     

     

    As for efficiency, a 2021 study shows that even if EVs were more economical post-purchase in terms of fueling per mile, there are fewer miles to monetize those returns. According to the paper from the Bureau of Economic Research, the average family EV only racked up 5,300 miles per year, less than half the 13,476 miles per year driven by normal privately owned cars. Thus, the savings in operating these cars was always a mirage because they are just driven less. They could never possibly replace internal combustion vehicles, just like wind and solar cannot replace oil, gas, and coal for electricity and fuel. Yet the government has mandated automobile manufacturers to quadruple the market share of EVs in their fleets.

    Then, of course, there is the issue of safety. Recently, it was found that during Hurricane Ian, electric vehicles caught in the storm surge in southwest Florida were suddenly exploding. DeWalt’s new no-turn electric mower also seems to have problems, as one model caught fire on the opening day of Equip Expo 2022. These are the sorts of issues that are worked out when a product has to rise or fall in the free market without a permanent guarantee of income. But with endless subsidies, we can only imagine the economic and societal problems from an EV-only road show.

     

    Moreover, what this all demonstrates is that EVs were never meant to replace traditional cars to fulfill our needs and standard of living. They are serving as a Trojan horse to break our standard of living so that we will “own nothing and be happy,” as the WEF officials like to say. They want us to pay a fortune for cars and then barely be able to drive them because of the cost of electricity that they are concomitantly and artificially increasing thanks to other global warming regulations and market distortions.

    Oh, and of course, no action taken against our prosperity, liberty, and mobility is complete unless it helps China. We all know China controls 76% of global EV battery production, and the nickel, cobalt, and lithium used to produce these batteries are all produced abroad. So now we are subsidizing China and other bad actors to make the rope that hangs our economy, which is pretty much in line with every other government policy. All they need now is to absolve these companies of product liability, and they will be just like the COVID shots.

    So why do Republican governors continue to service the electric vehicle scam? Why do they continue to place the boot of government on the scale toward these loser vehicles? The time has come for red states to completely divest from the green energy scam.
  • Link to article here.

    Tesla car battery 'spontaneously' bursts into flames on California highway, firefighters need 6,000 gallons to put it out
    By Carlos Garcia
    The Blaze
    January 30, 2023

    Sacramento fire officials said that it took 6,000 gallons to put out a fire caused by Tesla car batteries that had "spontaneously" burst into flames.

    The official Twitter account for the Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District issued a series of tweets documenting the incident near Rancho Cordova in California on Saturday.

    "Crews arrived to a Tesla Model S engulfed in flames, nothing unusual prior. 2 Fire Engines, a water tender, and a ladder truck were requested to assist," the department tweeted with four photographs.

    "Crews used jacks to access the underside to extinguish and cool the battery. Thousands of gallons were used in extinguishment," they added.

    They went on to say that the battery cells continued to combust as firefighters attempted to put out the fire.
  • Link to article here.

    Toyota president says auto industry 'silent majority' wonders if electric vehicles 'are really OK to have as a single option

    While electric vehicles may seem to be all the rage in the automotive space, Toyota Motor Corporation president Akio Toyoda is pumping the brakes on the idea of an all-in approach.

    "People involved in the auto industry are largely a silent majority," Toyoda told reporters during a trip to Thailand, according to the Wall Street Journal. "That silent majority is wondering whether EVs are really OK to have as a single option. But they think it's the trend so they can't speak out loudly."

    "Because the right answer is still unclear, we shouldn't limit ourselves to just one option," he said, according to the outlet — during the past few years, he said, he has attempted to communicate this idea to stakeholders in the automotive space, including government figures, but he indicated that his effort had been tiring at points.

    "Is there interest in electric vehicles? Yes. Is it more than 10% to 15% of our customer base? No way," said Ryan Gremore, a dealer based in Illinois who owns a number of brand franchises, according to the outlet.