The deck is stacked against the EV future greens advocate, and who are trying to make happen via subsidization and coercive regulation. From Mark P. Mills, Neil Leckie, and Gary Vial at stophumansacrifice.substack.com:
Neil Leckie writes:
My background is electrical engineering and I taught electronics for 30+ years. I am yet to be convinced that EVs are going to ‘save the planet’ (and that they are any less likely to fail than an Internal Combustion Engined (ICE) vehicle)!
The following seems to fit in with my research over many years on EVs. What it doesn’t cover, which is also a critical factor, is ‘end of life’ for EVs. Lithium batteries are allegedly recyclable, but the energy used in the process cuts out any gains an EV might have made!
Anyone who wishes to show the folly of thinking that EVs are going to solve the world’s pollution problems can use my name!
Neil
Eye on the News / Technology and Innovation
Mark P Mills, Texas Public Policy Foundation, Jan 29, 2024
It’s been a rough few months for electric vehicle fans. During the January cold snap, social media sites were filled with sarcasm and pictures of Teslas stranded by freezing temperatures. Lots of “dead robots out there,” one wag put it.
In mid-January, the rental car company Hertz, previously an eager early adopter of fleet electrification, announced a big sell-off of EVs that it had only recently purchased, mainly because they proved far more expensive to maintain than advertised. The same week, Ford slashed EV production, having earlier pulled back on planned battery factories. Both Ford and GM now face higher labor costs, having negotiated epic United Auto Workers pay hikes that now include previously excluded battery factories. Adding to the woes, unsold EVs are piling up on dealer lots, spurring aggressive discounting. The big sales benefit buyers but deepen the already-massive losses of manufacturers.
Finally, in the fusillade of bad news, as Fortune reports, “no one wants to buy used EVs,” leaving EV used-car values in free fall. That’s a problem for auto companies because their finance arms have been left holding the bag on fictitious residual values for leased vehicles. According to one industry executive, the situation “has the potential to destroy billions” of dollars in value for auto firms.
And now leasing has soared to over half of all EV sales, as it’s the only way to capture the federal $7,500 tax credit for most EVs. How so? By law, that credit is supposedly available only when purchasing vehicles built with materials sourced primarily in the U.S. This domestic-sourcing feature is what it took, reportedly, to get West Virginia senator Joe Machin on board to pass the all-partisan Inflation Reduction Act, because, as he surely knew, nearly all battery materials are currently foreign-made and will remain so for ages. However, the final legislation had a surreptitious exception allowing the credit for leased vehicles built with foreign materials. Evidently, the pen is mightier than the miner.
