“… Moreover, Ford’s decision reflects consumers’ mounting resistance to government efforts in the United States and Canada to press them into buying things they simply don’t want. Whether it’s EV sticker prices, range anxiety, the cost of maintenance, repairs and insurance, or resale concerns, car buyers are voting with their wallets with such fervour that mandates for all new-car sales to be EVs by 2035 look less and less likely to hold.”
Things are grim in the automotive industry right now.
First off, there’s a reason I didn’t put this story under my usual #Bidenomics Update, even though it has many components that are attributable to the brilliant Biden economic machinations that have brought us so many of our current difficulties. Not to mention, there are some uniquely American aspects to Stellantis’s problems. But this is also a global slowdown in manufacturing as well as a global climate cult political interference problem, and as much as I’d like, I can’t lay that all at POTATUS and Harris’s feet.
Stellantis CEO makes it clear – blame politicians for EV sales expectations.
The EVs ramp up “is not happening as quickly as the political leadership had expected. what we are seeing in the western world right now is the consumers are not supporting as much the political… pic.twitter.com/COlRepGa9C
— Dan Tsubouchi (@Energy_Tidbits) July 25, 2024
The issue is not just EV’s but quality and tanking sales across the line.
This is serious job loss territory. My guess is the Windsor Battery Plants will be “delayed.”
Company halts construction of $2.7B battery project in eastern Ontario
After breaking ground in 2023, the company building a plant to produce battery components for electric vehicles in a municipality near Kingston, Ont., says it’s delaying construction of the plant citing a slowdown in EV sales.
In a statement to CBC News, Umicore Rechargeable Battery Materials Inc. said Friday that its project in Loyalist Township is impacted by the “significant worsening of the EV market context and the impacts this has on the entire supply chain.”
The project carried a total price tag of up to $2.76 billion and was projected to create 600 jobs in the region back in 2023. According to a news release at the time from Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, the federal government was slated to invest up to $551.3 million.
Ford loses nearly $50,000 (£38,700) on every electric car it sells, results from the company show, as traditional manufacturers struggle with the switch away from petrol.
The company posted a loss of $1.1bn for its electric vehicle division, Ford E – equivalent to about $47,600 per car. It sold 23,957 electric vehicles (EVs), an increase of 61pc from a year earlier.
Canada’s electric vehicle transition is a matter of much debate, but the gears of industry and policy are already in motion to roll the vehicles out en masse.
Even if a new government were to reverse the federal mandate of all zero-emission sales for light-duty vehicles by 2035, many provinces have their own mandates in place.
Porsche has abandoned its sales targets for electric vehicles amid waning demand from customers.
The German car manufacturer previously said that EVs would account for 80pc of its new vehicle sales by 2030. But bosses have now watered down that goal, saying sales will depend on uptake and how the technology develops around the world.
It comes after a slew of rival car companies watered down plans for electric models, cast doubt on customer enthusiasm for the technology and expressed support for low-carbon alternatives to petrol known as e-fuels.
h/t DS
Where did the $590 million go?
On Thursday, automaker Ford announced it was changing its plan to build electric vehicles (EVs) at its plant in Oakville, Ontario and was instead going to spend over $2 billion converting the plant to produce heavy-duty pickups, such as the F250.
The symbolism couldn’t be more perfect.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s climate change policies could be thrown into chaos if former president Donald Trump wins the U.S. election on Nov. 5 and makes good on two things he promised in his speech to the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last week.
h/t DS
Canada’s electric-vehicle transition could cost more than $300 billion by 2040 as the installation of charging infrastructure expands, upgrades to the electrical grid are made and other changes take place, according to a report released by Natural Resources Canada.
The report, an update to a 2021 study that Natural Resources Canada also commissioned, forecasts that Canada needs to significantly accelerate the pace of installing charging infrastructure to add 40,000 public charging ports per year on average between now and 2040. That is a big increase given that there are currently around 32,000 public ports across the country, and roughly 11,000 public charging ports were installed in 2023.
The Ontario government is insisting that billions of dollars spent attracting electric vehicle manufacturers to Ontario have not been wasted after the Ford Motor Company announced it would produce a gas-powered truck at a plant originally meant for zero-emissions vehicles.
On Thursday, the American auto giant said it would produce F-Series Super Duty trucks at its Oakville Assembly Complex beginning in summer 2026, with an electric version to follow “later this decade.”
h/t DS
By election-time 2025, EV mandates in Canada, the United States, and Europe may well be gone, or at least watered down
The language of law must not be foreign to the ears of those who are to obey it
For those for whom the mere mention of anything legalese is cruel and unusual punishment, let me apologize. Profusely. Were it not for an extremely important, but much-ignored, missive from Reuters last week, I, too, would avoid all things constitutional as forcefully as warm beer and tight stockings. Delving into the language of lawyers, as it turns out, makes Bernoullian physics seem simple and straightforward in comparison.
The transition to greener, more sustainable transportation is impracticable as copper mine production cannot keep up with the rising global demand for electric vehicles, according to a new study.
“I think there’s a disconnect between, what the intentions are to meet the global warming challenges and the reality of the materials that are going to be required,” said Dr. Lawrence Cathles, an earth and atmospheric sciences professor at Cornell University.
Suffice to say, all is not well for the Electric Vehicle (EV) industry these days. Despite ample subsidies from the federal government, EV sales are slumping.
Some of the largest automakers, such as Mercedes Benz, admit they won’t come close to hitting their EV sales estimates over the next few years. And Tesla, the king of EVs, just announced its lowest quarterly profit over the past two years. After the Tesla news broke, the company’s shares cratered, leading to a $138 billion decline in value.
The federal government is going full throttle on its plan to ban new gas and diesel vehicles without any apparent concern about running into the reality of implementing electric vehicle standards.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the regulations in 2022. Unsurprisingly, the government still hasn’t provided much explanation about how people will pay for new electric cars or where they’ll get the power to charge them. And we certainly haven’t seen the full bill.
“… For a city with 120,000 homes, which today may require about 2,000 transformers, the addition of 120,000 home-charged electric vehicles means adding 1,000 transformers, about $8 million. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, because distributing 50 to 100% more household electricity requires generating 50 to 100% more electricity.
All this costs money that most Americans today do not have, especially at the generation end. Especially with the push to eliminate electric generation from coal and natural gas and even nuclear energy. It also requires massive construction of electric infrastructure, from transmission lines to transformers to in-home charging stations accompanied by larger electric fuse boxes.”
