THE MORNING RANT: Periodic Roundup of the EV Follies – 3/21/2025

Ford’s External Combustion Vehicle Nightmare

The rolling debacle of everything associated with Ford’s electric vehicle agenda just keeps getting worse. Its flagship EV, the F150 Conflagration Lightning pickup truck, has just been recalled again, for the usual reason…

“Ford Recalls F-150 Lightning Over Fire Risk” [KBB – 3/07/2025]

Ford’s EVs aren’t the only thing burning. So is its cash.

You know how the EV fanatics love to toss the word “sustainable” around. Do Bill Ford and CEO Jim Farley not understand that the EV losses they keep piling up year after year are not sustainable? Ford lost another $5.1 billion on its EV program in 2024 after losing $4.7 billion in 2023, and it’s now projecting a $5.5 billion loss in 2025 from its EV division. Something that cannot go on forever will stop. Either it stops because Ford goes broke, or it stops when someone says, ”Enough.”

There has got to be some adult supervision somewhere in the Ford boardroom who will tell Farley and Ford that they gave it their best shot, but it’s now time to, ahem, pull the plug on this 21st century E-dsel.

The EV Death Pool

I never even got around to entering Canadian school bus manufacturer Lion Electric into my EV death pool, but it is already circling the drain. Unfortunately, it didn’t cease to operate before sucking up $160 million in US tax dollars, compliments of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Top Biden EV Bus Maker Nears Bankruptcy, Leaving School Districts and Tens of Millions of Taxpayer Dollars in Limbo [Washington Free Beacon – 02/07/2025]

The Biden administration awarded Canadian electric bus company Lion Electric nearly $160 million to manufacture hundreds of battery-powered buses for school districts nationwide as part of its sweeping climate agenda. In recent weeks, Lion has initiated bankruptcy proceedings, laid off all employees tasked with building its buses, and paused manufacturing operations.

There are dozens of school districts across the country still waiting on delivery of their Lion EV school buses.

Lion's financial demise leaves dozens of school districts—including those in California, Montana, North Dakota, Iowa, Alabama, and Maryland—questioning whether they will receive the buses the Biden administration promised them. Lion has yet to deliver $95 million worth of electric buses to 55 districts across the country…

The school districts that didn’t take delivery of Lion’s electric buses are actually the lucky ones. The school districts that got hurt the worst are the ones that took delivery of these barely operational abominations.

School districts could get a free Lion electric bus through the Biden EPA’s “Clean School Bus Program” for each functioning diesel school bus they disposed of. Now those school districts are without the functioning buses they got rid of, while also stuck with inoperable Lion electric buses.

“Maine’s Lion Electric school buses have been a disaster. What’s next?” [CentralMaine.com – 01/27/2025]

This woman proudly standing (cackling?) in front of a Lion electric school bus is not the President of the United States, for reasons including her support of “venture socialist” boondoggles like the one that sent taxpayer dollars to Lion Electric for inoperable EV school buses.

[h/t to Mike J.Y. (@MichaelinMI on Twitter) for reminding me to post about Lion Electric.]

Trump’s EPA is Beginning “The EV De-Transition”

This is why I voted for Donald Trump…

“Trump EPA begins rolling back Biden EV ‘mandate’ in ‘biggest day of deregulation in American history’” [NY Post – 3/12/2025]

President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency began the process Wednesday of rescinding vehicle fuel efficiency standards that Republicans have called a de facto “electric vehicle mandate,” The Post has learned.

An administration official said dozens of additional regulatory rollbacks loomed on what would be “the biggest day of deregulation in American history.”

This is also why I voted for Trump…

“The General Services Administration is shutting down its EV chargers, calling them ‘not mission critical’” [The Verge – 3/11/2025]

The General Services Administration (GSA), which manages buildings owned by the federal government, is planning to shut down all of its electric vehicle chargers nationwide, describing them as “not mission critical.” The agency, which manages contracts for the government’s vehicle fleets, is also looking to offload newly purchased EVs.

All the “true conservatives” of Conservative, Inc. who were working to defeat Donald Trump were also therefore working to perpetuate the EV mandates and keep taxpayer subsidies flowing to the EV hustlers.

A Democrat Senator is also De-Transitioning from EVs

Sen. Mark Kelly is having a snit fit about Elon Musk, so the Democrat senator just announced that he’s de-transitioning from his electric Tesla to a big, gas-guzzling SUV. I consider this to be an endorsement by Sen. Kelly for an end to all EV mandates and incentives.

It’s also noteworthy that Mark Kelly is a former astronaut, and at the exact same moment that Elon Musk was rescuing fellow astronauts who had been stranded in space for almost a year, Sen. Kelly was having a tantrum about Mr. Musk. Quite the team player there.

A Dummkopf and His Money Are Soon Parted

Three years ago, Porsche was rolling in the dough, producing record revenue, profit, and unit sales. In a press release exactly three years ago touting the company’s blowout financial performance, the company also announced that it was boldly going in a new direction – almost all-electric.

“Porsche's ambition for 2030: More than 80 percent all-electric new vehicles” [Porsche Newsroom – 3/18/2022]

Nothing that followed is a surprise…

“Porsche Sales Are Falling, Here's Why: Porsche's best-selling vehicle is going electric at a very bad time for EVs” [Motor 1 – 11/09/2024]

“Porsche sees market value cut in half amid billions in EV losses” [Straight Arrow News – 02/10/2025]

Earlier this month, Porsche announced that it will also be taking a $21.7 Billion loss for its investment in VW, which is also going through a crisis related to its regrettable commitment to the EV transition.

If We All Drove EVs, the Introduction of ICE Vehicles Would Be a Revolutionary Improvement

I’ve often joked that outside of the boutique automotive niche captured by Tesla, EVs are a solution in search of a problem. The funny thing is that if we were all driving EVs, the introduction of internal combustion vehicles would revolutionize driving and provide a solution to so many problems inherent to EVs.

To that point, Mr. CBD sent me this quote: ”Imagine we lived in a world where all cars were EVs, and then along comes a new invention, the ‘internal combustion engine!’ Think how well that would sell: A vehicle half the weight, half the price that will almost quarter the damage done to the road. A vehicle that can be refueled in 1/10th of the time and has a range of up to 4 times the distance in all weather conditions. It does not rely on the environmentally damaging use of non-renewable rare earth elements to power it, and it uses far less steel and other materials. Just think how excited people would be for such technology. It would sell like hotcakes.”

Indeed, ICE cars provide the solution to the nightmare that the EV-mandaters are trying to push on us.

Sustainable Organic NPR Listeners Don’t Buy Maseratis

“Maserati kills electric version of MC20 supercar for lack of demand” [ARS Technica – 3/07/2025]

The sub-heading has this line, “Buyers are increasingly turned off by electrification when it comes to supercars.” True, but buyers are also increasingly turned off by electrification when it comes to pickup trucks, SUVs, sedans, child haulers, vehicles used for towing, etc.

But an electric Maserati would seem an especially tough sell, since the most passionate EV evangelists are the humorless scolds for whom NPR is their daily Mass and Whole Foods is their temple. They’re not buying supercars.

Throckmorton’s First Law of Live Music: “If there’s an upright bass in the band, it’s probably going to be good.”

Let’s boogie into the weekend with the Moonlight Howlers. While their guitar might be electric, there’s nothing electric about the carbureted Chevrolet pickup truck in “Rocket to the Moon”

Have a great weekend.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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