THE MORNING RANT – Update on the Electric Vehicle Follies (9/11/2023)

The left hasn’t killed off gasoline-powered cars yet, but they’re no longer even hiding the fact that their goal isn’t actually to move us from internal combustion (or “ICE”) vehicles to electric vehicles, their goal is to deny us car-ownership altogether.

“Pete Buttigieg Wants You to Stop Driving Cars” [Townhall – 9/03/2023]

The following opinion piece was in newspapers all over the country last week, making the point explicitly clear, “The problem isn't cars with internal combustion engines; the problem is cars.”

“Opinion: The real problem with all-electric cars” [John Crisp - Tribune Content Agency – 9/03/2023]

Here's the real problem with all-electric cars: They lull us into believing that we can solve the climate crisis without significantly modifying the way we live. The problem isn't cars with internal combustion engines; the problem is cars.

The fact is, our headlong descent into climate chaos is very, very likely to continue and accelerate unless we change fundamentally the way we live, which probably means fewer cars, smaller homes, much less air travel, less red meat and, frankly, less comfort and convenience.

”…less comfort and convenience.”

Believe them when they tell you who they are and what their agenda is. They want you to suffer a significant reduction in your freedom and your standard of living. Abolishing ICE cars for EVs is just a way station toward that destination.

Some good news is that EVs seem to have found their maximum market share, even with the ridiculous government incentives and rebates. Dealers have an abundance of EVs but customers won’t buy them.

“EVs are running out of customers — and some dealers don't want them anymore” [Business Insider – 8/23/2023]

More electric vehicles are being pumped out of car factories than ever before — but some dealers don't want them.

Electric-car inventory has been piling up on dealership lots this year as companies up their EV production, leading some dealers to say enough is enough. Some are telling automakers they don't want any more until they can sell what's sitting, several dealers told Insider.

Historically, a 60-day supply of new cars on dealers’ lots was considered ideal. Current EV inventory on dealers’ lots is much higher, and manufacturers are still ramping up production.

Car shoppers can find plenty of electric options on dealership lots — while there was about 54 days' supply of vehicle inventory overall at dealerships earlier this summer, EV inventory was nearly double that.

Other than Tesla, consumers are assertively rejecting EVs, which are simply a luxury/boutique/niche product. People buy mass-market products like Ford and Toyota for various practical and functional needs, but not because they are in the market for a boutique product. If consumers want a “look-at-my-hood-ornament” car they will buy a luxury brand, which includes Tesla.

I don’t try to be fair in my criticism of EVs, because the EV enthusiasts who are trying to ban ICE vehicles have no interest in being fair to people like me.

That said, a gentleman named Patrick Butler, who is a two-time Tesla owner, offered up some pros and cons of Tesla ownership. One of the cons is new to me, but it seems pretty significant. But before I get to that problem, I’ll acknowledge that he had strong praise for Tesla’s speed, comfort, auto-pilot, and insurance program.

But here is the really significant problem with EVs that I had not pondered before - the battery will drain itself of charge when left parked for a couple weeks.

IDLE CHARGE TIME: The world is not ready for EVs and idle charge time is the main reason why. With an ICE vehicle, you can park the car, leave it for a month or two and when you return, the car will start. With a Tesla, after a month or even a few weeks it will be a hunk of useless metal. As someone who travels a lot without a home charger, I frequently have to have someone babysit my car to ensure it doesn’t die and damage the battery.

The demographic that favors EVs (usually as a second car) is also the demographic that takes extended jaunts to Europe, Vail, etc. A dead EV awaits them when they return if they don’t have a babysitter keeping it charged.

One thing that Tesla gets lots of praise for is its charger network, allowing virtuous EV owners to drive “carbon free,” even between cities.

But are diesel generators that are used to provide electricity to charging stations “carbon-free”?

“Tesla’s Dirty Little Secret on California’s I-5” [SF Gate – 9/03/0223]

Instead, the company was running diesel generators to power additional Superchargers (the kind that take 30 to 60 minutes to recharge a battery) to handle the holiday rush, their exhaust mingling with the unmistakable smell of bulls—t. The fact that a small diesel plant was helping power the additional chargers…

The electricity that powers EVs is overwhelmingly generated by fossil fuels, no matter where you charge an EV. The “carbon-free” charade about electric vehicles is tiresome and fraudulent.

Still speaking of Tesla…

“Tesla created secret team to suppress thousands of driving range complaints” [Reuters – 7/27/2023]

About a decade ago, Tesla rigged the dashboard readouts in its electric cars to provide “rosy” projections of how far owners can drive before needing to recharge, a source told Reuters. The automaker last year became so inundated with driving-range complaints that it created a special team to cancel owners’ service appointments.

To be fair, the miles per gallon information on the window stickers of ICE vehicles is also inflated and not realistic. But - if I’m driving, let’s say between Nashville and Atlanta, and I’m expecting to make it on one tank of gas, I don’t risk getting stranded if actual mpg is less than advertised, because there are gas stations at every exit where I can fill up again in a matter of minutes. However, if I’m expecting to make that same 250 mile drive on a fully charged EV, I’m going to have a big problem on a hot summer day. I’ll have to seek out a place to stop for an hour or so to recharge somewhere in northwest Georgia, after I turn off the AC and literally sweat out the declining range.

It’s often been pointed out that EVs are a poor option in Florida and other places prone to being hit by hurricanes, because an EV is a terrible vehicle to use for evacuating (for all the normal reasons about lack of chargers, the time it takes to charge, the perils of running out of charge on the highway, etc.)

But you also better be careful about leaving your EV behind when a hurricane hits…

“As Hurricane Idalia caused flooding, some electric vehicles exposed to saltwater caught fire” [CBS – 9/01/2023]

Floridians battered by Hurricane Idalia this week may not have expected another threat — that floodwaters could cause their cars to suddenly burst into flames.

Yet that's exactly what happened when two electric vehicles caught fire after being submerged in saltwater churned up by the storm. Firefighters in Palm Harbor, Florida, cited the incidents, both of which involved Teslas, in warning owners that their rechargeable car batteries could combust if exposed to saltwater.

Suffering water damage to your car and home from a tropical storm surge would be really bad. Having your house then burn down because your EV produced a thermal runaway fire would be just awful.

"If you own a hybrid or electric vehicle that has come into contact with saltwater due to recent flooding within the last 24 hours, it is crucial to relocate the vehicle from your garage without delay," the department said in a Facebook post. "Saltwater exposure can trigger combustion in lithium-ion batteries. If possible, transfer your vehicle to higher ground."

When do insurance companies stop insuring homes when EVs are parked in the garage?

As noted at the top of this post, the real goal of the “electric vehicle transition” is not to replace your ICE car with an EV. Instead the goal is to eliminate car ownership, along with all the activities in your life that require a car.

In a post at American Thinker, John F. Di Leo, points out that eliminating gasoline powered cars also means eliminating day trips and weekend getaways, because you cannot re-charge your EV while parked at a sporting event, or at a campground, or at a festival, or at an out of town hotel, or even at your relative’s house in another city, especially if everyone is driving EVs and also needs to re-charge their vehicles while parked.

He points out that these are not shortcomings with EVs, rather the purpose is to deny you the pleasures in life that you don’t need.

”Those EV Shortcomings Aren’t Shortcomings at All” [John F. Di Leo – American Thinker – 8/13/2023]

There is an answer to all this. Don’t worry. They haven’t forgotten all these things. The elites who advocate the sole production of EVs have an answer for this: You just won’t be able to do these things anymore. That’s all.

They don’t believe you need to do these things. They want you to watch your entertainment on your smart TV or your laptop, on your streaming service, from the comfort of your apartment. If you want to attend a live performance, you can take public transportation to the nearest official venue…

You don’t need to go visit a river or lake, or travel to explore American heritage through Civil War or Revolutionary War sites. You don’t need fishing trips, hunting trips, road trips for baseball or football, college tours, family bonding drives.

Stay home. Stay safe. Stay still. Stay where we can watch you.

The conclusion is inescapable: In the final analysis, the EV pushers don’t see any gaps or contradictions. All the needs you have that EVs simply don’t meet, can’t meet, will never meet – well, these aren’t really needs at all.

I’ve publicly stated that I’m for DeSantis because of his solid record of supporting liberty – especially during Covid - and for using his executive power to actually win battles against the left in the culture war, but if we end up with Trump being the nominee again, this certainly heartens me:

Finally, let’s wrap up by checking in on what’s going on with EV startups. Those that haven’t already failed are rapidly heading toward insolvency, so it appears their CEOs are now looting their companies before it’s too late.

“Lucid CEO’s $379 million annual pay draws criticism from billionaire Elon Musk: ‘Beware any company where leadership compensation is not linked to performance’” [Fortune – 9/05/2023]

Rawlinson received a $379 million compensation package in 2022 for his role at the luxury EV maker Lucid, including a $575,000 base salary, $5.5 million of stock options, and an incredible $373 million in stock awards, according to a new CEO compensation survey from Automotive News and Equilar.

Rawlinson’s total compensation in 2022 was 11 times greater than the $34 million earned by the second-highest-paid automotive CEO, GM’s Mary Barra, and 21 times greater than the $18.3 million Ford CEO Jim Farley made.

To be fair, CEOs Mary Barra (GM) and Jim Farley (Ford) are aggressively destroying their companies too in pursuit of the EV fantasy, so their compensation is also preposterous, even if it is just a fraction of Rawlinson’s.

So Lucid must be making good money, right?

“EV startup Lucid is losing over $500,000 for every car it sells” [Business Insider – 8/08/2023]

The company posted $150.9 million in revenue from the 1,404 vehicles it sold in the three-month period. Coupled with a net loss of roughly $764 million, the results suggest a loss of more than $500,000 per vehicle.

How about Rivian?

“Rivian CEO to get pay raise of more than 50% to $1 million, plus about $15 million in stock”

Rivian lost $6.8 billion in 2022, and has lost another $2.5 billion in the first half of 2023.

For those of you who argue that these stock awards are different than monetary compensation, they’re even worse in my book. These stock awards are equity owned by shareholders that was taken from those shareholders and redistributed to the CEO. I guess you could say that rather than looting the company, the CEOs of these failing EV companies are actually looting the stockholders.

But then again, why shouldn’t they take money from the stockholders? There seems to be an endless appetite from “investors” to lose money gambling on dead-end EV startups.

A Vietnamese EV startup just had its US operations go public, and the company quickly soared to a valuation exceeding that of Ford and GM, despite having only sold a very few cars…to awful reviews.

“This Vietnamese automaker is worth more than Ford and GM. But it hasn’t sold many cars” [CNN – 8/17/2023]

But VinFast’s bold entry into the US hasn’t been smooth. For one thing, when critics got the chance to drive the company’s first US-bound product, the VF8 electric SUV, the resulting reviews weren’t what any automaker would hope for.

Several of the headlines were particularly blunt. “Simply unacceptable,” read a headline from Road & Track. ”Yikes,” said a headline from InsideEVs. “Return to sender,” wrote MotorTrend atop its review of the EV.

“The ride was really stiff, the quality of materials inside the car was very bad. There were panel gaps that were mismatching. There were creaks that we heard from the windshield,” said Miguel Cortina, an editor with MotorTrend. “A lot of issues in the quality of the car, in the way that it drove.”

An EV investor and his money are soon parted. If I had less integrity, I would go public with a shell company and a business plan for an electric vehicle start-up company.

Have a great week driving your gasoline-powered car, wherever you want to go, and as far as you want to drive it in this great land.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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