“Net-Zero Tyranny”

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.

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.

“… 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.”