The electric car ‘revolution’ is a disaster before it’s begun
July 4, 2023
By Paul Homewood
Better late than never, I suppose Ben!
60 Comments
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“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. – J Robert Oppenheimer.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Definitely late. Everybody except most politicians and those in the MSM could see this coming years ago.
The Emperor has no clothes!
Sales in USA and China are dropping, there are only so many “new adopters” and well off, the average person is just not interested in buying something that is more expensive and inferior to his existing transport. In these circumstances people just put off changing their vehicle. Have you noticed how many electric car adverts are on TV and radio. The U-turn is in sight.
Every advert I have seen is for an EV or occasionally for a hybrid.
Car manufacturers need to have models available for the 2030 deadline. They are just about at the cutoff point now, anything starting development now will probably not be at full volume by 2030.
But ICE models will have to be replaced between now and then as they always are. VW Golf introduced 1974 currently on Mk8 so new Golf every 7 years.
What is a car manufacturer to do to stay in business for the next seven years?
They have to assume governments won’t change their minds and start replacing ICE with BEV. They have to persuade a reluctant public, so advertising has to highlight the positives, whatever they are, of the latest BEV
Reported ‘EV’ sales in China are mostly electric scooters.
The public doesn’t want them but unless some key decisions about the continuation of internal combustion engine vehicles in the UK are made very soon the choice may, by default, be electric or nothing. Car manufacturers will already have made investment decisions impacting production from 2030. They will be already winding down the models and production lines for ICE vehicles. I can’t see politicians in the UK with 2 to 3 year time horizons (at best) making what they will see as difficult decisions to change course any time soon.
There will be a massive and increasing demand for ICE vehicles as 2030 approaches. Where will they come from?
Looks like a good opportunity to import used vehicles from other countries in the same way that the eastern Europeans were buying them here and taking them home. I recall seeing a line of used cars on trailers crossing the border from Germany to Czechia.
Probably all ICE vehicles will come from China when politicians finally panic in 2029 and “postpone” the ICE ban. By then, all European car makers will have gone fully EV
The entire world except Europe.
I still find it astounding that European car makers have been and still are failing to defend what the market (i.e. their customers) actually needs and wants.
What the European car makers should have done was to close factories (or even threaten to) instead of destroying their customer base by giving in to the EV hysterics.
>>demand for ICE vehicles as 2030 approaches. Where will they come from?
There are large swathes of the world where there is no chance of EVs being taken up. Even the elites won’t want them: they want something they can trust in a power cut. So we will end up importing from Africa and South America and Asia. Model choice will not be geared to European sensibilities of course.
Governments can effectively force manufacturers under their control to stop making ICE vehicles through unreachable mileage and emissions standards and outright bans on the sale of ICE vehicles. Governments, however, cannot force people to buy EVs. Are politicians and bureaucrats stupid enough such that they will run their countries into depression-level deindustrialization?
“Are politicians and bureaucrats stupid enough such that they will run their countries into depression-level deindustrialization?”
I think you’ll find that is in fact the plan.
“At a news conference last week in Brussels, Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.
Referring to a new international treaty environmentalists hope will be adopted at the Paris climate change conference later this year, she added: “This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.”
http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/climate-change-scare-tool-to-destroy-capitalism/
Add to that the United Nations Replacement Migration Program (yes, there really is one, guess who is supposed to be going to be replaced and who by), it is very evident what is happening.
Nadine Dorries has a column in the DM today where she bemoans the EV she had (loaned, is my guess). She claims that range anxiety and lack of charging stations meant she gave it back after just 5,000 miles. Fair enough. She’s learnt the hard way. But then she goes on to say:
“I support the push to cut Britain’s carbon emissions to ‘net zero’: it’s a policy that’s creating thousands of jobs and helping the environment. Cleaner air means we, our children and grandchildren can live longer, healthier lives.”
Well, that’s one less Christmas card I’ll have to buy. ☺
“…..it’s a policy that’s creating thousands of jobs and helping the environment.”
This bilge has been repeated for years, and hundreds of thousands of jobs in Scotland.
So far, I believe there are around 2,000 ‘green’ jobs.
Yep, I saw that this morning and noted that she gives an email address at the top of her column. Is it worth trying to educate her or is she a prime Moron of Parliament – well for as long as it takes her to fulfil her promise to resign as an MP because she was not given a damehood. Why she should be a dame escapes me.
Not much point in writing to her in her capacity as an MP, she’s leaving pretty in a huff soon.
Possibly as part of the Bojo columnist team on the DM.
Does she qualify as a pantomime dame?
Maybe there are “2000 green jobs”, but many more than 2000 have been destroyed by the obsession of politicians with “climate”, “green” and “net zero”.
>>So far, I believe there are around 2,000 ‘green’ jobs.
“I believe there are around 2,000 ‘green’ jobs.”
Sneaking out at crack of dawn to pick up all the bird and bat carcasses surrounding the bottoms of the mincers, no doubt.
Off my Christmas list too.
‘Cleaner air’
Cleaner than what?
The West cleaned up its air 50 years ago. Yet the Left still has ‘cleaner air’ in their playbook. As long as it gets traction, they’ll keep using it. Nadine Dorries is a punch line.
Well Harry, we know where Nadine’s future lies. I do not suppose that she will be reading my comment posted in July 3rd at 1.13 pm. Talk about a legislature being indifferent to the reality of life for 90% of its constituents.
Dorries needs to be challenged on her stuopid statements. She can’t live with an EV but, to “save the planet” she expects everyone else to do so. What a hypocrite
This is in the Washington Post today, just for information…….
Tesla reported that it delivered about 466,000 cars from April to June in a sales update released Sunday, exceeding Wall Street analysts’ expectations of 447,000. Electric-truck maker Rivian delivered 12,640 vehicles during the same period, according to a Monday sales update, beating analysts’ expectations by more than 10 percent. The two companies saw their stock prices jump 6.9 percent and 17 percent respectively Monday.
The growing demand for electric vehicles underscores an industry-wide shift away from gas-powered cars, analysts said. “Consumers are not shying away from electric vehicles … in fact, it’s quite the opposite,” said Wedbush senior analyst Dan Ives.
Tesla’s blockbuster results show roughly an 83 percent increase from a year earlier, Ives said. “We’re seeing a green tidal wave of demand playing out,” he said.
That maybe true in the West but here in Africa the closest we get to EV is a Scalextrix, and that is about as good as you get for the next 100 years.
But of course, as soon as you put these numbers into the context of the total vehicles sold we will find that they are a miniscule percentage.
You do have to wonder about Tesla,s figures .
I remember a year or two ago their yearly figures showed that they lost about $750 million on the years trading , but turned it into a profit after the subsidies given to them .
So are their current figures being inflated to increase this years subsidies .
As in China , are there vast numbers of hidden away vehicles which have not been sold but are just being used for production numbers to claim more public money .
Like this you mean
Fields full of EVs in China just degrading away.
Tesla has recently made several cuts to list prices to achieve an increase in sales, although this will probably hurt residual values.
IMO, most EVs are sold in the UK on the back of tax breaks for purchase and tax breaks for energy source (see tax on petrol / diesel compared to tax on electricity) .
A “roughly an 83 percent increase” on SFA is – roughly – SFA!
This is pay walled Paul.
Hi Malcolm try this
https://web.archive.org/web/20230701063222/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/07/01/politicians-forcing-electric-cars-public-doesnt-want-them/
Wayback machine is a wonderful asset. p.s. my middle name is Malcolm.
So….RMS! Were you ever an electrical engineer? 🙂
Yes Harry I was and was regularly known as “rootmeansquare”!
I blame Elon Musk. You know he just had a great a quarter for sales volume after lowering prices. He likes being the dominant EV player and receiving subsidies from ice vehicle manufacturers.
Ford loses more money on every vehicle it sells than they charge for the vehicle and they charge a pretty penny. With generous rebates from the government reinstated and lower prices last quarter, Tesla had better profit margins than the Big 3 US auto manufacturers. This also used to be called predatory pricing but don’t expect any investigations for the government.
Musk wants to convince Detroit that it will be cheaper to continue to pay him subsidies from their ICE vehicle sales than compete in the EV space.
LESS practical and simultaneously more expensive. How did they ever expect people to voluntarily use / buy electric cars?
‘Indeed, the decision to impose strict deadlines for the phase out of petrol cars could turn out to be one of the most ruinous policy decisions of our lifetimes.’
Central planners unite!
Totally ignoring what the actual market needs and wants is beyond disgraceful. It is particularly shocking that this is coming from those claiming to be “conservatives”.
>> phase out of petrol cars
Of course battery cars are nonsense. Apart from the extr aweight, and the unfortunate tendency to catch fire, where is the power coming from to charge them-apart from range anxiety, especially in winter with headlights, heater and wipers on, finding a charge point, hanging about whilst others and you charge. Then when your car has done, say, 70k miles, it will need a replacement battery costing more than the car’s worth. Madness!
I think the plan is that by the time the EV batteries need replacing private motoring for us plebs will have been cancelled altogether, iah!
Electric cars preceded ICE ones, but…
In August, 1888, Bertha Benz drove an ICE 105 km.
TRIH
Same problems with EVs then as now. ICE cars are much more practical.
>>Electric cars preceded ICE ones, but
Trevithick was driving around in his steam car in 1803
And Cugnot in his steam powered carriage in 1769.
@ Catweazle, was not Cugnot’s creation a three-wheeled tractor?
The vehicle in your post looks mid-Victorian
Indeed.
This is his steam tractor, designed to tow artillery and responsible for the World’s first road accident.
https://www.supercars.net/blog/1769-cugnot-steam-tractor/
That image comes from:
https://uh.edu/engines/epi1596.htm where it is credited with being Siegfried Markus’s second automobile, perhaps from 1875.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Marcus
In fact, Thomas Parker, an English inventor who was responsible for electrifying the London Underground, built the first production electric car in Wolverhampton in 1884.
Wikipedia mentions Parker but claims ‘German engineer Andreas Flocken built the first real electric car in 1888’, giving four references.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle#First_full-scale_electric_cars
It’s the car in the 1888 photo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flocken_Elektrowagen
And I take exception to Mr Weazle’s using the word “production.”
One of Parker’s electric cars, outside his home in Tettenhall, near Wolverhampton. Parker is in the middle. Photo around 1895.
Note the use of the phrase “One of Parker’s electric cars”!
A handful does not “production” make.
Debatable!
In the early days of motor vehicles pre-mass production when all parts were made individually by hand, it was very rare for two examples to be the same, even things like thread forms could vary between individual examples, I have come across a wheel spindle of an ancient motorcycle with different threads (neither of any standardised form) on either end!
That’s when a lathe comes in handy!
I have recently returned from a 2 week stay in Massachusetts where I drove over 2000 miles in that time. I saw very few EVs and noticed that ‘gas stations’ had no charging points. Actually I noticed no charging points at all, anywhere.
Even in Europe, there seem to be more charging points than actual EVs. Take a look sometime at the service stations on the France motorways. Almost all of them have removed some parking spaces and replaced them with EV charging points that never seem to be occupied.
>>where I drove over 2000 miles in that time. I saw very few EVs
Down here in Dixie there lots of EVs on the road. Teslas are quite common.
But, as you observed up north, few charging stations. The standard MO is having a home charger and never venturing out of range.
And that is precisely why EVs are not practical for the vast majority of the population, even in Europe, let alone the USA where distances are much greater.
>>never venturing out of range