The Morning Rant: State of North Carolina is Condemning Rural Homesteads for Vietnamese Electric Vehicle Startup

Millions of suckers investors are being taken to the cleaners by investing in electric vehicle start-ups, which is no sweat off my brow. It’s their money, their eco-religion, and their financial wipeout.

Well, it’s no sweat off my brow until elected officials get seduced by hustlers pushing EV startups, and start making it the problem of innocent property owners who are situated in the way of these snake oil projects.

It was just last March that North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper announced that his state had “won” the bidding war for a startup Vietnamese EV manufacturer named “VinFast.”

What a victory. North Carolina is shelling out hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars just to prepare the site and condemn land, before a single car will be built.

The state also anticipates providing additional support to the project by means of a state appropriation of as much as $450 million, to cover site preparations, road improvements, and additional water and sewer infrastructure.

Because Governor Cooper is such a great negotiator, the next $316 million that will be paid directly from North Carolina to VinFast will require that there be some actual car production and hiring.

But first, the state is condemning property to make way for the proposed factory.

‘I cried all weekend.’ Chatham residents react to NCDOT plans for VinFast factory site [Raleigh News & Observer – 8/23/2022]

It often takes many years for NCDOT to plan big highway projects like this. But the timeline here is set by VinFast and the state’s desire to see it begin producing electric SUVs at the plant in 2024.

There will not be EVs rolling off a plant in Chatham County in 2024. Trust me. But people will be displaced before then.

Members of the Sanderford family have lived off Pea Ridge Road for more than 70 years. “They’re taking everything we got,” said Jack Sanderford Jr. after looking at the NCDOT maps Tuesday. That includes five acres, the houses where his mother and son live and his business, Logger Head Clearing and Grading.

“I said could you leave me a piece so I could live there?” he said he asked an NCDOT representative. “And he said, ‘No, we need it all.’”

“They’re going to mess up a good home place,” said Lena Stone, who stands to lose four houses — hers and three rental properties where NCDOT plans to widen Pea Ridge Road. Stone has lived there since 1973, and the property has long been a family gathering place, said her daughter, Rhonda Mitchell. Like many who came to the Chatham County Agricultural and Conference Center on Tuesday, Mitchell said she had only learned of NCDOT’s plans a few days earlier. “I was in shock. I cried all weekend,” she said.

I didn’t bother mentioning that Governor Cooper is a Democrat, because getting seduced by EV confidence men promising massive job creation is a bi-partisan political affliction. In neighboring Georgia, Republican Governor Brian Kemp is forking over $1.5 billion in incentives for a new plant in a rural area east of Atlanta for EV startup Rivian Automotive.

So how is Rivian doing?

Rivian Begins Laying Off 6% of Workforce [Tech Crunch – 7/27/2022]

Layoffs are an interesting component of the promised job creation.

But how about its products? What’s going on with its product line?

Rivian Axes Entry Level R1T [Edmunds – 8/30/2022]

Rivian announced last week that it will no longer build the R1T in its introductory Explore trim level as planned, raising the cost of entry to the electric truck in the process.

So Rivian is eliminating its entry-level vehicle? That won’t do much to dispel the notion that EVs are just luxury toys for rich people, will it?

Because Rivian manufactured less than 7,000 cars in the first half of the year, it likes to announce its “pre-order sales” rather than its actual vehicles sold. It now has about 100,000 pre-orders, the vast majority of which date back well before 2022. I am very familiar with the evaporation rate of “pre-orders” on yet-to-be delivered exotic vehicles. About 20 years ago, a friend of mine managed an exotic car dealership. The Lotus Elise was coming to America, and hundreds of customers had put down deposits at my friend’s dealership. The promised delivery date for the first Elise kept getting pushed back, time and time again. Finally, some Elises started trickling in. While there were some customers excited to finally get their long-awaited car, others started declining and asking for their deposits back. It didn’t take long before there were Elises on the lot available for sale to the public. The waiting list of pre-orders had completely collapsed, with most customers wanting their deposits back. I’ll be shocked if the same thing doesn’t happen to Rivian’s pre-order list…if the company is ever able to build a significant number of vehicles at all.

OK, enough about southern Governors getting fleeced by EV start-ups.

How about regular investors getting fleeced by EV start-ups?

EV Makers Lucid, Nikola Plan for Stock Sales as Time Runs Out on Cash Burn [Bloomberg – 8/30/2022]

It was probably a case of now or never for the latest pair of electric vehicle makers to announce fundraising plans as they burn through cash.

Nikola Corp. said it will sell as much as $400 million in an at-the-market offering, one day after peer Lucid Group Inc. filed to sell up to $8 billion in mixed securities, including common stock. Both shares fell on the news…

Nikola stock was trading at over $67 per share in June 2021. It’s now trading below $6 per share.

Lucid stock, which traded at $57 per share within the past year, is now trading at about $15 per share.

Happy investing, EV true-believers. As you tally up your financial losses, don’t forget the innocent property owners who are losing their homes as a consequence of this whole ridiculous EV fantasy.

Songs of The Season

As we change seasons from Summer to Fall, how ‘bout we head into the weekend with a bittersweet song about the change of seasons - in both a relationship and in the weather.

(And maybe Alberta Oil Peon can verify for us that weather in Alberta is “good there in the Fall.” I trust that “those winds they sure get cold way out there” is accurate.)

Four Strong Winds – Sylvia & Ian Tyson

(buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com)

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

| Access Comments