THE MORNING RANT: Periodic Roundup of the EV Follies – 6/16/2025

Congress and President Trump Legislatively Revoke California Emissions Regulations

This is yet another reason why Americans voted for Donald Trump and Republicans to have control of the House, Senate, and White House:

“Trump revokes California’s nation-leading electric vehicle mandate” [Politico – 6/12/2025]

President Donald Trump moved Thursday to eliminate California’s nation-leading vehicle emissions standards, upending strict rules that had become a template for states across the nation to realize their greenhouse gas ambitions.

Trump signed three Congressional Review Act resolutions rolling back a trio of California’s rules at a White House signing ceremony.

What is extremely important to understand here, this isn’t just another executive order undoing a Biden executive order. Trump and the Republican Congress used the Congressional Review Act, which provides for a legislative reversal of regulatory diktats. Biden’s EPA gave California special permission to regulate the American auto industry. Majorities of the House and Senate voted to reject the EPA’s actions, and President Trump just lawfully eliminated it with his signature.

Of course, California and simpatico states are shopping for a District Judge to rule that an unelected bureaucrat’s regulation is irreversible “law” unto eternity, and that the actual legislative branch – with the President’s signature – cannot reverse a bureaucrat’s decree.

“California, 10 other states sue to block Trump from killing 2035 EV rules” [Reuters – 6/12/2025]

The states asked a judge to declare that Trump's repeal of waivers issued by the Environmental Protection Agency under President Joe Biden have no effect on state emissions rules. "The Federal Government carried out an illegal playbook designed to evade lawful procedures that might prevent the 'take down' of disfavored California laws," said the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in northern California.

California is calling EPA regulations “lawful procedures” while also stating that actual legislation passed by Congress and the President is “an illegal playbook.” When Democrats say that “democracy” is threatened by the Trump administration, what they mean is that governance by unelected bureaucrats is being threatened.

Massive Electric Bus Fire in Philadelphia

There was a massive fire in a Philadelphia bus yard earlier this month, when an electric school bus spontaneously erupted in flames, setting off the buses around it too. (That is the header photo up top.) I’m not sure if this is the “clean” part of green energy or the “renewable” part.

In this boneyard of transit buses decommissioned by SEPTA (SE Pennsylvania Transit Authority) were 25 Proterra electric buses that had been in service barely a year before being decommissioned because they were hopelessly defective. The fire soon spread, with 14 more electric buses fueling the fire that damaged a total of 40 buses.

“Electric fire caused 40 SEPTA buses to catch fire at bus yard in Philadelphia's Nicetown section” [CBS – 6/06/2025]

On Friday, SEPTA officials also said an electrical fire caused by a battery in one of the electric buses started the blaze.

Smoke from the fire was visible across the city, and residents nearby were urged to stay in their homes and avoid the smoke as much as possible. The Philadelphia Department of Public Health reported that early tests revealed high levels of pollutants. "We know that the air is still not entirely safe," Health Commissioner Dr. Palak Raval-Nelson said on Thursday. "That is why my recommendation as health commissioner is for residents to stay away from the area of the fire."

You Tube investigator “MGUY” is to EV fires what Data Republican and DOGE are to NGO money trails. He was able to access records showing exactly which buses on the lot were electric or diesel. The EV buses are in the green rectangle in the picture below. The fire in relation to the electric buses speaks for itself.

Here’s his video about the bus fire if you’re interested. It’s just 4 ½ minutes and very interesting.

Who is Running General Motors?

The good news is that General Motors is making a massive new investment in V-8 engines. The bad news is that its CEO, Mary Barra, is still babbling about an all-electric future. I’m starting think she has always been a naïve, globalist, figurehead who knows how to speak the WEF’s language about renewables and EVs, but is otherwise oblivious to what her company does, or who GM’s customers are.

There are apparently some responsible adults at GM in a position of authority who are trying to save the company from its EV-suicide, which is welcome news.

“GM Invests in V-8 Engines as It Backpedals on EVs; New $888 million plan marks GM’s largest investment in an engine plant” [WSJ – 5/27/2025]

General Motors has abandoned a plan to pump $300 million into electric-vehicle motor production at its upstate New York plant and will instead invest $888 million to make the latest V-8 engines.

Since the EV announcement two years ago for its Tonawanda plant, electric-vehicle sales have slowed, prompting GM and other carmakers to walk back investment plans for the technology.

GM’s customers have rejected EVs. GM’s dealers can’t sell EVs. GM can’t make any money manufacturing EVs. Voters threw out Biden and the Democrat congressional majority in part due to EV mandates. Yet Mary Barra is still talking like it’s 2021, when her job was to repeat the “100% EV future” talking points that her handlers in the Biden administration gave her.

“GM CEO says company is committed to all-electric future after major V-8 engine investment” [Spectrum News – 5/28/2025]

One day after General Motors announced it made its largest investment ever in an engine plant to make gas- and diesel-powered V-8s for trucks and SUVs, CEO Mary Barra said the Big Three automaker still believes in an all-electric future.

“We have more EVs in the market right now than anyone else in this country,” Barra said. “We’re growing market share. I see a path to all electric vehicles. It depends on getting the infrastructure ready, but I think we’ll get there because electric vehicles are better.”

Who is May Barra working for in her unyielding devotion to EVs? It certainly isn’t GM’s customers, dealers, or shareholders. Why is GM’s Board still allowing her to pursue the 100% EV dream?

Can a protest slate of General Motors’ shareholders please put me on GM’s Board of Directors so I can work to stop the suicidal EV obsession of its CEO?

“We screwed up” – new Ram (Dodge) CEO

After Stellantis finally fired its EV-loving destructor of a CEO last year, it brought back long-time Chrysler/Dodge executive Tim Kuniskis to revive its Ram truck brand. You won’t see him licking the boots of globalist masters like the CEOs of Ford and General Motors.

He has brashly apologized for how badly Stellantis harmed the Dodge/Ram brand by killing off its famous Hemi V-8 engine. After acknowledging that “We screwed up,” CEO Kuniskis had an epic rant in an interview with Road & Track magazine.

“The bigger issue is we took away a fundamental American thing. Americans love freedom of choice more than anything. When you take away their freedom of choice and tell them ‘you must take this,’ they revolt. Whether it makes sense or not, it doesn’t matter. It’s anti-American, you’ve taken my flag away, f*** you. It doesn’t mean they are making an irrational decision, maybe they are, maybe they aren’t, I don’t know. But we as Americans, that’s what we do.”

Kuniskis gets it. We Americans like freedom. We like choice. And we despise globalist busy-bodies trying to take our freedoms away from us.

Consumer Interest in EVs is in Free Fall

Closely related to Tim Kuniskis’ comments immediately above…when our imbecilic ruling class decided that we should all be forced out of the product that we wanted to drive (ICE vehicles) and into the vehicles that they would mandate (EVs), it was easy for most Americans to quickly figure out that EVs were awful, or else we wouldn’t have to be forced into them.

Some people had to learn the hard way, however, and they actually bought EVs, but have returned to ICE. Other than the niche of satisfied Tesla drivers for whom their car is not a poor lifestyle fit, EVs have collapsed in popularity. The EV-curious are now overwhelmingly EV-skeptical.

“AAA Study Finds that only 16% of Americans Would Buy an EV” [Yahoo – 6/09/2025]

What's even more striking is that the percentage of those who responded that they were "unlikely" or "very unlikely" to buy an EV edged up to 63%, up from 51% in 2022.

EV Death Pool Update

VinFast, a Vietnamese EV manufacturer, is heading to the front of the leaderboard in my EV Death Pool.

“Struggling electric car company [VinFast] swiftly shuts down half its stores; An electric vehicle manufacturer, which has several sites in Canada and America, is shutting at least half of its locations and showrooms in the country” [The Mirror – 6/08/2025]

I can’t even find any figures for VinFast’s US auto sales in 2025. To the extent that the number exceeds zero, it’s not by much.

VinFast famously seduced North Carolina’s governor into condemning residences, businesses, and churches to acquire land for a plant that VinFast will never get around to building.

The EV Battery Bubble is also Bursting

The EV battery bubble is also bursting, since there is not much demand for the product those batteries would go in. A few years back, a great amount of construction was announced simply on the premise that government mandates could compel mass-demand for a product without an existing mass-market. The mass-market didn’t develop, nor will it.

“EV battery maker suspends factory construction in SC” [WYFF – 6/05/2025]

In a statement, AESC cited market uncertainty for the pause: “AESC has informed the state of South Carolina and our local partners that due to policy and market uncertainty, we are pausing construction at our South Carolina facility at this time. AESC has invested over $1 billion into the Florence facility, and we anticipate being able to resume construction once circumstances stabilize. AESC fully intends to meet our commitments to invest $1.6 billion and create 1,600 jobs in the coming years.”

Let me translate that. ”There will not be an EV battery plant built in Florence, SC. Construction has been permanently halted.”

The Annual Porsche EV Recall

One year ago, Porsche had to recall its electric Taycans from model years 2019 to 2023 due to risk of fire from electric batteries.

Here we go again, with the current crop of new Taycan EVs on Porsche dealer lots undergoing a sales pause because they are potential explosive devices.

“Porsche halts sale of electric vehicle over fears its battery will catch FIRE” [June 1, 2025]

The issue is thought to involve a potential short circuit inside the battery, which could lead to thermal events and later to a fire in the vehicle.

If you want to drive a Porsche, be sure to get a real Porsche with a gasoline engine, not the electric “Porsche” go-kart built to please communist, car-hating, European commissars.

My latest piece at The Blaze discusses proposed election reforms, specifically the requirement for paper-only ballots with voting only on Election Day, and how this is unintentionally an invitation for Democrats to engage in suppression of Republican voters via ballot shortages.

I revisit my experiences in Democrat-controlled Travis County (Austin) Texas in the 1980s, when it was a built-in feature on Election Day that the county Democrats who ran elections would provide an insufficient number of ballots to conservative precincts, thus giving Republican voters the option of either waiting hours for provisional ballots to arrive, or to just give up and not cast a vote.

There’s now a new, related gimmick Democrats are using – the inability to print a ballot for conservative voters.

The inability to print a ballot is ultimately no different than a refusal to provide a ballot to a voter. It is voter suppression.

The piece is behind a paywall, but if you have a Blaze subscription I’d be honored if you’d give it a read.

Have a great week.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 10:59 AM

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