THE MORNING RANT: Periodic Update on the Electric Vehicle Follies (11/27/2023)

It’s been a little while since we’ve checked in on the “electric vehicle transition” and the ruling class’ religious obsession with replacing functioning gasoline-powered vehicles with electric vehicles.

There have been plenty more exploding lithium-ion batteries, which I’ll get to below the fold, but first let’s take a look at some of the recent idiocy that has unfolded with the “EV transition.”

Buses, Garbage Trucks, Snow Plows, and Planes

“Jackson [Wyoming] Buys Eight Electric Buses for Transit System, But None Are Working” [Cowboy State Daily – 9/26/2023]

A transit system run by the town of Jackson and Teton County set out to replace its diesel buses with electric, but none of the eight electric buses in its fleet are running, and the company that made them went bankrupt.

Fortunately they still have a couple dozen functioning diesel buses. If you think about it, electric buses are not unlike green energy, because you still need a full backup from conventional carbon sources since electric buses are completely unreliable, and often not functioning at all.

While I know that there are blue dots in the reddest of places, should there be such be an epidemic of electric bus failures in the snowy parts of cowboy country? It’s not just Wyoming that foolishly thought electric buses could work, so did leaders in Edmonton, Alberta.

“Edmonton's fleet of electric buses failing amid manufacturer's bankruptcy proceedings” [CBC – 11/22/2023]

In the summer of 2020, Don Iveson, then Edmonton's mayor, announced that electric buses were being deployed by the city's transit service.

Three years later, most of the city's 60 electric buses aren't fit to be on the roads.

In a court filing last month, the city's U.S. lawyers wrote that Edmonton's electric buses have failed to meet contract qualifications with respect to range, battery life, reliability and durability.

While I’m not defending Proterra, the manufacturer of these awful electric buses, it should be pointed out that people like the Edmonton mayor are credulous marks who are fanatic believers in the fantasy of electric-vehicles. They are desperate to be swindled by “green” snake oil hustlers. If it wasn’t Proterra, some other green company would have swindled Edmonton and its citizens.

The document says the range of the electric buses is shorter than Proterra stated — "an issue that is exacerbated in Edmonton's cold winters" — and there have been problems with the software that controls the vehicles.

The typical banker or bartender who reads this blog knows that electric vehicles are ill-suited for frigid weather. Yet somehow the mayor of a cold, Canadian city never bothered to find out that these virtuous, green toys can’t operate in Edmonton’s climate.

Not only do electric buses not operate well in cold weather, they also don’t operate well in steep terrain, as some unfortunate car owners in San Francisco found out recently when an electric bus rolled backward into several cars, causing one person to be hospitalized.

Not surprisingly, electric garbage trucks and snow plows are not a very good idea either, as any reader of this blog could have told the fools in New York City who decided to replace diesel snowplows with electric snowplows.

New York City spent over $3.5 million on seven Mack electric rear-loading garbage trucks as a test, with the intent to replace all diesel-powered garbage trucks and snow plows. It was, not surprisingly, money wasted.

“New York turns back to diesel snow plows and leaves electric vehicles behind” [Washington Examiner – 11/09/2023]

New York will rely on diesel-powered snow plows as opposed to electric ones this Winter, halting its goal to put electric ones on the street after a failed testing period.

“In our test of the non-diesel rear-loaders, we found that they could not plow the snow effectively,” Commissioner of the New York Department of Sanitation Jessica Tish said during a City Council hearing in November 2022, per the New York Sun. “We need them to go 12 hours and so I do not see today, given the current state of the technology, a path forward to fully electrifying the rear loader portion of the fleet by 2040.”

If there is an idea even more ridiculous than electric snow plows, it may be electric airplanes, so of course, the mouthpiece of the anti-petroleum global climate agenda is pushing electric planes.

The NY Times is gushing over a small electric plane that took only 16 days to fly from Vermont to Florida.

“Electric Planes, Once a Fantasy, Start to Take to the Skies” [NY Times – 11/03/2023]

How a small plane’s 16-day trip from Vermont to Florida might foreshadow a new era of battery-powered air travel long considered implausible.

That’s because the airplane Mr. Caputo would fly runs on batteries. Over the next 16 days, he and his colleagues flew the plane, a CX300 built by their employer, Beta Technologies, down the East Coast. They would make nearly two dozen stops to rest and recharge…

Back in 1860, the Pony Express could deliver mail from Missouri to California in 10 days. Now, 163 years later, our elites are gushing over a limited-use conveyance that takes 16 days to travel from Vermont to Florida.

When the journey came to an end in Florida, Beta handed the plane over to the Air Force, which will experiment with it over the next few months.

If the Air Force plans to do anything other than laugh at this toy, I fear for our country in the next major war.

The trip offered a vision of what aviation could look like years from now — one in which the skies are filled with aircraft that do not emit the greenhouse gases that are dangerously warming up the Earth.

Carbon dioxide is not warming the Earth, but humanity is in peril if we don’t stop politely playing along with the zealots of the Sustainable Organic Church of the Carbon Apocalypse.

We’re Sorry About Your Defective EV

At this point, it’s getting hard to feel much sympathy for the unfortunate people who have bought a General Motors EV. GM’s electric vehicle experiment has been a rolling debacle of recalls, battery failures, and instructions to park the explosive cars where they can do no harm if they spontaneously burst into flames.

But this is still a slap in the face to buyers of GM’s electric vehicles:

“Chevy Bolt owners could receive $1,400 compensation from GM for nerfed batteries” [The Verge – 10/24/2023]

In summary GM’s Chevy Bolt had batteries which were prone to catching fire. There were multiple recalls and a software update to mitigate this risk, but this also restricted the (already limited) range of the car. There is now a class action lawsuit against GM because the car cannot drive anywhere near the range in one charge that was promised to the unfortunate customers who bought a Bolt.

Chevy Bolt owners might have the option to receive a $1,400 payout from GM as compensation for dealing with defective EV batteries in model year vehicles from 2020-2022.

To qualify for the offer, owners must install a “final remedy” software update on their Bolt through a Chevy dealership by December 31st, 2023.

By “final remedy” GM means that it is washing its hands of its awful product’s future battery problems.

However, it’s not without strings attached. According to the terms and conditions of the offer, owners have to agree to “forever waive” rights to sue or join a future class action lawsuit regarding battery issues “known or unknown.”

Many Rivian owners also got a little surprise recently when a software update killed some of its vehicles’ functionality.

“Rivian’s ‘Fat Finger’ OTA Software Update Soft-Bricks R1T and R1S” [Inside EVs – 11/15/2023]

Despite the soft-brick killing the infotainment system, most critical vehicle functions are still working.

Meanwhile, customers are reportedly being told not to charge or restart their vehicles in an attempt to fix the problem.

As of now, Rivian doesn’t have an expected fix, though it is hoping to remedy the problem remotely. Those that do require physical service will likely be contacted, per Rivian’s initial statement on the matter.

Meanwhile, Stellantis (Chrysler/Dodge/Ram) has found a novel solution for the range problem of its electric pickup – it’s adding a gasoline-powered generator as an option. This sounds like a Babylon Bee satire article, but it’s not:

“Stellantis’ new Ram pickup is an EV — with a gas-powered generator in case the battery runs out” [CNBC – 11/07/2023]

Stellantis plans to produce an industry-first pickup for its Ram Trucks brand that’s equipped with an onboard gas engine and electric generator.

Ram’s gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles are extremely popular, because they are great at doing heavy-duty hauling and towing. It is a successful product because of the outstanding engineers and technicians behind the popular trucks. It should be noted that it is a successful product despite the executives running the company.

Ram CEO Tim Kuniskis characterized the new Ram 1500 Ramcharger pickup as the “ultimate answer for battery-electric trucks.”

The ability of engineers and “car people” to overcome the ineptitude of America’s auto executives is being severely tested.

Exploding EVs

Electric vehicles and lithium-ion batteries are still spontaneously exploding, causing all sorts of damage.

“Five cars destroyed at Sydney Airport after battery from luxury electric vehicle ignites” [Sydney Morning Herald – 9/12/2023]

The risk of fires in multifamily housing has always frightened me. In my younger days when I lived in apartments, I was apprehensive about a fire breaking out in the complex. I always assumed the fires would come from a kitchen. I never had to worry about EVs or lithium-ion bikes exploding into flames.

Fire that killed 3 generations of NYC family sparked by lithium-ion battery [NY Post – 11/13/2023]

A massive blaze that killed members of three generations of a Brooklyn family over the weekend stemmed from a lithium-ion battery used to power an electric scooter owned by one of the victims, FDNY officials said Monday.

The lithium-ion battery was found “extensively damaged” in the home, the FDNY boss added. The scooter that used the powering device belonged to one of the victims killed in the fire, according to Chief Fire Marshal Daniel Flynn, who did not specify which one.

Much like compact fluorescent light bulbs, vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries will one day be banned by the same people pushing them on us today.

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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