“EV’s – Electric Vehicles”

Hertz announced to much fanfare on Oct. 25, 2021, that it planned to buy 100,000 Teslas. “Electric vehicles are now mainstream, and we’ve only just begun to see rising global demand and interest,” then-CEO Mark Fields said. The share prices of both companies popped, and Tesla’s market capitalization surged past $1 trillion, exceeding the valuations of nearly all traditional automakers combined.

C-suite executives praised the announcement. “Kudos to Mark Fields and the Hertz team for steering a great American brand into the electric and connected future,” Ford CEO Jim Farley tweeted. Hertz had emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy only a few months earlier. It was betting on electric vehicles to power its revival.

Car rental giant Hertz is selling 20,000 EVs – a third of its electric fleet – due to a lack of demand and expensive repair costs.

The proceeds from those sales will be used to reinvest in gas cars, the company said in its most recent filings.

Hertz’s electric fleet is mostly Teslas but also features Chevrolet Bolts and Polestars.

When Ben Baird purchased a fully electric truck, he expected to install the Level 2 charger it came with at his Yellowknife home.

Ford’s F150 Lightning comes with an 80 amp charger. It would have required Baird to upgrade the 100 amp panel in his home to a 200 amp panel — an expense he was prepared to pay.

But in order to provide that level of power to his home, Baird said, power distributor Northland Utilities told him he’d have to pay $12,000 to upgrade the transformer in his neighbourhood as well.

Electric buses are just like electric passenger vehicles: they’re not ready for prime time, only more so. Proterra buses are a case in point. Cities that wasted money on them found they had far less range then advertised. They commonly couldn’t complete even short, flat routes specifically designed for them. The enormous weight of their batteries cracked frames, and getting parts from the factory was virtually impossible. But to make up for their failures, they were far more expensive than reliable diesel buses. Proterra went bankrupt in August of 2023.

Sales of electric vehicles (EVs) are defying the combined urging of green lobbyists and government diktat with just a quarter making up new purchases for 2023, UK data reveals.

The consumer rejection of EVs is a challenge to the electric car market and government goals to move towards net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The expensive electric vehicle that Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm used during her ill-fated summer road trip is no longer eligible for federal tax credits thanks to a new rule that pulls subsidies for cars made with certain Chinese components.

The inevitable, planet-saving, path to universal electric vehicle (EV) ownership is becoming increasingly cratered. Some 4000 dealers recently begged President Biden to stop pushing EVs. They can’t give them away.  About half of all Ford Dealers refuse to stock them, and more than 50% of Buick dealers recently went out of business rather than sell them.  Ford has largely bet its EV future on the F-150 Lightning pickup. It’s a sucker’s bet. Ford recently announced it was cutting its EV production plans in half. Articles like Motor Trend’s “Our Last Ford F-150 Lightning EV Pickup Road Trip Was A Nightmare” explains why… 

A friend got a rental of a Tesla over the holidays. It’s undoubtedly the industry standard for EVs and a complete blast to drive. The problem: It’s not a practical car at all. He was driving in the cold, and the car was nearly drained after two hours. Searching for a charge was no easy task. The first one didn’t work. The second one stated that it would be charged in 10 hours, which he didn’t have. The third one charged in one hour but that was a full hour wasted.

His conclusion: This is indeed a glorified golf cart designed to keep you at home and under the thumb of the manufacturer. And this is just a test. The repairs are worse. Keep in mind that this is the best the industry has to offer. The other manufacturers of these things make products not nearly as highly rated, which is why so many of them are sitting on lots unsold and why orders for the machines are plummeting.

Two of Hollywood’s great sci-fi villains from the last quarter century — Agent Smith from “The Matrix” and Marvel’s Thanos — both believed that the success of their evil schemes was inevitable. “You hear that, Mr. Anderson?” Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving) asked in the first (and only) Matrix movie as he pinned his opponent in front of an oncoming subway train. “That is the sound of inevitability… It is the sound of your death… Goodbye, Mr. Anderson.”

In Canada, despite massive government subsidies of new electric vehicle purchases and EV battery plants, as well as considerable government spending on EV infrastructure, the EV market still makes up only 13.3 percent of new vehicle registrations. I write “only” 13.3 percent, but the federal government somehow managed to interpret from this statistic that in double-quick time, 100 percent of Canadians will want to drive nothing but EVs. It cited the statistic as part of its newly announced mandate that by 2035, 100 percent of new vehicle sales must be electric or plug-in hybrid. The government also announced interim targets: From 13.3 percent last quarter, EVs must account for 20 percent of the market by 2026, and at least 60 percent by 2030. Dealers who fall short of these quotas face heavy financial penalties: They must either buy EV “credits” from other automakers or pay for public EV charging stations.

In a story that seems to be becoming increasingly common as time goes on, The Western Journal reported this week about a Canadian EV owner experiencing some massive sticker shock over the cost of replacing the damaged battery in his electric vehicle.

Now, those of us who have always driven internal combustion engine (ICE) cars have at one time or another been faced with big repair bills for some of those vehicles. I can remember spending $4,000 on a new radiator for a 10-year-old Infiniti QX 50 with 220,000 miles on it that I just couldn’t bear to part with several years back. I did finally retire that wonderful vehicle when faced with the prospect of a $6,000 tag for a rebuilt transmission.