The profiles of common folks for potential EV ownership are vastly different from those of current elite EV owners.
Summary: We’re running out of elites in the wealthy countries that are buying EV’s.
Published February 26, 2024 at America Out Loud NEWS
Ronald Stein is an engineer, Founder of PTS Advance, Author, Columnist, Energy Literacy Consultant, and Featured columnist on Energy Literacy atAmerica Out Loud NEWS. Ron is also Senior Policy Advisor for the Heartland Institute, the Center for a Constructive Tomorrow, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations”.
The elites have bought EV’s, and elites may continue to buy EV’s, BUT we’re quickly running out of elites!
The average debt in America is almost $60,000 across credit cards, mortgages, auto loans, and student loans. The common folks need a workhorse vehicle, not just a second car toy that sits in the garage to be used on short ventures!
Inflation has changed the way many Americans shop. Fed up with prices that remain about 19 percent on average, above where they were before the pandemic, consumers are fighting back. More Americans are buying used cars, but there has yet to be a used EV market!
Mandating a change to EV ownership and further financial austerity onto those that can least afford it, is facing a rebellion from those that need transportation. The problem is that manufacturers are loading up the “supply chain” with EV’s on dealer lots, but they’re not seeing the “demand” for EV’s coming from the public.
The current EV ownership profiles are reflected in the oligarchic elite owners are that they are:
- Highly educated.
- Highly compensated.
- Multi-car families.
- Low mileage requirements for the families’ second car, i.e., the EV.
- Reside in a “temperate” climate like CA or FL. Almost 40% of EV’s are in CA and CA has 6 times as many EV’s as FL.
Unlike the profile of current EV owners, the owners of internal combustion engine vehicles are dramatically different from most potential EV vehicle owners.
- Many are single-car owners,
- Most of the potential car buyers are not as highly educated.
- Nor as highly compensated as the elite EV owners.
- Mandating a change to EV ownership and forced austerity, may face a rebellion from those that need affordable vehicle transportation.
EV sales are beginning to hit a speed bump.
- Hertz, previously an eager early adopter of fleet electrification, announced a big sell-off of EVs.
- Ford’s electric-vehicle business lost nearly $4.7 billion in 2023 and could lose another $5 billion in 2024, thus, Ford slashed EV production, having earlier pulled back on planned battery factories.
- Unsold new EVs are piling up on dealer lots, spurring aggressive discounting.
- “No one wants to buy used EVs”, as Fortune reports, leaving EV used-car values in free fall.
According to one industry executive, the situation “has the potential to destroy billions” of dollars in value for auto firms.
- By law the credit in the Inflation Reduction Act is supposedly available only when purchasing vehicles built with materials sourced primarily in the U.S.
- However, nearly all battery materials are currently foreign-made and will remain so for ages.
- An Inflation Reduction Act exception allowing credit for leased vehicles built with foreign materials. Evidently, the pen is mightier than the miner.
- Thus, leasing has soared to over half of all EV sales in America, as leasing is the only way to capture the federal $7,500 tax credit for most EVs.
The American government provides incentives and tax deductions to transition society to EV’s, but those incentives are financial incentives for the continuation of Child Labor and Ecological Destruction “Elsewhere”. Is it ethical and moral to provide financial support to the developing countries that are mining for exotic minerals and metals to build EV batteries for Americans?
The putative EV revolution is stalling for three main reasons, and not because of “dead robots” or the other road bumps in recent news. What will happen is that.
- We’ll run out of money to subsidize the common folk,
- We’ll run out of copper and other foreign sourced special metals.
- Car drivers will run out of patience in putting up with inconveniences.
International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that global gasoline consumption in 2023 blew past the pre-lockdown 2019 peak, even with roughly 30 million EVs on the world’s roads, up from near zero a decade ago. The primary reason may be that EV’s are mainly 2nd vehicles with low mileage vs the high mileage workhorse vehicles that are internal combustion engines.
The CO2 emissions arising from building an EV before it gets driven revolve around a simple fact: a typical EV battery weighs about 1,000 pounds. That half-ton battery is made from a wide range of minerals, including copper, nickel, aluminum, graphite, and lithium. Accessing those minerals requires digging up and processing some 250 tons of earth per vehicle, mostly in poorer developing countries with minimal labor laws and environmental regulations.
The battery pack is a complex electrochemical system made from hundreds or thousands of parts, including sensors, safety systems, cooling or heating systems, and a boatload of power electronics.
The underlying material requirements from developing countries is the single constraint that will cause the EV stall-out before other factors kick in. All the world’s mines, both currently operating and planned, can supply only a small fraction of the 700 percent to 4,000 percent increase in various minerals like copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, and other rare earth elements that are essential components in many of today’s rapidly growing electricity technologies that will be needed to meet the wildly ambitious EV goals.
The rate of EV adoption is currently braking before there’s a battery-dominated future because, again, we’ll run out of money, copper, etc. and political tolerance for enriching other nations—especially China, where 50 percent to 90 percent of the critical materials are now controlled and produced and will be for years yet to come, no matter how lawmakers rewrite the sourcing regulations.
AGAIN, the elites have bought them and will continue to buy them, BUT we’re running out of elites to buy EV’s !
Please share this information with your friends to further enhance conversations about Energy Literacy as Breezes and Sunshine cannot manufacture anything. Electricity CANNOT exist without crude oil !
Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure, Co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations”, policy advisor on energy literacy for The Heartland Institute, and The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, and National TV Commentator- Energy & Infrastructure with Rick Amato.
Ronald Stein, P.E. is an engineer, energy consultant, speaker, author of books and articles on energy literacy, environmental policy, and human rights, and Founder of PTS Advance, a California based company.
Ron advocates that energy literacy starts with the knowledge that renewable energy is only intermittent electricity generated from unreliable breezes and sunshine, as wind turbines and solar panels cannot manufacture anything for the 8 billion on this planet.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Lots of arm waving here. But what about the main data? How many EVs are being sold in the US?
Here is the data from Cox. Still just going up and up:
The Q4 numbers are out now. It was a good quarter. It total, 1,189,051 were put into service in 2023.
I’m not familiar with Cox Automotive, are these numbers actual sales to the public or numbers delivered to agents to be sold?
Cox is the major monitor of new and used sales (Blue Book). They describe them as numbers put into service.
And how many EV’s are taken out of service each year? That has a huge bearing on numbers in service.
Well, how many?
The claim here was that sales have hit a speed bump. But 2023 sales were 43.6% higher than 2022.
Does a lease count as a “sale”?
And Stokes still refuses to reveal if he owns his own battery car or not…
Leases are counted as sales. The vehicle is sold from the manufacturer to the leaseholder, which is some sort of financial institution.
Where Nick lives, there’s no charging stations within cooee.
Everyone has to buy food regularly, so you can’t blame Nick or other green apostles for not confining their road travels to just a run to the local shops once a week.
43.6% of squat is still squat.
Combined population of California and Florida is over 61 million.
Do they break that down into where in the market the EVs are going?
In the UK sales are overwhelmingly to companies and fleets and not to the man or woman in the street.
That’s exactly what I was thinking….companies might be more motivated to buy EVs for their fleets (or lease them) due to the huge subsidies they will get. A $7K subsidy for each vehicle will add up pretty quickly and would sweeten the pot far more for commercial users than the individual.
The figures are difficult to get hold of for EV’s, nobody appears to want to say anything out of turn. However, one UK recycling company that handles EV write-offs for insurance companies said that in the 12 months from March 2022 to March 2023 they’d seen an increase from a dozen in 3 days to over 20 per day. Now do the maths for the US market – a 1-year 500% increase in EV insurance write-offs alone is going to make a significant impact on those figures.
Thanks. That alone is a very interesting ‘factor in figuring’.
ICE sales were up 11.6% from 13.9M to 15.5M A difference of 1.6M or 500k more than total EV sales
So EV sales account for 8.9% of total auto.sales in the US.
Wake me when EV sales hit 20% of the market
Given that insurance companies are writing off EV’s after relatively minor accidents, I’m willing to bet that a large % of ‘new’ sales are replacement sales for write-off’s.
Some reports are sales to customers for Tesla (majority of EV sales) and sales to dealers for other manufacturers … which include EVs collecting dust on their lots. … Unsold EV inventory has been too high since November 2023. Tesla does not have any inventory.
Unfortunately, most manufacturers report sales by quarter rather than individual months. Tesla complicates everything by reporting only global sales by quarter. So US Tesla sales have to be estimated.
Experian reports new EV registrations, which should be more accurate.
Cox uses Kelly Blue Book when seems to count vehicle registrations
When you say; “Tesla does not have any inventory.” What you actually mean is Tesla doesn’t have any inventory piling up at dealerships, they still have unsold inventory piling up at their production plants.
Tesla does not have any dealer inventory counted as sales even though the final customer has not yet shown up. Other manufacturers include dealer inventories in their sales figures.
The Tesla assembly plants try to keep production steady to control costs. The result is an average 55 day supply of inventory at the plant that will eventually be sold. 55 days is considered normal in the industry. Those cars are not counted as sales.
Other than Tesla, most US auto sales are off the lot at dealerships.
Build time for custom orders are 6 to 8 weeks — 4 to 8 weeks for Tesla.
A lot of people don’t want to wait for up to two months. Having some inventory helps with those sales.
I once had an accident and needed a new car in a hurry. Renting a car for 6 to 8 weeks would have been a waste of money. So I bought a car off a dealer’s lot for the first time
“placed in service” usually means when the buyer takes possession.
Large proportion are fleet cars .. just a tiny market.
And that will disappear once the fleet services find the massive loss they will make when they try to off-load used EVs.
Which rental car giant was it that just off-loaded a whole of used EVS.. and isn’t replacing them ??
You never did say which EV you drive, Nick.
Is that because YOU DON’T DRIVE ONE. !
Are you just a mindless shill !!
Hertz has an EV fleet, and sold most of it at very low prices, because nobody wanted to rent them.
Nowadays, most EVs are bought under a lease, by upper class folks, because they make too much money to qualify for the EV tax credit
I read a lot of great comments.
We have to vote Trump in by a landslide, so all these idiotic self-serving politicians get wiped out all over the country, and out of the Congress, so Trump can unto the Biden damage, especially at the border, because every illegal is a Democrat vote.
DEPORT ALL THE ILLEGALS, INCLUDING ILLEGAL CRIMINALS
Wow, it does not get much better than this.
.
The Washington, DC, perpetrators of these EV follies want to be re-elected to have power over you, to use more of your money, to do more of the same follies, “for as long as it takes”, while they debilitate the US with open borders and over-top-war mongering
.
All that is even more true, because the EV charging stations are unreliable, often are out of service, and to top it of, EVs are unreliable, have high repair bills, and have poor range in cold weather, especially when having more than one passenger, and some cargo, and going uphill, on cold, snowy days, as in New England, etc.
.
Currently, the vast majority of charging infrastructure is concentrated in more densely populated coastal areas, as opposed to more rural areas of the country, according to the Department of Energy (DOE).
.
Almost all people in rural areas, often with dirt roads, and snow and ice and cold, and longer distances, are definitely not giving up their pick-ups and SUVs to “switch to EVs”, especially in impoverished states, such as Maine and Vermont. Their Socialist governments lost all sense of reality, and think money grows on trees.
.
Insurance Costs Very High: Because EVs are much more costly to repair, EV insurance rates are about 3 times the rate of gasoline vehicles, completely wiping out any energy savings.
.
Monthly Payments Very High: Because EVs are more expensive and interest rates are high, monthly payments are much higher than for gasoline cars, completely wiping out any benefits of tax credit subsidies.
.
Useful Service Life Very Short: EV useful service lives are very short, usually at most 8 years.
No one in his/her right mind, would spend at least $15,000 to $20,000 to replace a battery in an 8-y-old EV, which by then. would have lost almost all of its value, unlike a gasoline vehicle.
.
Charging Cost Very High: EV charging cost is very high on the road, usually at least 30 c/kWh, at home at least 20 c/kWh in New England
As a result, annual fuel cost savings are minimal, because EVs are driven fewer miles per year than gasoline cars, and the price of gasoline is about $3.20/gallon
.
Minimal CO2 Reduction: EVs driven, on average, about 72,000 miles for 8 years, according to various studies, do not reduce CO2 emissions compared to efficient gasoline vehicles driven the same miles, if CO2 evaluations are made on a mine to hazardous-waste landfill basis, and same-mile basis.
The useful service lives of gasoline cars is much longer than of EVs.
.
Range Usually Much Less Than Advertised: EV owners experience much less range than advertised by EPA, especially with one or more passengers, with some luggage or a heavy load, cold weather, up and down hills, on wet/snowy dirt roads, hot weather, etc.
Teslas EVs, driven 75,000 to 80,000 miles, will have lost about 15 to 20% of battery capacity at end of year 8.
If traveling with one or more passengers, with some luggage, was a challenge on a longer trip, and even more of a challenge on a cold/snowy day, then an older EV, with an aging battery, has all that, and more, which is a good reason not to buy one.
.
Battery Aging a Serious Issue: If a new EV, it takes about 1.15 kWh to add a 1.0 kWh charge in the battery, plus, there is a loss of about 5% to get 1.0 kWh out of the battery to the drive train of the EV, etc.
If a 5-y-old EV, it takes about 1.25 kWh to add 1.0 kWh charge in the battery, plus there is a loss of about 5.5% to get 1.0 kWh out of the battery
The older the EV, the greater the losses, plus the battery has lost capacity, the ability to do work and go the distance; all that is worse on a cold day, or hot day, heavy loads, and other adverse conditions.
.
Charging Batteries at Less than 32 F: If an EV owner parks at an airport, goes away for a few days or a week, upon return he/she may find the EV with an empty battery (if the battery had a somewhat low charge to begin with), if during that week the weather were below freezing, because the battery thermal management system, BTMS, will maintain battery temperature, until the battery is empty, then the battery freezes to 32F, or less.
Charging would not be allowed, until the battery is warmed up in a garage.
In the future, with thousands of EVs at the airport, a percentage would have empty batteries. You would have to wait your turn to get a tow to the warm garage, get charged, pay up to $500, and be on your way, after 8 hours or so!!
.
Losing Value After 3 Years: Used EVs retain about 60% of their high original value, whereas gasoline vehicles retain at least 70% of their not so high original value, by the end of year 3.
Losing 40% of a $45,000 EV = $18,000
Losing 30% of an equivalent size, $35,000 gasoline vehicle = $10,500
The loss difference wipes out any tax credit subsidies.
.
LEGISLATOR’s CHEVY BOLT CATCHES FIRE WHILE CHARGING ON DRIVEWAY IN VERMONT
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/chevy-bolt-catches-fire-while-charging-on-driveway-in-vermont
I’ve used off-site parking in the winter where you drop the car off inside and pick it up inside and warmed up. It costs a few extra dollars but it is well worth it in the cold. EVs would still be a problem unless they warmed up the battery and charged for you, which would add significant cost.
“useful Service Life Very Short: EV useful service lives are very short, usually at most 8 years.”
How many times are you going to repeat this total BS? Are you stuck on stupid? I correct you every time and you continue lying.
==================
Charging Batteries at Less than 32 F: If an EV owner parks at an airport, goes away for a few days or a week, upon return he/she may find the EV with an empty battery
Gross exaggeration
Ford tests in 2022 at 0 degrees F. found a range reduction of 2% to 4% a day. That would be a maximum of under 25% in a week at zero degrees F..
=========
“Battery Aging a Serious Issue”
More BS
Loss of range is no more than 1% a year. The range will still be okay after 20 years.
===================
“After 75,000 to 80,000 miles, will have lost about 15 to 20% of battery capacity at end of year 8.”
Gross exaggeration
Range loss will be less than 10%
============
You are the website king of EV misinformation and disinformation who will never correct gross errors.
I rather think not, Richard. It appears that it is you who are just regurgitating incredibly biased sales propaganda from the EV industry.
How many times are you going to repeat this total BS propaganda? I correct you every time and you continue lying.
For goodness’ sake, Richard – do some digging will you, those figures you are spouting are BS, as I’ve pointed out before. They are to convince the gullible idiots to buy an EV and bear no comparison to how EV’s work in real life.
dickie is always willing to just “believe” the far-left propaganda pap that he finds.
At heart he is a non-thinking nil-science AGW cultist/nutter hiding behind a fake facade of semi-rational realism.
“a facade if semi rational realism”
Added to my resume.
I recommend articles bashing EVs every day on my blog for years and would never buy one. But I do not appreciate lying about them.
I have contacted Ford EV engineers about EV performance and battery durability testing.
The EV problem is people pay too much and get too little.
The battery life is as long as an ICE engine lasts: 200,000 miles. Only 1.5% of ICE vehicles are used for over 200,000miles Maybe not as long longing as a diesel.
One thing I don’t do is lie, so when I tell you that you are nasty and made no attempt to refute anything I wrote, I’m telling the truth.
Insults do not refute anything.
The last time you made this claim, you just happened to bump into a Ford engineer who told you this. Now you are claiming that you contacted them. Interesting.
Regardless, you still are unable to name this probably fictional engineer.
I worked in Ford product development for 27 years. I have known my contact engineer for decades and trust his reporting from inside the company. I did not happen to bump into anyone.
I think you bumped your head as a child and never recovered.
Convenient and, if actually true, doesn’t alter my point. What, exactly, would a Ford engineer say to a member of the public enquiring about EV’s except the usual industry propaganda? If they told everyone the truth it would likely severely hurt the companies profits.
If you would actually read what I reported, the Ford EV engineers are very pessimistic about the EVs they are designing and the high prices FORD IS EXPECTED TO CHARGE FOR THEM. Some engineers think the company is doomed.
But they are not lying about battery life. Battery life, unless there is an accident that damages the battery case, is not an EV weak point. Battery deterioration causes a loss of range that starts at abut 2% a year and gradually slows down. The average deterioration over 20 years is expected to be about 1% a year. Not good, but not a disaster for most EV owners
The range deterioration from fast charging is unknown because Ford can’t find many EVs to test that were mainly fast charged at 480 volts DC. So far it appears that fast charging is not as bad as previously thought but that’s not based on much data.
The list of EV disadvantages is huge and growing. THERE IS NO LOGICAL REASON TO BUY AN EV.
There is also no need to spout FALSE CLAIMS ABOUT EVs TO MAKE THEM LOOK EVEN WORSE.
If you tell someone EV batteries only last eight years, which is BS, then everything else you say about EVs becomes harder to believe.
And the ICE engine costs around $5400 to replace while the battery requires a second mortgage to be taken on your house.
A recent study conducted by Recurrent on 15,000 electric vehicles brought onto the market between 2011 and 2023 confirms that electric car battery replacement is a rare occurrence. Indeed, just 1.5%* of EVs have required a new battery.Sep 28, 2023
Some of those will be under the usual long term warranty, often eight years / 100,000 miles but only of the battery has less than 70% of the original capacity. It;s obvious Tesla is hoping to rarely get forced to replace a battery under warranty. You can buy EV battery insurance from some auto insurance companies. Better yet, don’t buy an EV.
Haven’t… Won’t
Tesla’s extended warranty that goes to 8 years does not cover battery packs or drive trains. The normal warranty is only for about 3 years, I believe. Again, Richard, I’ve told you all this before but you insist on ignoring it and making a fool of yourself.
Another case of RG deciding what he wants the answer to be, then cherry picking the data to find support for it.
If I have provided any specific facts, data and logic that you think are wrong, please explain where and why. Generic insults refute nothing.
It is sad that so many conservatives have no desire to hear the truth about EVs and other subjects.
They only want to hear bad news about EVs. Never mind if the news is true or false.
And only criticism of AGW, no matter what almost 100% of scientists believe about AGW
After 23 years the fuel tank on my Durango still,holds it’s original 22 gallons and can still travel 300 miles between fills.
More good info! Thanks. If more folks get to absorb this information, there will likely be many additional “cars on blocks” showing up, as permanent displays of foolishness.
I read that Hertz sold it’s EV fleet at an eye watering loss because they were so expensive to maintain.
Report was they sold 1/3, not the entire fleet of EVs.
Although, in the past they regularly sold into the used market, and made money doing so. Thus their fleet was more-or-less mostly newish.
The 2/3 not sold will be sold over the next few years, so the question is ‘how much of the fleet will be EV?’ in about 4 or 5 years.
EVs still represent just 11 percent of the total Hertz rental fleet. In total, the Hertz EV fleet is around 60,000 vehicles.
Jan 11, 2024
Hertz said EVs were too expensive to repair.
EV maintenance should be less than an ICE vehicle.
Hertz is mainly selling 2 to 3 year old high mileage EVs that were originally leased to ride hailing companies.
Resale value was low so Hertz tried to add them to their local retail shops which already had enough EVs.
Hertz did not offer these high mileage EVs at cheap prices and charged $35 to recharge them if they were returned with less charge than when rented which was a rip off. Another $25 fee if you brought the EV back with under 10% charge.
It’s like Hertz was deliberately steering people away from EVs.
Hertz charges $6.99 to fill your gas tank plus the market cost of gasoline in the area
Hertz had an EV fleet leased by auto hailing companies like Uber. They were 2 to 3 years old mainly Tesla model 3’s with very high mileage. They were older and with much more mileage than the typical used ICE that Hertz retires and sells
Some Hertz genius decided to keep those EVs and distribute them nationwide to retail Hertz shops. Hertz soon found out few car renters want EVs, and they already had enough EVs at the shops. So they decided to sell the used EVs
I suspect the resale value of EVs was very low and that’s why Hertz tried to get more use out of them. The experiment failed.
The sales figures of electric cars don’t invalidate the article. It is very clear that supply of electric cars now exceeds demand. This can be seen by the unsold electric cars piling up in dealerships. The problem for electric car manufacturers is that the target market is wealthy virtue signallers. These people make up a small percentage of the population. For most people, electric cars are an inferior product at a higher price. I can’t see that changing any time soon.
They’ll ALWAYS be an inferior product, that’s never going to change.
And the only way they get “cheaper” is by picking the taxpayer’s pockets to make the price tag *look* cheaper.
“For most people, electric cars are an inferior product at a higher price.”
That’s the way I look at it.
History is repeating itself. Over a century ago, dozens of auto manufacturers offered EV’s. By 1918 the Free Market had killed them off in favour of superior ICE technology.
And what was the total number of new cars sold.
Some 15.5 million. !!
CNN: How EVs became such a massive disappointment…
And the government changed the way they pay subsidies for EV’s last year, where the subsidy is paid when the vehicle is purchased now, whereas before, you didn’t get the subsidy until you filed your taxes in April.
I imagine that change spurred a little buying of EV’s.
Along with deep discounting.
Not a very good quarter at all – what the total numbers do not tell you is the detail and as we all know from the saying, that’s where the devil is. Total sales were spread across 103 makes, with Tesla having the largest market share – all other manufacturers totals were far below 10% of the market. For other manufacturers (not Tesla) this translates into less than one manufacturing plant output, often under 50% of that plant output where the plant must hit at least 80% output to remain economically viable. Add to the production figures that the average sale price across 2022 was very nearly $70,000 (thanks to Tesla and high-end luxury models) whilst in 2023 they were $53,376 – that means that, although total numbers may be up, the total sales profits are down by a considerable margin. Like you, I used figures from Cox, unlike you I actually dug into what those figures meant. When you factor in the numbers of EV’s that were scrapped or got rid of (off road and for sale) in 2023 that growth figure turns into a net loss along with the huge net loss in profits.
At least there won’t be an electric Apple to drive
Apple Kills Its Electric Car Project – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Ah so the electric Apple is a Lemon. Ok.
Actually.. you can use a lemon to create an electrical current.. (iirc from a long, long time ago)
Not sure if an Apple would work.
Potatoes work quite well too.
One of the best reasons to dislike both Apples and Teslas, is because of the people who buy them.
I cannot believe it took Apple 10 years to finally shit-can their EV
They wasted at least $10 billion and got next to nothing out of it, while Microsoft took that same $10 billion and put in AI, and is now worth well over $3 trillion
How quaint, a lot were sold.
How much fuel have the electric cars prevented from being used?
The last article I saw showed roughly a week’s worth of gasoline in the US was saved in the prior decade. I believe this is was published in 2022.
Curious if there is an update available.
Since you seem to be a fan of KBB, looks like just two days worth of gas per year is saved with electric vehicles:
https://www.kbb.com/car-news/study-all-those-evs-save-america-2-days-of-gas-per-year/
No demand destruction here.
The 70% larger upfront carbon dioxide “footprint” of EVs will require at least 60,000 miles of driving before any reduction of CO2 emissions. Not that CO2 emissions are bad news.
volvo-carbon-footprint-report.pdf (volvocars.com)
60,000 miles at 9000 miles a year for the average EV takes almost seven years.
And with a 500% increase in EV write-off’s for vehicles in the 1-3 year age range, very few EV’s are ever going to reach the seven year mark.
LOL…, trying to think if I’ve ever bought an ICE less than 7 years old !
Pretty sure I haven’t
I still have a 1985 Chev 3/4 ton helping with my firewood supplies on VERY hilly property. It is really “beat up”, but still doing what I need it to do.
I got rid of a 1982 about a year ago — while it was still able to move under its own power. It had hauled firewood, fence posts, and horse manure.
How come dealers have their lots full of EVs and no one is buying, as was predicted
And why are prices of used EVs so low?
And why do dealers not take EVs as trade-ins, when a buyer wants a gasoline car, after coming to his senses?
And does a lease count as a “sale”?
Yes.. to the leasing company.
US manufacturers count a ‘sale’ when a vehicle is delivered to a dealer, whether it’s bought by a consumer or not.
Dealers are usually obliged to buy certain numbers of vehicles per month.
They now have mountains of EV’s piling up waiting to be sold to consumers. Time to sale is months rather than weeks and this is vital to dealers, they must maintain turnover. Meanwhile they are forced to take delivery of EV’s whether they have sold their previous months quota or not.
And from your link: “Still, in the automobile business, nothing happens quickly. EV growth will continue to slow, and in the year ahead, we may even report the first quarter-over-quarter sales decline in more than three years.”
From memory, I think it was GM which bought a lot of their dealers out because they refused to continue to sell EV’s.
More to the point, with a collapsing second hand EV market EV drivers will get a small fraction of what they paid for their car in resale compared to ICE’s.
Porsche Taycan prices have tanked to badly in the UK that the only way you can buy a new Porsche ICE GT3 is to buy three Taycans at £170,000 each.
One wealthy You Tube Porsche fan wanted a GT3 so badly he was prepared to do the deal incurring a £10,000 loss on each Taycan with delivery mileage when he resold them, or so he thought. Before he took the plunge he checked around with dealers willing to buy the Taycans. They were offering around £100,000 for each of them.
As usual, you stick to the narrative and find any ‘evidence’ you can to support it without understanding what’s really going on.
The ‘Hope’ strategy.
I believe it was Buick dealers.
Maybe the total number of EVs sold is increasing, but was the percentage of all new cars being sold are EVs? The figures I have from last year are only about 8% of all vehicles sold in the US were EVs, and that figure shows signs of decline for 2024. In addition, according to Car&Driver’s numbers, only 2 of the top 25-selling vehicles were EVs in ’23. So it seems there’s a lot of wishful thinking on the part of EV proponents.
But most experts had predicted bev sales of 1.7 million. So even though yoy there was an increase, the rate of increase and the anticipated demand fall far short of expectations. This will most likely continue as many fleet operators scale back or eliminate bev purchases due to higher operating costs, increasing insurance premiums and poor resale value.
Wow! Those are such great numbers I really can’t understand why Tesla stock (the EV leader) has dropped roughly 33% since last July! What am I missing? What are investors missing?
Well, you could equally say that it is up 60% from start 2023. The share price is mainly dependent, not on total sales, which are rocketing up, but on Tesla’s market share and its prospects. There are a lot of new competitors.
You could also say TSLA is down 50% from their peak Oct 31, 2021 of $407
Nothing to see here, folks. Just another Nick nitpick where he successfully rebuts the headline claim of a WUWT post. He doesn’t seem to understand that the truth is in the many deflective inferences he gets in response.
Nick needs to read and heed this paraphrase of Sephus Purcell in “Matewan”, before factually outing another WUWT header.
[Sometimes you need to tell a little lie to get out the real truth].
Mr. bob: We are all shocked, SHOCKED, that you find lies to be the ultimate source of truth. Thanks for the confession. And for reminding Mr. Stokes that reading the article before commenting is not moronic.
Nick, my boy, you missed the point. Yes, it is an avoidably poorly edited articled, so it is possible to make it through and miss the data… That admitted: It is not about absolute numbers gaining on previous years, though that is always nice to see from the manufacturers’ perspective. Rather, the point is a relative one — relative to forecast, relative to ROI, relative to viability.
Makers are burning through cash to sustain a really bad idea, one that is net negative financially for owners and producers, negative for the so-called carbon targets, and propped up only by idiotic and undemocratic subsidies (transfers of wealth from the have-nots to the have-plenties). Losing billions, from the perspective of a dapper, clever fellow like yourself, might be nothing; but it doesn’t speak well for the industry.
Sales may go up significantly this year owing to massively discounted liquidation, but that isn’t the datum that matters.
Rather lots of gaslighting on your part. Did you not see the references? Of course you didn’t.
I think you are right, Nick, 2023 was another good year for EVs. But it appears that the rapid growth needed to hit Biden zero emissions targets has come to an end. Starting toward the end of 2023 inventories started to build, used EV prices began to plummet, and news about EV failures in a January cold snap hit the media. The result is likely to be reduced growth rates for EV sales.
It isn’t that EVs will suddenly go away, they are just not going to be able to continue the increased rate of sales that they previously enjoyed. And that means mandated sales targets will be missed. When the sales targets are missed, and manufacturers are penalized (one way or the other), the manufacturers will pass that penalty on to the only people they are selling lots of cars to – people like me, who still want to buy ICEs or hybrids, not EVs. That seems unfair.
The post says EV sales are beginning to hit a speed bump. You’re just spinning the trend by increasing the date range.
Yes, EV sales for 2023 were up as compared to the previous years. Nobody disputes that. Yes, the sales peaked and are now in a downward trend. This is also true.
The headline says “sales hit a speed bump”
I don’t see how 4th quarter sales figures from 2023, counter the claim that current sales are hitting a “speed bump”.
Oh, you got me there!
But wait, you didn’t refute the argument, just corrected my paraphrase.
These technical terms regarding marketing and sales, such as speed-bump, are hard to keep up with. In 2024, Websters is going to add “spike strip” to the dictionary — as in, EV sales hit a spike strip.
The article talks about current and future sales.
Nick brings up past sales.
Yet another example of Nick trying to obfuscate and change the subject.
Us BEV sales up about 50% in 2023
Up about 40% in 4Q 2023 which I suppose could be called bad news
January 2024 may be worse because dealer inventories have been too high since November 2023.
Tesla does not have dealer inventories. So far their factory inventories have been steady and normal at about 55 days of sales.
EVs are running out of suckers who want to pay more and get less.
You say, “Still going up and up.” Up, maybe. Not up and up.
Despite trillions flushed into U.S. economy in the last few years and all the bombast and perverse incentives of the administration, their sales are topping out. Clearly this is because common ordinary people don’t want one of these turkeys penned up in their garage so they can take it out and show it off once in a while. As the article says, most “elites” are “highly educated”. The truth will dawn on people that fully electronic cars aren’t worth it and never will be, even as a virtue trumpet. Stein’s argument wins. “We’re running out of elites.” Just not soon enough.
Hybrids are a different kettle of fish imo.
There are many professional arm wavers here.
Just like leftists excited about the imaginary coming climate crisis.
“”The profiles of common folks for potential EV ownership are vastly different from those of current elite EV owners.””
Companies and fleets have the dosh….
“”Three out of every four new electric vehicles registered to fleets””
https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/three-out-of-every-four-new-electric-vehicles-registered-to-fleets
Many people live in apartment buildings, tower blocks etc and they have no hope of “home charging”, unless they run lengthy cables out of the windows and down to the car park below… In days of yore employees could take their vehicles home and refuel as required, now they have to be able to charge them up at home.
Think about it, most working class white van men with nowhere to plug in.
You might as well tie one hand behind your back.
“Many people live in apartment buildings, tower blocks etc and they have no hope of “home charging”, unless they run lengthy cables out of the windows and down to the car park below…”
__________________________________________________________________
These days, anybody putting up a new apartment building or condos is going to consider accommodations for electric cars. It just makes sense.
If you have a designated parking spot where you live, I expect you can get it wired up to charge your car.
Yes if you have to park on the street then you probably are out of luck.
“Many people having no hope of home charging” needs to be defined.
These days, anybody putting up a new apartment building or condos is going to consider accommodations for electric cars. It just makes sense.
They won’t simply because of the fire risk. Besides the UK has very limited space with which to work. The US it is not.
Yep, home recharging of battery vehicles is definitely not without fire risk
Many such apartment buildings and condos have parking “garages” that are positioned UNDERNEATH said apartments or condos. Providing EV charging in such parking garages will inevitably lead to EV fires that will structurally damage said apartment or condo buildings, resulting in not just EV charging but EV parking bans, already happening in Germany.
If I was considering living in such apartments or condos, I’d be petitioning for such bans from day 1.
Parking and charging EVs underneath any kind of structure is stupidity in action.
Not to worry, when fire insurance no longer covers EV fires it will be the final nail.
TFN…any comment???
Our strata corporation currently has lawyers working on By-laws amendments to circumvent any “as of right” moves by owners or tenants to set up on-property EV charging.
And also requiring liability acceptance and insurance coverage for any fires attributable to an EV parked anywhere on the property.
In my city (in the US) apartment buildings are being tossed up willy-nilly. I see no signs they are being outfitted with charging, although some condo with garages could conceal that infrastructure. But buildings with 10+ stories only have limited parking and that costs extra each month. No charging there, and since you don’t own the parking space, unlike a condo, there is no incentive to add it.
There is in fact no hope of getting parking spots for apartment dwellers “wired up”. There is also no hope that if by some miracle some spots are wired up, that you will be able to charge your vehicle. In most neighborhoods, gangs of thieves will steal your cable.
All of this speculation about ‘chargers’ here or there, is not broaching the question of just “from who, and from where” is the additional electricity coming from (particularly in parts of the Country(ies) that are already suffering ‘brownouts & rationing’.
The apartment buildings each would require an additional massive electrical substation in order to feed the hundreds of chargers in the parking area. Particularly if they are all 40 Kw units.
I help build apartments and parking structures. The proportion of dedicated charging spaces is generally small, and usually largely unoccupied. I also noticed that Tesla uses conventional ICE vehicles for their service fleet.
That is in SLC, Utah. I don’t know anyone who drives one of the things.
Tesla uses conventional ICE vehicles for their service fleet.
If THAT doesn’t alert folks, it will take an atom bomb to do so.
They know you can’t tow a Tesla with a Tesla and hope for any distance. ICE still rules the road
Perhaps Nick Stokes could comment on the fact that Tesla itself has so little faith in EV’s that it uses ICE vans as service vehicles.
Fact? Source?
https://insideevs.com/news/604067/tesla-energy-fleet-transitioning-to-model-y/
You’re welcome.
“If you have a designated parking spot where you live, I expect you can get it wired up to charge your car.”
How are you going to do this in an already existing apartment building? How many landlords are going to pay to dig up everything to bury an electric line all the way to your parking spot? How many landlords will pay to install an electric metering system for every charging spot they put in? Will they provide for credit cards to be used?
It can be done but at great cost as (1) the buildings supply transformer won’t have the capacity, (2) power supply will need to be separately metered for back charging cost, and (3) parking is generally what they call ‘community space’ and you are licensed to use a particular bay under strict regulation.
Within 10 miles of where I live, there have been 4 apartment complexes built in the last 5 years. One of them has two charging stations in front of the leasing office. The rest have none.
Once again, what you want to be true, isn’t.
Steve, thank you for establishing your level of ignorance related to the provision and economics of electric services in multi-unit housing. “Build it and they will come” is not a viable planning assumption given the massive amounts of electrical infrastructure involved. Show me a business case … and include fire hazards analyses.
It isn’t just the infrastructure of the property, it is also the capacity of the local sub-grid.
In Australia, bureaucrat planners (through academic planner influences on development policy) have reduced carparking ratios in every class of building so you’re lucky to get 1 car per apartment and in some buildings, you don’t even get a car parking space.
Notwithstanding, there are serious issues in body corporate ‘land’ regarding bringing EVs into basement carparking due to the fire hazard. This extends to battery scooters as well being taken into apartments.
Older buildings have problems with suspended slab structural design as the floor loading for EVs are substantially higher than for ICE vehicles.
These days, anybody putting up a new apartment building or condos is going to consider accommodations for electric cars. It just makes sense.
I evaluate apartments before they are built. I’ve only seen one complex so far that has EV charging stations. That’s not one per space, but a few for the comlex. No one is going to pay to put in more than a few charging stations until EVs are common. Margins are too thin in multifamily construction.
In Australia, EVs as company / fleet rentals are sans tax other than GST. That is a huge discount to fleet owners who don’t care how long your car lasts.
The Supreme Soviet Decrees:
More than 20% of each manufacturer’s new cars sold in 2024 must be zero-emission or they will potentially face fines of £15,000 per vehicle
Under current plans, the proportion of EVs must be at least 22% in 2024, rising to 80% by 2030, and 100% by 2035, when sales of hybrid cars will also be prohibited.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/sep/21/carmakers-uk-sell-electric-vehicles-fines
The Supreme Soviet hopes it will be more successful than its heat pump mandate….
“UK government is poised to scrap the so-called “boiler tax” after manufacturers hiked the price of new gas boilers to cover the fines they have to pay if new targets to fit eco-friendly heat pumps in homes are missed.”
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/feb/04/uk-scraps-boiler-tax-after-makers-raise-prices-to-cover-any-fines
But it’s not a mandate!
A “suggestion”, or else!
A plan. A fabulous, victorious five year PLAN.
The battery pack is a complex electrochemical system made from hundreds or thousands of parts, including sensors, safety systems, cooling or heating systems, and a boatload of power electronics.
…and it’s all so sustainable and readily recyclable-
FINALLY! 4680 Battery Pack Lid off | Tesla Model Y Update (youtube.com)
4680 Battery Pack: What We Found Under the Foam! (youtube.com)
Meanwhile Toyota San is laughing all the way to the bank-
Toyota’s global output rises by 7% in January (msn.com)
Many manufacturers have deliberately gone for battery packs that can be easily swapped out (relatively speaking) to ease maintenance and repair. Tesla has gone in the opposite direction with its Model Y – the battery packs are structural, meaning that the whole car has to be replaced if the battery fails. It’s a built-in redundancy, the lifetime of the car IS the lifetime of the battery.
Soooo.. in order to extract the cells for recycling, they blast away the foam with dry ice. Anyone see a problem with this?
Not really. That battery is going into a crusher next then they’ll use a recycling process (probably sulphuric acid or similar) to recover some of the minerals. The dry ice is the least of it!
Actually in the video, they say recycling will be done by immersing the whole thing in liquid nitrogen and then grinding it up and separating elements by floating. Does not sound like an economically viable process.
None of the recycling processes for renewables are economically viable; expensive processes to recover a very small % of the minerals – most of it is disposed of as waste.
Electricity CANNOT exist without crude oil!
Without CO2 there would be no life and electricity.
Can’t build an EV without fossil fuels.
I have noticed a number of headlines against EVs.
Here are a couple of the latest:
After 16 Years, Apple Abandons Work On Electric Car
Mercedes Pushes Back on Going All-Electric After Cold Hard Truth Kneecaps Plan
Of course our semi literate politicians who only seem to be able to read and respond with tweets will not read and apply their minds to these reports.
“Ferrari foolishly resists EVs, calls ICE ‘an essential part of the company’s heritage’
Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna recently told the BBC that the company would be “arrogant” to dictate what customers can buy despite calls for sustainable transportation. Vigna added that Ferrari would continue to resist EVs and instead build ICE cars, building on “an essential part of the company’s heritage.”
https://electrek.co/2023/05/15/ferrari-resists-evs-as-part-of-companys-heritage/
It’s too bad that none of the major automakers (with exception of Toyota) has had the nads to do this!
Judging from the billions of dollars in losses, too bad for their bottom lines and their investors most of all.
I couldn’t imagine a Ferrari without a throaty engine noise. What’s the point of it?
Mr. Michael: Why are you dwelling on current headlines, when Mr. stokes can show you last year’s sales are up?
Mr. Stokes may have read the article this time!
“The average debt in America is almost $60,000 across credit cards, mortgages, auto loans, and student loans.”
Mortgages, and to a lesser extent auto loans, have genuine collateral behind them, unlike credit card and student loan debts. Lumping them together is not illuminating, IMHO.
Idiot Biden is wiping out student debt
Bribe’em is buying votes
And he is not yet qualified to be an idiot. Maybe an assistant idiot.
Then, I NEVER want to meet “an idiot”. (please, no comments about mirrors)
Even though the supreme court has already told him he doesn’t have the authority to do this.
The courts will stop him yet again; its that damned Constitutional thing.
In violation of the Supreme Court’s clear decision. As was already obvious, Biden is a traitor and should be impeached – and that’s not even getting into the massive corruption, obstruction of justice, weaponization of the federal government against his political enemies, etc. etc. etc.
If you Google, “Hybrid car fire statistics” This comes up:
“A recent study by US insurer, AutoinsuranceEZ found that hybrid cars had the worst fire record, while EVs were the least likely type of car to catch fire. Hybrid cars had 3474.5 fires per 100,000 sale; petrol cars had 1,529.9 fires per 100,000 sales and EVs had just 25.1 fires per 100,000“
If 3.5% of hybrid electrics are catching fire, I’d think there would be a giant recall, and we would all know about it.
If you follow that link you will find two very different answers regarding fires in all gas cars, hybrids and all electric cars.
What they are also not telling you is that EV’s are being written off, at an ever increasing rate, after relatively minor accidents because the batteries cannot be accurately tested for fire-causing damage. This has a knock-on effect of keeping EV fires to a low level at the expense of full replacement. The batteries, certainly all in the UK and most in the USA, are not being recycled but stored in steel containers whilst the rest of the car is partly recycled. Even when the batteries are being recycled (such as in some US plants) the intake is high compared to a very low level of outgoing product whilst the cost is astronomical – most of the ev battery volume is waste with a low recyclable %. The idea that EV’s are sustainable and infinitely recyclable is a con, easily refuted, they are far less sustainable than ICE cars.
An EV fire is a major inferno, and take many hours to extinguish, other fires are very minor in comparison
It’s why they sell expanding foam to fill gaps at the hardware store and not plastic explosive.
Yes. Statistically speaking, the average person is far, far more likely to be bitten by a housecat than by a tiger, leopard or other large wild cat. But of course, dealing with an aggressive housecat vs dealing with tiger or lion doesn’t even compare. A BEV fire is like the tiger, while the ICE is like the housecat.
This is why many countries, states and municipalities ban the keeping of large wild predators by private citizens because they are so dangerous.
But yet those same private citizens can keep a vehicle that, while less likely to combust, when it does it burns like a chemically fueled rocket!
That said, I think that probably in some places there might be future bans on parking and storing EVs (and possibly hybrids) in garages and other locations. EVs will always be niche vehicles, but there are still enough of them out there to worry about.
And speaking of EVs and fires, I am looking to the day when I hear or read in the news that a huge wildfire in California was started by a combusting EV…..With that kind of market penetration, it’s bound to happen soon.
Those fire numbers are extremely hard to believe. My BS detector overloaded.
Greene tries hard to hijack yet another comment section…
I provided a lot of useful information, none of which you made any attempt to refute. Meanwhile, you added nothing of value. Who is the loser? You.
I’m really hurt by your insult, did it make you feel good?
I wrote that you add nothing of value to tis this thread. You just proved my point.
I think ‘k’ did, in fact, add something of value to the thread. “feelings” are what are used when Critical Thinking and Logic are abandoned (not pointing any fingers here)
The AutoInsuranceEZ fire numbers are Total BS off by a factor of 60. I read this analysis in Summer 2002 and just remembered where it was:
No, Millions of Cars Are Not Catching Fire Every Year (caranddriver.com)
2002?
2022
Those AutoinsuranceEZ numbers don’t seem to pass the sniff test. In a city of a million people with say 100,000 cars, there would be a petrol car on fire every day. I watch the traffic news….doesn’t seem to hold up rush hour very often….
Not all at once, or even in a year – that’s over the service lifetime of the vehicle. For an ICE car that might be 20-30 years.
From 0.04% to 0.06% of all 300,000,000 US vehicles catch fire every year
All vehicles are only about 1% BEVs with no gasoline
AutoinsuranceEZ claimed
1,529.9 fires
per 100,000 ICE sales
which seems to say
1.53% will have fires.
1.53% of US ICE automobiles
do not have fires
The average age of a US auto is 12.5 years.
Note that based on the 1975 to 1993 Polk data, 7.9 percent of passenger cars are still on the road after 20 years and 12.1 percent of light trucks are still on the road after 25 years.
If as you say, the average life of a US car is 12.5 years (seems legit from other sources), then the figure is slightly too high – maybe around 0.8%. Although the same sources mention that more US ‘light vehicles’ are still going after 20 years and the average age of an EV ‘light vehicle’ is 3.6 years. I suspect some massaging of the data has occurred somewhere in the EV’s favour.
I think you’ll find a lot of ICE fires are the result of vandalism or insurance fraud.
I have driven hundreds of thousands of miles in the past 40 years, and I can’t remember the last time I saw a vehicle on fire.
I’ve seen exactly one several years ago, it was along a rural county road and the car was a heap on its last legs. Don’t know how it caught fire, but the VFD had it out in about 2 minutes.
So, what’s the market (if there is one) for a “preowned” used EV?
Practically non-existent. Many EV’s are written off after relatively minor accidents as the battery packs cannot be accurately tested for damage – write-off’s cannot be insured for road use so are out of the market. 3-5 year ex rental’s are being offered at about 2/3rds of the price they were at in 2022 and still aren’t selling in any numbers and older EV’s just aren’t selling at any price, especially if they’re older than 8 years – the replacement battery cost is prohibitive. The only good news is that EV’s have a fairly constant scrap value, if somewhat low compared to new vehicles (think hundreds, not thousands), and are being scrapped in increasing numbers.
As far as insurance write-off’s are concerned, there are very few figures released for ev’s, although a leading UK car recycling company has stated that over the last 12 months (up to March 2023) they’ve seen numbers grow from about a dozen in 3 days to over 20 per day.
What people are starting to realize is that although a 3 year old ex lease EV can be had for a bargain price, after they have owned it for 2 or 3 years the batteries are going to be further depleted, so virtually worthless to a third owner when they want to replace it. Would you buy a 6 year old EV when it is likely the battery is operating at maybe 50% of it’s performance when new?
A six year old EV will have a range down by about 10%, not the 50% total BS you claim.
The range reductions start at about 2% a year and decline as the EV ages to an average of about 1% a year in the long run. So the range might be down 20% after 20 years which does not make the EV worthless
A six year old EV will have a range down by about 10%
I’m curious how much range a ICE loses in 6 years.
Interestingly enough there was a UK Top Gear episode where they looked at older ICE cars and worked out how much hp the engine had lost over about 15-25 years. Over 6 years, with proper maintenance, very little – the wear and tear builds up and the loss gets worse after some years, the opposite to batteries where there is an almost immediate loss then a gradual decline over time.
No one (recently) has mentioned how frequently tires have to be replaced on EVs compared to ICEs. The weight differences must be astronomic.
Curious.. Are these figures from the “literature”, or from real-life-over-time analysis?
There are many EV battery life tests available online and I have heard from Ford EV engineers to verify the clams are correct.\
EV manufacturers do not talk about EV battery deterioration. They may offer an 8 year 100000 mile EV battery warranty but that only means they believe that won’t cost them much, but will help sell EVs.
If EV batterie only lasted an average of eight years, as some fool here writes, then an eight year warranty could send Tesla into bankruptcy.
If battery life was really eight years with a normal distribution of data, half the batteries would fail and need replacement under warranty.
Tesla further protects themselves by declaring batter failure warranty costs only apply to batteries holding less than 70% of the original charge when fully charged
FYI, Chevrolet reserves the right to install less than factory new quality batteries in Bolt’s to get you over the 8 year/100K mile finish line.
All told, with comparable vehicle ICE maintenance and the upcoming increase in gas prices with Permian reserves apogeeing, still a better value for a 2nd car…
Tesla do not insure their battery packs or drive trains for more than 3 years, as I’ve told you before. The 8 year extended warranty that Tesla offer does not cover the battery pack or drive train. Go and look it up, Richard, and stop being such a fool.
A lot will depend on what sort of life the battery has had. How many total cycles, how many fast charges, operating conditions etc. I doubt many will make it to 20 years. Maybe you shouldn’t have so much faith in the sales blurb.
Stein is a mediocre writer who gets many points wrong and includes very little supporting data considering he claims to be an engineer
Stein claims elites buy EVs
That obscures the fact that the average US EV sold, including the tax credit, is cheaper than the average ICE sold. (A typical EV is a compact car while a typical ICE is a pickup truck or mid-sized SUV. The size difference and the tax credit explain why the average EV is cheaper).
Stein claims there are not enough elites to buy EVs.
Roughly half of US households can afford an EV including the tax credit.
Stein claims leasing is the only way to capture the federal $7,500 tax credit for most EVs.
That claim needs explaining
Under the Inflation Reduction Act leased electric vehicles are classified as “commercial vehicles,” making them eligible for the full federal clean vehicle credit without meeting strict battery and sourcing requirements.
That is a loophole for leased foreign made EVs. The dealer receives the EV tax credit (not you). So, any savings you receive would be in the form of a rebate or reduced lease price. Some dealers may not pass on all, or any, of the credit savings.
If an EV buyer can afford an EV but can not use the tax credit, he would want to lease his EV from a dealer who passes on all of his EV tax credit as a lower lease price. This is all needlessly complicated.
The most important news about US BEV new vehicle registrations in 2023 was about a +50% increase versus 2022 despite a huge list of disadvantages versus ICEs and hybrids. Not mentioned here.
The second most important news may be a January 2024 EV sales slowdown in the US, UK, Germany and probably Australia too.
There may be two reasons: EVs cost more for the same size vehicle and deliver a lot less. That was not very obvious from the pro-EV biased mass media articles until the cold weather charging problems for Teslas in Chicago made headlines this winter.
And the high EV prices are more than almost 50% of US households can afford. One reason is 40% of US households owe no federal income taxes so have no need for a tax credit.
The Ford Mustang EV looks nothing like an ICE Mustang. As a former Ford product development employee (27 years) I had many Mustang GTs as my company cars. The EV “Mustang” is a very expensive generic styling dorkmobile that no US muscle car owner from the past would want.
Ford total EV sales up 30% in 2023 (year over year)
Mustang EV sales up only 3% in 2023
Mustang EV December 2023 sales up only 2%
Mustang EV January 2024 sales DOWN 50%
That was important news!
Mustang price cuts announced February 20
Whether the Mustang EV price reductions will reduce losses, or increase fully accounted losses depend on the effect on sales. Ford must believe the lower prices will increase Mustang sales a lot and reduce losses, or why would they reduce prices?
A large portion of Ford EVs losses are from up front engineering and factory construction that is expected to be financed by later sales of EVs.
So far Ford EV sales are not keeping up with the industry average (30% growth in 2023 versus 50% growth for all US BEVs sales, which are mainly Teslas).
The last engineer I knew at Ford retired at the end of 2022. He was an electrical engineer working on an EV program for 2026 model.
He reported that fellow EV engineers thought EVs were worth $10,000 less than ICEs, but Ford was intending to sell them for $10,000 more. A very foolish business plan.
Some engineers speculated that in five years Ford would become Federal Motors and GM would become Government Motors.
Haning pessimistic Ford EV engineers in 2022 was very unusual: In my 27 years at Ford, ICE engineers were always overoptimistic about the products they were designing. Even the mediocre products. We used to joke that Ford’s Edsel engineers were probably very optimistic about the Edsel too.
EV sales so far have been surprising to conservatives because we have been reading negative EV articles for years. While the mainstream media has been EV cheerleaders.
The basic EV business plan is destined to fail: Compared with ICE and hybrid vehicles, you pay more for a similar sized EV and get less, even if you can use the $7500 tax credit.
I can’t speake for woke central, but EVs in the U.K. require a large income. Very large.
A US Tesla 3 is $39,000 and that is $31,500 after taking a $7500 tax credit
The average US auto sells for
almost $49.000
But a model 3 isn’t really comparable to the entire “average us auto”. The comps for a model 3 are cars like the Corolla. The class of vehicle comparison is more like 25k for an ICE vs a model 3 which starts at 40k with no options, low range model. More like 45-48k in reality.
Mr. 117: I don’t recognize your name, so you may be unfamiliar with our Mr. Greene. Notice above, sturmudgeon asks for the source of his numbers, and mr. Greene circles back to no source at all. A word of advice- throwing facts at Mr. Greene helps us see the light, but they bounce off Mr. Greene, and bounce really hard, so there’s a risk of it hitting someone. Facts won’t be absorbed.
The average price for a US EV in 2022 was just short of $70,000 and in 2023 that had gone down to $53,396. That’s the average, just to be clear, but it does indicate that the more expensive end of the EV market was selling up to 2022 though that is likely dropping off. The figures would seem to support his statement that elites are buying EV’s and the US is running out of elites. Unless you plan on telling me that an average US household can afford $53,000 on a second car?
The average US auto price is $49000
$53,000 is not that much higher
That is the average cost of an EV, which is not what I asked. Given an average US family income and expenditure, could they afford to spend $53,000 on a second family car? I suspect not – I strongly suspect that above-average families (highly above average income most likely) are the ones buying the more expensive EV’s which is skewing the average upwards. The fact that, since 2022, the average amount spent on an EV has fallen by over $16,000 probably means that there are far fewer higher-income families buying those high-end EV’s.
Guilty just like Mr. Stein.
As far as the number one? producers of EVs, isn’t Tesla massively “discounting” their cars?
Apparently BYD is sending a boat load of cheap EVs to “stimulate” the USA market. I’d not take one if it was even cheaper than free, given their record in other countries. Wonder if they’ve decided where to put the EV garden for this lot?
If they’re on a boat, will they even reach the US market?
When this EV thing started up I just knew it would hit a peak and then start a decline, it is unsustainable, and there is too much against it for it to continue. Like so many things.
Latest news on EVs:
Apple has cancelled their electric vehicle after a decade of development.
Rivian lost $5.43B last year
Ford lost $4.7B last year on EVs
GM lost $2.5B last year on EVs
Polestar lost $155M last year
Toyotas chairman stated that EVs may only reach 30% of market and has cut their EV projections 40% and is pursuing hybrids instead.
Hertz stated 3 years ago that they were going to buy 175k GM EVs, 65K Polestars, 100K Teslas – that plan was so poor that the executives that made that decision at Hertz don’t work there anymore.Q4 was a $382M loss due to EVs.
Lucid lost $2.72B last year
Nikola lost $153M last year
Fisker lost $91M last year
Mercedes was to be all electric by 2030, now only half will be EVs
Honda and GM stopped their $5B joint venture to make a affordable EV.
VW has cut their EV production due to lack of demand.
Why would anyone invest in these companies that make EVs?
Tesla is making money, as is BYD in China
Tesla is losing money as well, just at a lower rate than most other producers. 2022/3 saw them slash the prices on new cars by up to $15,000 because they’d overproduced in 2021 and had cars piling up that weren’t selling.
“Tesla is losing money as well”
Total BS
Are you detached from reality?
TESLA WAS THE SECOND MOST PROFITABLE AUTO COMPANY IN THE WORLD IN 2022 BASED ON NET PROFIT MARGIN
The Tesla net profit margin for 2023 was 15.5% which still may be the second highest in the industry
Data Source:
Tesla Net Profit Margin 2010-2023 | TSLA | MacroTrends
Yes Richard, the company as a whole turned a profit but they lost money on the car sales. Some sources have stated that Bitcoin and credit sales are keeping the profits up but the Tesla figures are so convoluted that it’s difficult to separate out regional and sector profits.
More BS
Tesla is making most of their profits from car sales
In 2023, Tesla generated $96.77 Billion in revenues. Tesla’s business model primarily relies on automotive sales, $78.5 billion (over 81% of the total revenues); services/others followed with over $8 billion; energy generation and storage generated over $6 billion in revenues
A very large proportion of Tesla’s profits were from carbon credits, i.e. a state subsidy stolen from the taxpayer.
https://carboncredits.com/teslas-record-carbon-credit-sales-up-94-year-over-year/
I listed 13 companies that are losing money and/or changing their EV strategy.
You listed 2 – like finding corn in a turd and thinking they are gems.
2024 and beyond will be interesting – Germany has a 14% drop in EV sales as the incentives have ended.
There is no way that 50% of vehicles will be EVs by 2030.
Fascism and subsidies could get to the US to 50% EV sales by 2030. Also laws that forbid repairs on ICE vehicles older than 15 years and higher taxes on gasoline. None of this is good news
I’m not sure why you have down votes – those are actions under consideration from the politicians, which will be the reason that they won’t happen. They could write and approve an act that makes gravity illegal, but that law won’t change a thing.
People vote and the green stupidity has a shelf life that is soon expiring.
Good grief. What a waste of money and opportunity.
But they can make up their losses with volume!
Yes there’s nothing like a dragooned volume of suckers for a hefty legup-
Tesla Hits Record High Sales from Carbon Credits at $1.79B
I will likely never buy a pure EV. Hybrids have some technical appeal, but if I need to tow a trailer or haul a serious load, I’ll use a reliable ICE powered truck.
Agreed I will never buy a hybrid or an EV. I keep my vehicle purchases under $5000 and preferably half of that. I usually get 6 or 7 years out of each one. I have done that since I first started driving 50 years ago. In my life I have not spent $30,000 on vehicles mostly because I do my own repairs. The only car I have spent money on is my 1953 Ford Customline that I restored as my retirement vehicle. I just replaced my $200 1992 F150 farm truck with a 2011 GMC Sierra WT. Never been a fan of V6’s but the one in this truck sounds and pulls like an inline 6 and is earning much respect on my part.
Good for you Matthew, but you are an outlier.
Most folks enjoy other pursuits. After a few repairs
I moved working on cars to last place in a list of 100.
I don’t do a lot of work on these vehicles. I don’t buy them because they are pretty just mechanically sound. I don’t mind dents and scratches they deter the thieves. I find the repairs uncomplicated and relaxing after 40 years of diagnosing and repairing very complicated ever changing process machinery, PLC control and power systems that quit running for whatever reason, under the gun to get them back on line as fast as possible.
You can thank Bidenflation, in part, for the decrease in EV purchases. General anxiety about the poor Biden economy is also cutting into major purchases.
This is a great and very readable summary of the issues. The most positive idea I see in this is that we are running out of elites who think that buying and EV is a virtuous and smart decision. The fewer the better.
It’s becoming clear that the road to hell is paved, not with good intentions, but with unsold EV’s.
I do not hate the electric car per se. I hate the forcing going on all around it, the assault on freedom and free markets, economic damage done, the manipulation of the masses, … and a lot of other things.
I do not hate those who ignore these things only to root for EVs as “progress”, but they are, never the less, the deluded means of all the related wrongs.
From the above article:
“The average debt in America is almost $60,000 across credit cards, mortgages, auto loans, and student loans.”
Actually, according to http://www.usdebtclock.org/index.html , the average debt per US citizen is a bit more than $75,000. Zowie!
Average net worth per household is about $1 million
Median net worth is about $200,000
Admittedly, a rather high-end and expensive EV but…
Drivers don’t want electric cars, Aston Martin admits (paywalled)
Even CNN is noticing…
How EVs became such a massive disappointment
Maybe not just the common folk who are not keen.
”Aston Martin has delayed the launch of its first electric car as the luxury marque’s Chairman admitted that drivers still want “the sports car smell, feel and noise” of a petrol engine.”
“Mercedes has also insisted it will keep making internal combustion engine cars “well into [the] next decade” amid slow consumer uptake.”
Link. https://dailysceptic.org/2024/02/28/drivers-dont-want-electric-cars-aston-martin-admits/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chyGAlFTxVo
This link takes you to a YouTube video by a couple that lives off-grid in Northern Idaho. They have a massive solar panel installation but the system doesn’t meet the household load during December and January. So this guy bought a F150 Lightning for $49,900. He determined that he can power his entire house from the truck for 5 days. He then goes to town and fast charges the truck in 2 hours (while he eats lunch). A fascinating video – a discounted truck be used to power his house. If you are interested check it out.
Just buying a large battery pack and a generator would be smarter.
Then he wouldn’t have the time and expense of going to town and eating a crummy lunch.
The goal is not to get everyone into an EV, but to get everyone out of an ICE vehicle.
Correction: The goal is not to get everyone into an EV, but to get everyone out of personal transport.
The ebbing EV market is great news for taxpayers who are tired of paying for EVs for people who have made an existential decision in response to a non-problem, often with money to burn.
Let’s keep the car market free of tax subsidy and let the market decide.
Very nice Ron.
Ron has highlighted my concerns.
Number one if we educate the common guy this nonsense will go away. The common guy is capable of taking a lot of abuse but he has limits. I believe we have already reached his limit, all we have to do is show him how bad he is being screwed.
Number two government is the problem not the solution. Without government interference there would be zero EV market, without government interference there would be zero wind and solar infrastructure and demand, without government interference we would be building clean, safe and reliable fossil fuel and nuclear generation.
This is not rocket science!
Ron,
The speed hump is a useful device to illustrate this topic.
Speed humps cause actual harm. Many people like me have medical conditions that really hurt when the car crosses the typical speed hump. There are reports of emergency service vehicles taking longer routes to avoid speed humps (both harm to the patient and slower speed). Speed humps will damage vehicles more than the original road would have.
The speed hump has become an engineering article of faith. Just sprinkle them everywhere – they will reduce the accident rate, as a routine matter (but few reports have investigated cost/benefit, so benefit is simply assumed).
You can see parallels with the global warming matter-of-faith juggernaut. Assume there are benefits from CO2 production, silence disagreement, pay subsidies for “approved solutions” like electric vehicles, whether regressive or not.
To my knowledge, there is no social enablement that allows people installing speed humps to proceed, knowing that this will hurt/harm many innocent people.
The metaphor extends to climate change generally. Many “solutions” will harm/hurt innocent people. Does the law allow that to happen?
As many others have noted, government edicts are now becoming more command and control, less expression of the will of the people. Lawyers reading this, is it illegal for people putting in speed humps to proceed, knowing that this will hurt innocent people? Can one buy a license to hurt?
Geoff S