From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Well, who would have guessed that!
Makers of electric cars are slowing down UK production as the vehicles are too expensive for many motorists.
It is now expected that the UK will produce 280,000 fully electric cars and vans in 2025, down from previous estimates of 360,000.
The forecast means only a quarter of car output will be electric within the next two years, lower than prior forecasts of more than a third.
In its latest report, the Advanced Propulsion Centre, which provides taxpayer funding to makers of zero-emissions vehicles, said the ‘uncertain economy’ was expected to push drivers towards cheaper car models for a longer period.
Declining production threatens to scupper a key government plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions, with the UK set to ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars by 2030.
The APC added a recovery in sales for 2030 was now ‘uncertain’ due to ongoing supply chain issues, particularly of lithium, a key ingredient in electric car batteries, as well as political tensions across the globe.
A production slowdown has already begun in the UK’s zero-emission car industry, with BMW announcing in October that it would stop production of the electric Mini at its plant in Oxford in order to ship the operation to China. And Jaguar has yet to provide further details on plans to become fully electric by 2025.
Concerns about costs were flagged earlier this week by the RAC, which revealed the average cost of charging an electric car had jumped by 58 per cent since last May.
Sales of pure electric cars, BEVs, were 267,000 last year, so this new forecast suggests flatlining.
I am not surprised in the least. A large proportion of EV sales are for company cars, due to the various tax advantages bestowed. Most private buyers however appear to be numpties who think they are saving the planet.
EVs offer nothing to the vast majority of the driving public, and it is hard to see any real breakthrough arriving anytime soon.
By coincidence, I was chatting with a BMW Sales Manager this week, who had just been turfed out of his X6 and given the IX electric model (which he says is crap!). The reason was that BMW had been pre-registering a lot of EVs before the end of the year, in order to meet government targets.
He says BMW were under government pressure to do so, though what that pressure is I cannot tell.
And all of this highlights the immense problems facing our car industry as the 2030 deadline nears. They are being forced to invest billions in setting up new assembly lines and engine plants to cater for the new models, whilst at the same time running down conventional car operations. On top of that, they may find that they cannot sell all of the EVs they are producing; or alternatively if they cut back on EV output, they risk losing market share.
So BMW is moving the plant to China, which uses coal to power their economy, and then they will ship them around the world using some of the dirtiest fuel in the world on the container ships. Sounds like there is absolutely no co2 reduction is this process at all. But it’s still cheaper for BMW, so there is that.
I hope they buy those cars in China or India because in the soon Third World Countries of Europe not many buyers will remain. How can you afford an EV if you can’t afford the electricity ?
Andy Espersen
And how can you ever drive them – if the electricity isn’t there??
Robert and Andy, now you are catching on…
Yes. Just look at the Climate Change Committee projections for where electricity is going to come from over the years to 2050. Pure fantasy. Huge increases, almost all from wind, and no storage. Not only will they not be able to afford the cars, nor afford to refuel them at any public service station, nor even get access to such a charging point without a long wait, they will also find that their own home charging point (those that have a house layout which allows them to have one) will not supply them with a recharge when they need it, because there’s no power to go round and the smart meter has turned off.
Or even worse, you plug it in to charge it only to find your smart meter is immediately hard at work draining your battery because there is a grid shortfall, because the wind has dropped.
How do you get the kids to school in the morning, or yourself to work? Don’t bother us with details, we are saving the planet!
You, say, Or even worse, you plug it in to charge it only to find your smart meter is immediately hard at work draining your battery”.
Yes, one of my favorite liberal/progressive/democrat solutions for storage and reliability. The other one is charging at night using solar.
One popular YT channel (known for explaining how old tech live VCR and laser disk works) proposed: let’s hide some battery capacity from the owner to have something to offer back to the grid, such that the apparent charge (user visible range) doesn’t change.
Simon will tell you that all we need to do is increase the subsidies, and besides, they are fun to drive, so it doesn’t matter.
How can you have your pudding, if you don’t eat your meat!?
We have entered the geological roundabout.
I think the move to China is more to do with moving nearer to where the market is, because soon China and India will be the only ones producing enough electricity to meet demand, and they have large, dense populations in urban areas with pollution problems, the only places where EVs are practical and actually solve an environmental problem.
With modern pollution controls, in most large cities, the air coming out of an ICE car is actually cleaner than the air going in. That pollution is not coming from cars, it is coming from millions of people just living their lives.
household cleaners,
factories and bakeries,
grills and barbecues
etc.
Mostly water.
And right now, the crematoriums.
Farting.
Agree, the only sensible cost effective BEV charging source is coal (lignite). Burning CH4 to feed a resistive and reactive circuit to charge a battery to drive a vehicle weighing an extra 1000 pounds is a waste of a precious resource and “less than wise”.
Only they’re not practical there, either. Nowhere to plug the stupid things in when you live in “dense urban areas.”
BMW is just trying to stay in business. Lithium is not being recycled because it is a too expensive process…..a replacement for lithium better be found ….soon. China has small minimal EVs for a $2000 base price….a lithium battery is another $1000. This is just more pressure on lithium prices.
Should be easy. Lithium is electropositive. It stores and shares electrons because the charge is tightly constrained in low orbitals and easily lost (s1).
So all you need for a better replacement is a more electropositive element, preferably a solid. Every school has a copy of the Periodic Table if you cannot search for it. Just go to Lithium (the third element) and look for any solid up and leftwards of that.
Easy.
So easy, it has already been done???
Heh heh….good one.
Mcourtney
Not Easy.
For transportation the power to weight ratio is key.
EV batteries must last for thousands of discharge/charge cycles without degradation, work over a wide temperature range, have high energy density/kg, not be too large, have reasonable discharge & charge times, be easy to make, not cost too much (includes the environmental effects of mining, processing, manufacturing etc), and it would great if it didn’t catch fire & was recyclable.
That’s why we have been hearing for years one after another the latest, greatest battery breakthrough, which then quietly dissappears.
From Vaclav Smil: a Li batt is ~260 Whr/kg while diesel ~12,600 Whr/kg
I think a few people here need to check that their sarcmeters are turned on 🙂
(Clue: try looking up and left of Li in the periodic table…)
That’s if the batteries don’t spontaneously combust and sink the ships
Oh but we need more of those “episodes.” People need to learn how risky it will be to park one of those impossible-to-extinguish fires near their HOME.
Environmental arbitrage, as labor arbitrage, is tres equitable, inclusive, and ‘G’reen.
“Advanced Propulsion Centre, which provides taxpayer funding to makers of zero-emissions vehicles”
Well exorting to PRC, at least we don’t have to subsidise those coal, imported wood chip & methane (natural) gas powered vehicles.
Only in France can we honestly say the electric vehicle is nuclear powered…
..in Germany they are mostly coal fired, and lignite at that after shutting down most of their NPP for unreliables
(calm foggy winter nights in Germany and all that).
How come a German company couldn’t figure that one out??
I suspect we still see the car firms jockeying for position , none of them wanting to be the first to publicly say they just can’t do it.
We’ll probably also see some Volkswagen-style accounting tricks like they did with their fuel economy figures. Doing the dirty business in China or similar such countries will also remove them somewhat from scrutiny by any UK regulators that get a bit keen and try to actually enforce the unachievable targets before other competitors are publicly humiliated.
They don’t have an ounce of collective courage between them to face down the green lobby.
BMW stopping production of its “Mini” to ship the production to China? OH, that’s why China went back to importing coal from Australia, so they could use carbon-based energy to build BMW Minis to ship back to UK, where there is no future carbon-based energy? Obviously, the UK is destroying its economy with idiot virtue-signaling while China doubles down, on both carbon-based energy and selling cars to idiots. I need a drink, maybe that would help me make even a little sense of this.
wait until they learn how much C02 the alcohol beverage industry produces.
Darn, now I am afraid to open my club soda.
Whiskey on the rocks could work but making ice uses a lot of electricity, probably produced by FF power plants
Beer and champagne are out of the question and wine releases a lot of CO2 during fermentation.
Do I have to face the rest of my days beefless, carless, and sober.
A terrible fate since age has already mostly deprived me of other pleasures.
Oh well, I will soon be leaving this world to the stupid, anyway.
Champagne will be exempt – it’s the preferred beverage of socialists
It will be exempt, but consumption of it will be limited to those with sufficient social credits.
Champagne socialists will be awash with social credits
Bite Your Tongue!
Perhaps we should start calling it idiot-signaling.
There is that, but a lot of that coal is needed to manufacture solar panels for sale in Northern Europe where the capacity factor is <15% (5% in the three (3) winter months) and the return on investment is < 1:1.
Ron
Well said. Better make it a double.
IIRC a quote I read from somewhere:
“Whatever happened to that country who used to buy all the stuff we make?”
The communists are selling the West the “rope” with which to hang ourselves. In this case the “rope” is so-called renewable energy (wind & solar). Madness!
Invest in livery stables /sarc
Horses fart, they won’t be allowed either.
Next thing we know they’ll be taxing Unicorn farts and I’ll be out of a hobby.
I suppose we could put them in the freezer and eat the meat, though.
They will make eating meat illegal just like having cats and dogs.
Put the farts in the fridge? Ewww? 😀
How dare you think of enslaving our equine brothers.
-Your local PETA spokesperson
BMW has effectively moved all its Mini production to China. BMW will allow its ICE Mini production to wither in-place when the sale of ICEs is banned. It is cheaper to not move a doomed business unit.
Also there is the tragi-comedy of BritishVolt…
Unilateral UK deindustrialization continues. We must look forward to careers in social care—wiping each other’s bottom on minimum wage while we wait to die
The wait may be brief if you cannot stay warm.
I remember learning that the problem with the service economy was that you can’t produce net wealth by having a country full of accountants all doing one another’s taxes….or surgeons operating on one another. Your prediction for social care is part of the same continuum I suppose.
Next door to the east has just taken delivery of a new all electric BMW. He is a CAGW sceptic but the tax breaks on his new car are worth several hundred pounds a month to him. However he works in sales and is very careful to arrange his travelling around available charging points.
Next door to the west has a new MG hybrid ( built in China ) which he charges from his rooftop solar panels, and he also cites the tax breaks.
Last evening a taxi driver told me that by the beginning of next year all taxis in Falkirk are to be electric by order of the local council. He thinks that regulation won’t last long.
Being retired I don’t qualify for any of the tax breaks. I was thinking of changing my 16 YO diesel Merc for a diesel BMW X1 but having read this paper and the BMW sales rep’s comment probably not, particularly if BMW are moving to China.
And what fools are funding all those tax breaks? Us… What a circus.
The central banks are fabricating currencies from nothing using computers. They use this fresh new funny money to buy debt from the central governments. The highly credentialed idiots in government think Modern Monetary Theory is consequence free, which is going to crater the entire economy.
Actually the banks issue debt to clients by way of loans and mortgages, and the government buys the mortgage fund off of them, resulting the bank getting cash to cover the loans, and the government declaring the fund to be an asset on their accounting books. It works as long as everyone thinks they are going to receive their cash, but in the end it depends on the average person being able to make his monthly payments….
True, but the central banks, working with the Treasury departments, are debasing the value of the currency in the real economy. This is the cause of inflation. Inflation is the hidden taxation that will cause the illusion to break down and no one will trust the currencies to represent anything but a worthless slip of paper. See Zimbabwe.
There’s even a book about this process: This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly.
“A recent study shows that electric and hybrid vehicles are more likely to fail their MOT test on issues such as worn tyres, but overall are more likely to pass the MOT test first time.”
https://www.westendservicestation.co.uk/electric-cars-more-likely-to-fail-mot-on-worn-tyres/
I have never heard of an ICE vehicle failing its first MOT – that’s when the vehicle turns three years old. In fact my FIAT (2017) hasn’t failed three MOTs The above statement is nonsense. Weight is a big issue, especially for tyres.
And tyres aren’t cheap.
and brakes. And they are expensive too.
Regenerative braking is easy on the pads.
My personal jury is still out on EVs though I am inclining against. Still, it’s good to have the correct facts
Electric vehicles can make sense if you only drive at night and charge from your dedicated solar panels during the day. Hmm, maybe not so sensible in foggy Britain. Short days and low sun insolation are a bit of problem at higher latitudes, as well, this time of year.
If I had somewhere to charge the thing and enough money to buy one, I’d have one just for the acceleration alone
Having said that Nissan is advertising a petrol-powered vehicle which drives an electric motor which drives the wheels.
Mad but I’ll bet the acceleration is good
Regen brakes help if you have normal driving patterns. If you have lots of stop and go driving where most of the time you are slowing down from less than 20mph, then regen brakes won’t help much at all.
MOT would be????
I duckduckgo’d it, but I can only find references to MOT certificates in UK, but nothing describing what they are.
It’s the colloquial term for the annual safety inspection required on all UK vehicles over three years old. You have to produce a valid MoT certificate before you can pay your vehicle excise tax. It’s a fairly extensive inspection.
Testers are independent but authorised. Some are more scrupulous than others. For example, I once had a very old vehicle with some structural corrosion within 12 inches of the rear seat-belt attachment, which would normally be a fail. My tester simply asked if I ever used the rear seats. By taking the seats out my car passed.
On the whole I’m OK with the annual testing though I think it could be relaxed with no noticeable loss of safety.
A two-yearly inspection was suggested not long ago, couched in terms of saving people money. But if someone is happy to save the c. £50 for the MoT test, will they also look to save the £250 (or whatever) cost of servicing their car? I guess that’s the risk.
To answer the question that you asked, Ministry of Transport, or Ministry of Transportation.
loved the cost to charge bit
and the offshoring to china
read/heard about some spanish dude being peeved cos the cost to charge was MORE than a tank of fuel was, which was the only reason he’d bought ev
But how much of that cost is the actual cost to e=recharge, and how much of it is tax?
Considering the new 2023 battery replacement costs the soon to be understood double depreciation rate vs conventional ICE vehicles won’t offset the gasoline cost saving. Not that it matters to the rich boys and girls who are the targeted buyers.
How much of the fuel cost is tax, especially in Europe?
Vive la difference!
Wait till ev owners have to pay a road tax commensurate with the extra road wear caused by their bloated weight!
IN ADDITION TO the skyrocketing electricity prices!
Things that you will find out about your new EV after you have signed the deal. IF you’re lucky enough to deal with a fair minded salesman. Maybe.
1: EV batteries, like all rechargeable batteries, will have useful life extended if you do not charge above 80% and do not let it fall below 20%, so there’s 40% of your range gone already.
2: EV batteries, like all rechargeable batteries, will deteriorate faster if you frequently fast-charge, much better to charge slowly (if you have the facility to do this. If you, like many in the UK especially, do not have off-street parking you may not have that choice)
3: Winter range will be severely compromised as not only do the batteries not perform well when the temperature drops, but use of lights, wipers, heater etc will increase load on the battery.
4: Do not attempt to charge your EV battery if the temperature is below 0ºC as this will damage the battery and likely void the warranty
5: The manufacturer can turn off features on your car, or switch them to a subscription charge, without consulting you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoIAgi6KM5Q
Happy motoring!
BMW is very big on feature subscriptions. It is, as their man said, the future.
The Gillette model – give away the machine, make money on the blades.
Ah yes, more “income streams.”
Pretty soon, you’ll have to pay for the heater to work when it’s cold out!
Oops.. forgot THE most important point..
6: Resale value. If you trade it in after 2 or 3 years, it may not be too much of an issue, but after 5 years or so the battery capacity will be depleted, range and length of time it will hold charge will be compromised, so I doubt anybody will want to take it off your hands until you either replace the battery or drop your asking price. How much would you pay for a 5 year old EV?
Nothing.
I read the other day that customers were being quoted a wait time of four years to get their used EV batteries replaced.
Is a courtesy car provided? I thought not.
I don’t know but I doubt it.
The woman the story was about said at first she went to her nearest dealer (she had a Chevy Bolt, I believe) and they told her four years, so she went to where she bought the car hoping she could get it done sooner, and they too told her about four years. I think they were having a recall on this particular car for battery fires, so they had a long waiting list.
I suppose other brands might be able to replace them sooner than four years, but I don’t know.
I’m sticking with an ICE vehicle.
They are trying to increase the number of new EVs being sold. That will also increase the demand on batteries.
I think that is because it is subject to recall, so GM is replacing tens of thousands of batteries. But battery production is limited, so they feed vehicle production lines first and then the rest go to recall/retrofit. Since each dealer’s access to the batteries is limited, some have longer waits. That woman was able to find a dealer farther away, but with a waitlist of only 1 year or so. Still… that’s unacceptable when the issue is possible fire hazard.
I know a man who can supply you with a relatively new battery for just £5000 (don’t ask where he got it).
Yes, it just needs a new battery.
Well after spending the whole life of the car waiting for it to charge (and waiting for their turn in line), they should be used to the waiting!
Very little. But what if ICEVs are banned, and that is all that’s available?
Technical question – as a battery ages, does the recharge time lengthen?
“What if ICEVs are banned and that is all that is available?”
A lot of people will be unable to get to or do any work, unemployment rates will soar, the relevant government departments budgets will soar and tax rates for those who can get to work will soar. And sales of EVs will plummet.
And maybe _then_ we’ll start voting for politicians who don’t want to wreck our lives.
Wouldn’t that be nice!
I’ll guarantee the already-too-short “range” will get even smaller.
’85 Chev & ’94 Ford pickups, still performing, and I would want a vehicle that is no good after 5 or 10 years? Baloney.
I wouldn’t pay anything for a brand new one, much less a 5 year old one!
The owner of this Tesla in Finland discovered that it would cost him $23000 to replace the battery.
His solution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zAhwiQ95Wg
You forgot the need for a reserve charge in case you get stuck in a snowbank. In winter, I never let my ICE get below a half tank. To dangerous if you live in a rural area of the Canadian prairies.
I remain convinced that the goal of legislation is not to increase the sales of EVs, but to ultimately restrict access to personal vehicles for all but a privileged class.
Elitism…
(Neo-feudalism)
The question is, how many are the “privileged class”? Once that bunch, have their eco dream, sales will dry up, loads of people out of work, car manufacturers shutting down due to extremely low sales. Trashed economy. Mass unemployment.
Oh, yes! The greens and ecoloon ruling classes sure will save the planet, at OUR expense.
“how many are the “privileged class”?
Most ICE cars can manage ~300 miles or so on a tank (50l)
£26,695 Range: 250 miles – MG 5 EV
£28,995 Range: 168 miles – Nissan Leaf
£29,305 Range: 222 miles – Vauxhall Corsa-e
£30,050 Range: 124 miles – Mazda MX-30
up to £90,000 or so for a Tesla
https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/electric/cheapest-electric-car/
People who can afford those prices and reductions in range
NB Ranges are very seldom as claimed by the manufacturer…
Yes, those quoted ranges are nameplate values. Sort of lkike the EPA mileage ratings for cars sold in the US – fiction. Not based on actual driving experience.
And like those windmill nameplate output figures, which are entirely fraudulent!
When it gets to that point, the “elite” should assume that things will get medieval… in a whole lot of ways.
Here in the U.S. dead people vote, but they don’t emit CO2 so it’s win-win for the elites.
Regardless of the intent, the consequence is inevitable, so it doesn’t matter. The result is the same. Here in the U.S. the woke explanation will be it’s Trump’s fault. I don’t know about anywhere else /sarc
It would be interesting to know the proportion of electric vehicles owned by companies or a component of salary packaging compared with private ownership.
My bet is that the majority are owned by companies or company sponsored purchases rather than direct private ownership.
It is certainly the case in the UK. According to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) fleet and business buyers were responsible for two thirds of all EV registrations in 2022.
Now, THAT is a VERY interesting stat, and should be made to go ‘viral’, in order for the ‘buying public’ to weigh the at least some of the truth about popularity of these crackerboxes..
I like to start my day with some good news. And this is a great start for today.
This situation just makes me realize yet again that all the advances of technology and our supposed superiority over generations past account for nothing in the face of our lack of common sense. Let’s see how long carmakers submit to this stupid pressure.
Or car buyers
Yes, all “the advances of technology” have supplanted most of what was once Common Sense.
And a move to start road-taxing EVs like ICE vehicles, plus reduction of subsidies, plus increased costs to recharge batteries making them overall more expensive than ICE vehicles – and limited range, long time taken to recharge, long queues at charging points, often chargers not working.
But apart from that …
The lie that EV motoring is cheap as chips, has been exposed.
But EVs don’t require as much maintenance. (Thought I’d throw out Griff’s favorite point, since he doesn’t seem to be around anymore.)
Maintenance goes away when the vehicle self-destructs before it needs any. ;-D
I don’t think I post this every time I see one of these articles, but it’s close. My prediction is that the EV market will virtually collapse within the next 10 years – and if this article is any indication, it may collapse within the next 5 for a variety of reasons – many pointed out in the article and in the comments here. Not sure if I read it here or elsewhere, but, over the holidays, there were reports of long lines at charging stations coming from several countries and people waiting hours to get their car charged. I live on Amelia Island in north Florida – a great place to live. I see an increasing number of virtue signalers here driving their brand new Teslas. However, most people here don’t drive more than 20 miles a day – many old retired farts like me live here so don’t do much more than drive to the golf course, bar, and back. So people here can get away with it. Up in New Jersey where I left to move here, very different situation.
Long lines and waits, range, cost, lack of charging station availability for those living in apartments or in urban settings, supply chain issues, and the occasional fire that can’t be extinguished, plus other issues I can’t think of right now, to me point to a fairly rapid demise at some point. What amazes me is the level of investment car manufacturers are making in EV production while scaling back or eliminating production of ICE. Maybe a good time to look at starting up a small ICE car company, because there may very well be a number of bankruptcy’s due short term thinking, government subsidies, and just plain stupidity.
Car manufacturers cannot be unaware of all the drawbacks of EV’s, even as their marketing departments produce expensive TV commercials encouraging us to “drive the future”, and similar platitudes in the vain hope they can continue to be in business for a few more years. But as more people are starting to recognize these drawbacks too, I would not be surprised to find that their engineers are continuing to develop and improve ICE vehicles as they must surely realize they will make a comeback in the not-so-distant future (because they know hydrogen power won’t work either)..
You can’t discount the possibility that a non-trivial number of management types are true believers in both the global warming myth and the “inevitability” of EVs.
I see management in quite a few companies kowtowing to the green totalitarians.
Invest in aftermarket parts manufacturers or wrecking yards. If this stupidity continues we will be forced to keep our fuel powered cars usable for as long as possible. I already have to do that. Long past is the day when I would trade for new every two years.
And how will all those Tesla drivers get a charge when they need to evacuate some significant distance ahead of a storm.
…Especially if the power were turned off ahead of the storm or wildfire
You forgot about “too big to fail”.. GM got bailed out in 2008 so that their democrat union member employees wouldn’t lose their jobs. Just increase the National Debt a few more $trillion when GM fails again in 2028 and everything will be fine. Paul Krugman, the liberal/democrat/ progressive go-to-economist claims National Debt doesn’t matter. So there you go.
“ to look at starting up a small ICE car company” Ah, but you have forgotten “big brother”.
Quote:“He says BMW were under government pressure to do so, though what that pressure is I cannot tell.
Without inflicting brainache upon myself, I understand that manufacturers are under some legal obligation that ‘a certain %’ of the the cars they sell *have* to be electric.
This to be by a ‘certain’ date and as time goes by, that % increases
If the target is missed then some penalty is applied and *that* is ‘the pressure’
To all intents they’re threatened with bankruptcy if they don’t sell the dictated number of cars.
At some point, The Worm Will Turn.
It has to because already Government Diktats and the stress/worry/anxiety they create are killing huge numbers of people.
Why: The UK, having just come through Covid which created a massive Excess Death Rate (EDR), should now have a *negative* EDR.
Covid would have taken out the elderly, infirm, the chronic existings and otherwise ‘sickly’
But instead of positive Excess Life Rate, the UK still has a massive EDR – and EDR that’s worse than its been for 50 years. source
While the NHS is variously described by those inside it as “a battlefield”
Just one small reason here..
Effectively, smart meters are being used to charge folks more for their electricity, pay for it in advance and then black them out when that credit expires.
And it’s being inflicted upon The Very Last People on this Earth who need that sort of shit
Most people are not ‘wealthy’ and consequently they have to be managed – if not removed entirely.
Seems to me, based upon all of the info we are uncovering about ‘the jabs’, that THAT is the main reason that it is “worse than it’s been for 50 years”.
I predict that independent garages and machine shops which specialize in keeping older vehicles running will do very well. The average age of private automobiles on the US roads is now over 12 years. It will go up anywhere sales of new internal combustion vehicles are restricted.
I love the idea that California is banning the sale of gas engine cars, not because it’s a good idea but because auto manufacturers will no longer have to kowtow to CARB requirements for the rest of the country. Cali politicians are making CARB irrelevant and I love that.
California, as stupid as it is, has NOT banned the sale of gas-engine cars. It has banned the sale of new gas-engine cars. Big difference.
‘Big difference’, indeed… but, a First Step, not a Final One.
Remember “to flatten the curve”?
Sounds like an opening for a new business–buy a bunch of new ICVs in AZ or NV, drive them to my sales lot on the CA border, and they cross the line as “used” cars. How long do you think CA would let me do that?
I said “is banning” as in it is happening in the future. I’m not sure I understand your comment since the point of my comment was to say that California may be making CARB irrelevant for the rest of the country.
Yes, but even though the sale of used ICE cars will still be permitted (for how long?), it still does have the effect of reducing California’s regulatory overreach, since the manufacture of NEW ICE cars would no longer need to worry about what they “lose” by not meeting CARB regs.
Unfortunately, other States have adopted the same “standards,” so the cancer has already spread.
They aren’t zero emissions vehicles.
They are zero emissions here vehicles. They produce just as much, if not more emissions than do ICE vehicles, it’s just that it’s somewhere else, so it can be ignored.
Great point, MarkW.
MarkW,
Yep. “displaced emission vehicle” is the term I’ve seen.
This displacement also applies to the mining, refining, smelting, processing and manufacturing that occurs elsewhere to produce these virtuae signalling devices.
All too funny and so predictable.
Yes, this is not going to end well. I can see a couple of ways in which it might turn out.
One, current policy continues, but people just refuse to buy EVs and hang on to their aging ICE cars. The car industry is then in deep trouble, having invested in production capacity which they cannot sell. Volumes and revenues fall, layoffs. Repercussions through the supply chain.
Two, seeing this coming, governments intervene and try to change the balance between driving an EV and ICE.. They could raise the tax on gasoline and diesel so it once more becomes cheaper to drive EVs. They could raise the road tax or the VAT on ICE. Probably raising the cost of licensing them would be most likely, but a VAT increase as well must be a possibility.
But this will probably not work, because the costs of owning and running EVs is unaffordable for huge numbers of people already struggling with inflation in the price of necessities, such as food and fuel.
So, three, a likely possibility regardless of what other choices the government makes, maybe car ownership falls? Because we will have a situation in which ICE cars are unaffordable, and EVs don’t meet the needs people have, because of range and refuel times and lack of charging points and costs to refuel.
Bottom line, it is looking like attempts to continue present policies and ban ICE cars from 2030 is going to lead to huge social changes. Like, if its made unaffordable for the less well off to own an old ICE car which they need so as to drive to work, to shop, to get the kids to school, what are they going to do? Its a recipe for increasing the welfare rolls and increasing unemployment.
I would personally like to see car use in cities strongly cut back. But not like this, done by an orderly plan which provided public transport and bike ways as alternatives, and which addressed the needs of people for whom there is no real alternative to cars. And companies who have been persuaded to locate in industrial estates which are only accessible by car.
This is completely crazy. Another example of governments basically being in denial about half of what is needed to make their current project of the day work properly.
The British Government’s approach to cycling is another example. They exhort everyone to cycle, but they don’t provide safe bikeways or safe places to park a bike when you get where you’re going. The result is that there is a short lived surge in bike sales, and then people find out what the reality is of cycling on an A road with trucks hurtling by a 60mph, and decide its not for them, find that there are no connected routes, but just about anywhere you want to go at some point you have to use a road which is not fit for biking on.
And decide that they will never let their kids out on a bike. Quite rightly.
Yes, the current Western policies will lead to a signficant reduction in ICEV ownership and not that much more EV ownership. So, a rational thing to do would be to make a massive investment in mass, rapid, transit (with non-existent money). But that will only benefit folks who live in urban ares – not the folks who live in the countryside, producing the food.
Michel:
In a word: No.
Your plan would just empower the government even more. Afterall, it is the
government who is pushing us into this nonsense. Allow them to use a purported
“Climate Crisis!” to completely reorder society to their version of utopia? No.
At some point we have to stop voting into office those that acquiesce to this madness.
Unfortunately, that won’t happen until some 1st world country [UK or Germany come to mind if this winter worsens] collapses due to lack of energy. The West just ignores failures like
Venezuela or Sri Lanka thinking that can’t happen here. It can, and it will if we really try
for NetZero.
Soon, only the most wealthy will be able to own and operate an automobile. It’s almost as though this was the plan all along.
Tesla cuts prices by a record £8k as Musk battles sales slowdownTesla customers who have already received deliveries posted on social media saying they were considering whether to demand a refund.
The cuts will be passed on to customers who are awaiting deliveries, although those who have already received their cars will have missed out on the savings.
One member of the Tesla Owners Club UK wrote on the club’s Facebook page: “I just picked up the car yesterday. What should I do? Go to Tesla and give back the car? I can’t believe after a few hours from picking up the car I lost £5k.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/01/13/tesla-cuts-prices-record-8k-musk-battles-sales-slowdown/
No evidence of a price cut in the US.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64266471
The cost of the newest Tesla models increased in the last year or two by about $10,000. On top of that, interest rates are terrible. In the end, the discount is a wash.
Empires that lasted for millennia are no longer around. One of the reasons for their disappearance advanced by Joseph Tainter in his book “The Collapse of Complex Societies” is that the proliferation of bureaucracies and their attendant rules and regulations eventually became so onerous, and unenforceable, that people simply ignored them, moved away or destroyed them. Unlike the civilizations of ancient Egypt or Babylon, those of the technically advanced West have been around for only a relatively short time and their self-destruction will be very much accelerated. For the young, this might be interesting if they’re aware of it.
If that view does not “appear” on their Twit, Fakebook, or Boobtube screen… they will not ‘become aware of it’.
As I’ve said before, consumers suspect there’s a considerable amount of collusion between the manufacturers and governments regarding EVs. The former are keeping prices high in the hope that people will be enticed into purchasing them because of the incentives/subsidies; but if these vehicles have an average North American price tag of $65,000-plus,a $7000 subsidy still leaves them overpriced, and whatever savings there are with owning these things over the long term may be exaggerated. Besides the longer they’re kept, the more likely they’ll need new tires, brakes, suspension parts etc. as well as the associated labor costs. It’s worth noting that EV proponents downplay such facts by trying to convince the public that they will be doing their parts to save the planet.
It’s different in the U.S. I leased a Chevy Bolt Premier in March, 2021. My payment is $289 a month. I save a lot of that in gas and maintenance. Gas is still over $4.00 here in SoCal.
stanny1:
That sounds quite affordable. What were the lease terms? How big was the down payment?
Of course, from a “saving the planet” stand point [ie limiting CO2 emissions according to the current alarmist meme] your Bolt would need to be driven > 50,000 miles just to breakeven with an ICE vehicle regarding the life-cycle CO2 emissions of each. [MIT study 2019]
Using California’s mix of electricity production to charge your Bolt it might be > 80,000mi.
[I couldn’t find a listing for SoCal. but here’s the link for the state with a nice graph depicting the sources – nukes, wind, solar FF, hydro, etc]
https://www.energy.ca.gov/data-reports/energy-almanac/california-electricity-data/electric-generation-capacity-and-energy
btw My neighbor likes his Bolt, but doesn’t park or charge it in his garage.
This works for me, it will make my 1966 Corvair convertible that much more valuable…
Just a bother example of the market being smarter than the marketers.
It would save a lot of CO2 if they just opened the forced labor camps in the UK instead of western China.
Not a good time for BMW in the UK. They’ve just stopped selling cars to the police (who use a lot of them) because of on-going problems with reliability of diesel engines, culminating in a fatal crash when an engine seized. BMW have said it is because of the way the police use their vehicles.