“EV’s – Electric Vehicles”

“RECENTLY I received this leaflet from West Sussex county council about a proposal to install six charging points for electric vehicles (EVs) in the road where I live, and inviting my comments. This is what I replied.”

1. Most EV drivers will have a home charger and perhaps two. So having another point near to home is far less important than having one within around 50 miles or so away. The place for them would be in car parks, so that visitors who have travelled a few miles, can get home. They will have to hope that National Grid (NG) has not drained their battery of energy while they were parked. What agreement will you have with NG to allow them to use EV batteries to support the grid in emergency?

We may soon regret the radical and absolutist embrace of electric vehicles (EVs). Governments across the world are planning to ban sales of new petrol and diesel cars, and to take older, gas-guzzling vehicles off the road. The Biden administration is proposing strict new pollution limits, as well as vast state subsidies, to accelerate the United States’ transition to EVs.

The Army is trialling battery-powered mountain bikes that enables soldiers to approach the enemy in silence.

As part of a more agile army, soldiers have been experimenting with operating shoulder-fired rocket launchers such as the Carl-Gustav from Stealth H-52 electric bike.

Lithium bike batteries have proven lethal in civilian use. Soldiers could toss the bikes at the enemy and watch them fry!

… Thomas Peckruhn, vice-president of the Central Association of German Vehicle Dealers, said a relatively healthy number of new registrations was belied by a darker picture emerging from order books. “New orders for electric cars are down by 30 per cent to 50 per cent on where they were a year ago,” Peckruhn told Handelsblatt.

The VW brand, part of the Volkswagen group, acknowledged yesterday that it was “experiencing a general reluctance to purchase electric cars, like other manufacturers are”.

Thousands of EV’s rotting in fields in China

China is the leader in EV car production but it’s not quite the success you might think it is.

h/t Mauser

A dozen U.S. states, from California to New York, have joined dozens of countries, from Ireland to Spain, with plans to ban the sale of new cars with an internal combustion engine (ICE), many prohibitions taking effect within a decade. Meanwhile, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in a feat of regulatory legerdemain, has proposed tailpipe emissions rules that would effectively force automakers to shift to producing mainly electric vehicles (EVs) by 2032.

This is all to ensure that so-called zero-emission EVs play a central role in radically cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. To ensure compliance with ICE prohibitions and soften the economic impacts, policymakers are deploying lavish subsidies for manufacturers and consumers. Enthusiasts claim that EVs already have achieved economic and operational parity, if not superiority, with automobiles and trucks fueled by petroleum, so the bans and subsidies merely accelerate what they believe is an inevitable transition.

Long report here’s a summary below and a link to the pdf – Electric vehicles the Impossible Dream

Electric Vehicles: Mills Bomb Thrown

The Mills bomb is (was?) the popular name for the pineapple-style British hand grenade that made its debut during the First World War. It came to mind after I was a few pages into Mark Mills’ intriguing new report for the Manhattan Institute on electric vehicles (EVs), entitled, “Electric Vehicles for Everyone? The Impossible Dream.” The report is too long to do it much justice in a brief(ish) summary. Nevertheless, I’ll touch on a few points he raises.

Interesting news on Hydrogen … Limitless ‘white’ hydrogen under our feet may soon shatter all energy assumptions

There’s a real possibility that vast reserves of this clean fuel can be extracted at competitive costs

Tesla’s futuristic Cybertruck has finally rolled off the assembly line, nearly four years after Elon Musk unveiled the vehicle to the public.

In a tweet, the company confirmed the first Cybertruck for customers has been built at its ‘Giga Texas’ manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas.

A photo showed more than 100 Telsa staff in hard hats and high-vis vests surrounding the vehicle at the 10 million square foot facility.

It turns out wages are much lower in government-subsidized electric vehicle plants than they are in traditional assembly plants.

Union leaders who are familiar with the economics of climate change and subsidized electric vehicles are suddenly reticent to endorse Joe Biden for a second term.

Why is that?

Doesn’t “Lunch Bucket Joe ” operate in the best interests of “blue collar” workers, particularly those who are part of organized labor?

Electric vehicle tires produce up to 20 percent more pollution than their gas-powered equivalents, experts have revealed, meaning EVs could be coming at a higher environmental price than many owners are aware of.

For decades, the impact of tailpipe emissions from gas-powered cars has been the primary draw of battery-powered vehicles.

But experts are warning that tires, which are often overlooked as a source of pollution, are releasing chemicals and microplastics into the environment. While switching to an electric car no doubt helps lower how much carbon you generate, it actually exacerbates the problem of tire emissions.

The left likes to treat skeptics of electrical cars as if they were Luddites. Truth is, making an existing product less efficient but more expensive doesn’t really meet the definition of innovation.

Even the purported amenities and technological advances EV makers like to brag about in their ads have been a regular feature of gas-powered vehicles going back generations. At best, EVs, if they fulfill their promise, are a lateral technology.

With the recent announcement that Stellantis and LG Energy Solution will be moving forward in building their electric vehicle (EV) battery plant in Windsor, Ont., following a financing deal with Ottawa and the Ontario government, there are now plans for two large EV battery plants to be built in the province, both of which have received significant government funding.

The federal government first announced in March that PowerCo, which is a subsidiary company of Volkswagen, would be building the European auto giant’s first overseas battery cell plant in St. Thomas, Ont., after receiving a number of subsidies from Ottawa.

Here are 10 reasons for federal and Ontario taxpayers to be concerned about the decision by the Trudeau and Ford governments to subsidize two electric vehicle battery plants for up to $30 billion over the next decade.

Even if politicians can push us all into e-vehicles, they will have to be small and scarce to achieve emissions goals.

“The Impossible Dream” is the title of a new report on electric vehicles from the Manhattan Institute’s Mark Mills. After reading the particulars one wonders whether that title is too optimistic. One issue that probably hasn’t received enough attention is that even if politicians can manage to force all of humanity out of cars with internal combustion engines, it will still be extremely hard to meet political emissions targets unless the surviving electric vehicles are small and scarce. What also may not be appreciated given all the alleged innovation surrounding EVs is that production of the minerals needed to make them may become less environmentally friendly, not more.

Big government mandates are forcing the national transition to electric vehicles. Consumer demand doesn’t appear to matter.

Government is doling out billions in special loans and subsidies to select companies and twisting tax policy to make EVs appear cheaper. At the same time, heavy-handed mandates are making traditional, reliable cars more expensive and harder to produce.