Matthew Lynn – The Telegraph Feb 2, 2024
France’s President Macron had a plan to make millions of electric vehicles a year. Chancellor Scholz planned to put 15 million on Germany’s roads by 2030. President Biden trumped the lot with a $174bn (£138bn) plan to make the US the world leader. Even Boris Johnson – remember him – had a £1bn plan to beef up our charging network.
Rewind only a couple of years, and almost every president or prime minister was making electric vehicles the cornerstone of an industrial strategy. And yet, this week we have learned that Renault is abandoning plans to separately list its electric vehicle (EV) and software business, while Volvo is winding down its Polestar electric sports car subsidiary.
In reality, amid an onslaught of Chinese competition, and falling sales, the West’s electric vehicle dream is quickly unravelling – and we need to relearn all the lessons in why grand, state-led industrial strategies never work.
It was not so long ago that countries were competing furiously to launch battery-powered visions of the future. With Tesla riding the wave of green demand to become the world’s largest car manufacturer, measured by market value if not volume, and with ambitious net zero targets to meet, they all wanted to make sure they could compete in electric vehicles.
We would reduce carbon emissions, create many jobs, and shore up our industrial base. Sure, governments would have to commit a few billions – or tens of billions – to make it happen. But it would pay for itself many times over.
And yet, right now, plans for an EV-led industrial revolution are in full-scale retreat.
Renault, despite the programme of state support, has this week scrapped the separate listing of its EV unit Ampere, which has been scheduled for the first half of the year. It was a “pragmatic decision” according to the company’s chief executive Luca de Meo, arguing that falling sales for EVs across Europe meant the market was more challenging than forecast.
Likewise, Volvo announced that it would stop funding its EV unit, Polestar, and might even offload its 48pc stake on other shareholders, including China’s Geely. Last September, Volkswagen said it was cutting production of two of its flagship EV models, while in November, Ford said it was scaling back its battery plant in Michigan.
It looks like all those “well-paid green jobs” are going to take a little longer to arrive than anyone anticipated. As for the payback on huge sums various governments have “invested” in the industry, it looks like the returns on that money will take a while to come through as well.
There is nothing wrong with EVs themselves. They are often great as run-arounds for dense urban environments, and as long as the raw materials are sourced correctly, and the chargers are not powered by coal-burning generators, they are probably a little better for the environment than the petrol version.
If people want them, then that’s great. The trouble with the industry right now is that demand is falling because the vehicles cost far more than anyone expected, and what market there is will be captured by Chinese manufacturers such as BYD that can make vehicles far more cheaply than anyone in the West can. The result? A lot of government money will be wasted.
There is a lesson in the humiliating climbdown. State-led industrial strategies never work. Indeed, the failure of the drive into EV is a textbook example of everything that goes wrong.
First, it backs the wrong industries. No one really has any idea what products people might want in five or ten years time, which is why it is best to leave it to private companies and their investors to make their own bets, reap the rewards when they get it right, and bear the losses when they don’t.
Politicians and bureaucrats are no better at making those decisions, as usually a lot worse. Don’t believe me? Just ask consumers. Hertz in the US is disposing of the 20,000 EVs it bought with great fanfare in recent years, and is replacing them with petrol models, due to lack of demand. Over the past year, figures from the Society for Motor Manufacturers and Traders revealed a steep fall in EV interest from private buyers.
Next, the state over-invests. Even if there is a small market for EVs, there certainly wasn’t space for huge new industries in France, Germany, the US, or in a dozen smaller countries. The car industry was awash with over-capacity already, and that was before the Government started throwing billions at electric vehicle plants. All that happens is that prices collapse, and no one makes any money.
Finally, it distorts the market with subsidies. Governments start out spending a few billion on new EV factories, then they have to start subsidising the EVs so that people actually buy them, then they have to impose tariffs and quotas to stop imports from countries where other government have invested too much.
Finally, they have to pay out even more to keep alive the factories making a product that no one wants. It’s a vicious cycle, and once it starts it is very hard to stop.
The one relief for the UK is that our political and administrative class was too inept to pour even more money in, despite the best efforts of the former PM’s Theresa May and Boris Johnson to splurge a few tens of billions into the “race for EVs” and the endless warnings that we risked “getting left behind’”. We will be spared the worst of the pain ahead.
In reality, the volte-face on the electrification of the auto industry is underway. Major manufacturers have started to pull back, but all the grand projects for battery factories, for shiny new EV plants, and for charging infrastructure, will inevitably be scrapped very soon.
Billions of taxpayer’s money will have been wasted. We should draw the lesson from that, as bitter as it might prove. The Government never knows what the industries of the future will be – and should leave it to entrepreneurs and customers to work that out.
Courtesy Les Visible
Source https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/02/02/west-humiliating-electric-car-climbdown-begun/
“We would reduce carbon emissions, create many jobs, and shore up our industrial base. ”
Absolute nonsense. People just don’t want electric cars, it’s as simple as that.
“There is nothing wrong with EVs themselves. ”
Eh, really? What about their propensity to burst into flames and explode?
“We need to relearn all the lessons in why grand, state-led industrial strategies never work.”
See the monumental lie in the quoted statement?
Industrial strategies are based on solid science and economics.
EVs, and most green tech isn’t based on any science or economics.
There’s only one reason why Nazi UK has a weed bed of wind turbines, and that is debt. They have illegally trash the value and restrict the use of your legally purchased diesel vehicle, with taxes, in order to force the thicko sheeple to buy trash EVs, and they are trash.
I was commenting with some EV idiot on a NaziTube thread, and he just couldn’t get his head around seperate meters for EV charging units, at your home, and much higher tariffs. We are nowhere near the tipping point, but when it comes, EV drivers will have the nuts in the Nazi vice.
As to China, they makes lots of EVs, but they have fields and fields of registered (so sold to no one) of EVs that no one wants. Hertz just decided to sell off their entire 20,000 Tesla fleet, because no one wants them, and they cost a fortune to fix.
Your typical EV after a crash. Any sign of battery damage, and it will be scrapped. EVs are more than not even green, they are a liability. Saw a vid on NaziTube, EV catches fire, 4 other vehicles, one being a lorry, all burnt out, scrapped. 3 London buses, all EVs, caught fire, but it’s not just the loss of three buses, they will need to be replaced. A monumental carbon footprint, not that I believe in carbon crap.
This is your usual Nazi corruption, but will anyone stand trial for enforcing Nazi sect beliefs based on diddly squat?
A state led industrial strategy was the French building a high speed rail network over 70 years ago. That’s what you call an industrial strategy, and the UK hasn’t come close to their high speed rail network, and it might never happen.
Matthew Lynn, just your regular Nazi presstitute.
We simply have to adapt the power grid to a higher demand. And ze problem is, that all the politicians are scripted clowns, waiting for instructions on paper. Every move they make has to fit into ze great plan. And that slows down all the technical measures.
Third electric London bus catches fire in the space of two weeks – as operator launches probe and starts urgent check of 380 similar vehicles in its fleet
By Dan Woodland
Published: 09:18, 25 January 2024
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13005001/london-bus-fire-panic-capital-flames.html
Just one reprt of many instances of electric vehicle fires, some of which have cost lives.
In the interests of generating “clean energy”…
I’m surprised that some Govt “Think” Tank hasn’t come up with the bright idea – Yet! – of having everyone walk around wearing one of those baseball-cap with a propellor on top!
😂
Like the COVID ‘vaccine,’ it has been a sick joke from beginning and will be to its prospective end. And, this was the brainchild of the Corporate State…the gang of folks who just want to be immensely wealthy at our expense….the State–like the politicians who are always there to blame–is just a tool of the oligarchs… something to point to when things go awry for them so they don’t have to take the blame for their crimes against humanity.
This EV topic was discussed at length over at
https://www.ericpetersautos.com/
>>> There is nothing wrong with EVs themselves. <<<
EVERYTHING is WRONG with EV's you DA!
It takes only a tit bit of research 2 come 2 that conclusion.
Don't be fooled!!
Ever thought of the elctro-magnetic field the driver / passengers have 2 endure while driving??!
'Melt downs' from the accu-packs are NOT uncommon..
Better 2 drive on hydrogen-on-demand aka driving on water 🙂
how is ,you leftgreen ecology fuckers, with sparing energy costs,
CO2 reduction (has nothing to do with climate !), antiA plants,
releasing Methane gas by fracking + Nordstream blowup,
poisoning groundwaters by fracking, Chemtrailing air + wasting
energies in continuing US war terrors ? ? ? ! ! !
WHITE INTELECTUAL IDIOTS !
Back to combustion engines! They are fun and always usefull even after a catastrophe if there are no roads anymore .. even the gases of a woodstove can make em run ..
Don’t worry about it, the Overlords are still intent on phasing out gas fueled vehicles for these electric cars. It might take them a little longer than 2030, to totally implement this techno-Commie scheme, but they have all the time in the world, since they control the world.
“…carbon emissions…”–they do not think for one second about the words they are using; their image is of people getting coal or oil out of the ground, burning it, and letting some carbon, in CO2, go into the atmosphere and heat it up, according to a loopy new theory from the 1980s, and if only the carbon were kept in the ground, it would not heat the Earth like Venus is heated by its almost purely CO2 atmosphere. Of course, Venus is not heated by its incredibly slow rotation rate which bakes it on one side at a time for over a hundred days (but I forgot my main point, which was simpler)
Georgia has spent billions on infrastructure for the Rivian plant being built on previous farmland
that the majority of the neighbors don’t want and have filed lawsuits and held protests against to no avail since the state is gung ho to throw money at this project.Before the plant is anywhere near completion Tesla and Ford and probably other manufacturers are scaling back on productiion because consumers are not able to shell out $80,000 for these things and many wouldn’t want one for $20,000.Most compact ICE cars average 35 to 40 MPG so not much savings with an EV unless you could charge it for free.And in a very short time an EV will have little resell value.
As a kid, batteries never appealed to me in toys because they had to be replaced when they ran out- even rechargeable batteries eventually wear out. Replacing the ordinary car battery is expensive & inconvenient enough. Batteries of any kind, including solar battery panels, are always a temporary means of energy & are hazardous when disposed of.
Electric vehicles are not a viable alternative and don’t decrease the carbon footprint.[ if one wants to believe carbon footprint is legit concept ] The raw materials needed to manufacture batteries do not exist in sufficient quantities to provide for even a small fraction of what is needed to replace gas and diesel engine vehicles. The same multinational JWO cartels that control energy control mining industry worldwide. Elements needed for E-car batteries line their pockets , same as gas or diesel . They sacrifice nothing. Forbes magazine article link and excerpt below. Forbes is MSM and exposes this. E-cars are a deliberately engineered disaster.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/tilakdoshi/2020/08/02/the-dirty-secrets-of-clean-electric-vehicles/?sh=6351bc56650b
” There are 7.2 million battery EVs or about 1% of the total vehicle fleet today. To get an idea of the scale of mining for raw materials involved in replacing the world’s gasoline and diesel-fueled cars with EVs, we can take the example of the UK as provided by Michael Kelly, the Emeritus Prince Philip Professor of Technology at the University of Cambridge. According to Professor Kelly, if we replace all of the UK vehicle fleet with EVs, assuming they use the most resource-frugal next-generation batteries, we would need the following materials: about twice the annual global production of cobalt; three quarters of the world’s production lithium carbonate; nearly the entire world production of neodymium; and more than half the world’s production of copper in 2018.
AND THIS IS JUST FOR THE UK . Professor Kelly estimates that if we want the whole world to be transported by electric vehicles, the vast increases in the supply of the raw materials listed above would go far beyond known reserves.
The environmental and social impact of vastly-expanded mining for these materials — some of which are highly toxic when mined, transported and processed – in countries afflicted by corruption and poor human rights records can only be imagined. The clean and green image of EVs stands in stark contrast to the realities of manufacturing batteries. “
Oh please. The EV was mostly a distraction. The real plan has been NO CARS except for the billionaire class.
@ antiJHWH
You are blinded by racism. Please learn the difference between White,Anglo-Saxons and jews. Colonialism was the City of London corporations. Whites and Anglo -Saxons in the home country had it worse than the colonised.
This video on how dangerous lithium batteries are was posted on youtube seven days ago, it is scary to say the least.
Sorry, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnKm9-S0_UY
After taking a day-long road trip with a friend, it was apparent that the EV “Rapture” is a fraud. Decision was entirely based upon charging logistics; the. Ar was rather nifty and might be useful for getting around town, if everyone else else did not have or need one.
Talk about delusions and the madness of crowds! Someone should start an EV car company branded “Tulip.”
vasting energies for lunatic ideologies .
inclusive all ideologies running around
from white + jewish societies today + since
150 years . I bless the blacks : they have no
crazy white ideologies !
YOU DONT IMPROVE THIS PLANET
WITH YOUR CRAZY IDEOLOGIES !
Dayne nailed it in his comment above.
Evey time I see someone in a Tesla on the road, I think, “What a f*cking idiot.”
If one can afford, can park it AWAY from the domicile, charge it, I can see how it might be a great second car. The tech has some success in hybrids, (the Prius for best example) and the Japanese deserve alot of cred for that. Hydrogen power has great promise too. But til everybody works out their bugs, give me a gas powered, reliable, reasonably priced Ford EVERY TIME. Tesla, (like Icarus) got a little too close to the sun.
I just want to say that I am disappointed with this site in respect of posters in the comments section.
I do not see this site as a ‘social’ media site. I have no interest in any of them, ever.
I enjoy reading others’ comments if written well and understandable. I have never read newspapers or watched any television for over 60 years and am the better for it but I do a great deal of research and have written hundreds of articles on contentious subjects.
For myself, I have never ‘followed’ any political, religious or any other ‘organisation’, thus I can retain my independence from everything.
I find it total ignorance of those who keep using terms such as Nazi/Natzism in every ill-written comment and especially those who paste silly smilies in their work. This is not professional and what do they mean anyway?
I find it strange that non-first language speakers write better English than those of whom it is a first language.
Please also refrain from using acronyms that are not explained for those of us who can have no knowledge of their meaning and should be accompanied by full stops. Posts are worthless if they cannot be understood and ‘gut’ reactions are not acceptable in proper discourse.