The left likes to treat skeptics of electrical cars as if they were Luddites. Truth is, making an existing product less efficient but more expensive doesn’t really meet the definition of innovation.
Even the purported amenities and technological advances EV makers like to brag about in their ads have been a regular feature of gas-powered vehicles going back generations. At best, EVs, if they fulfill their promise, are a lateral technology.
This is why there is no real “emerging market” for EVs in the United States as much as there’s an industrial policy in place that props up EVs with government purchases, propaganda, state subsidies, cronyism, taxpayer-backed loans, and edicts. The green “revolution” is an elite-driven, top-down technocratic project.
And it’s increasingly clear that the only reason giant rent-seeking carmakers are so heavily invested in EV development is that the government is promising to limit the production of gas-powered cars artificially.
In August 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order to set a target for half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 to be zero-emission. California claims to ban combustion engines in all new cars in about ten years. So, carmakers adopt business models to deal with these distorted incentives and contrived theoretical markets of the future.
In today’s real-world economy, Ford projects it will lose $3 billion on electric vehicles in 2023, bringing its EV losses to $5.1 billion over two years. In 2021, Ford reportedly lost $34,000 on every EV it made. This year, it was losing more than $58,000 on every EV. In a normal world, Ford would be dramatically scaling back EV production, not expanding it. Remember that next time; we need to bail out Detroit.
Too expensive Won’t Last Not Dependable Will Fade Away over Time !!!!!!
A 1000 pound EV battery typically contains about 25 pounds of lithium, 30 pounds of cobalt, 60 pounds of nickel, 110 pounds of graphite, 90 pounds of copper, about 400 pounds of steel, aluminum, and various plastic components. In total then, acquiring just these five elements to produce the 1000-pound EV battery requires mining about 90,000 pounds (over 40 tonnes) of ore. When accounting for all the earth moved (i.e. the materials first dug up to get to the ore), one battery requires digging and moving between 200,000 and 1,500,000 pounds (or between 90 and 680 tonnes) of earth per battery. These figures don’t include the vast quantity of materials and chemicals used to process and refine all the various ores. They don’t count other materials used when compared with a conventional car, such as replacing steel with aluminum to offset the weight penalty of the battery. Also excluded is the non-battery, electrical systems used in an electric vehicle. These add substantially to the environmental footprint as they use 300 percent more overall copper compared to a conventional vehicle. And there’s no mention of the coal mined to produce the energy for charging an electric vehicle overnight. On top of that, the green weenies don’t want want to admit that at the end of the day, these batteries end up in landfill, harming the environment and leaching toxic leachates into the groundwater.
I bought an SULEV – 90% fewer emissions and great gas mileage (I commute a lot for work). It won’t suddenly catch fire, works in all weather conditions and is economical to use. I’ve yet to see an EV that matches it.
WHEN will everyone figure it was never about being Green – its about the politicians making money on a cause?
Times change early Automobiles were dismissed as the play toys of the rich Elites the Horse and Buggy folk never imagined they would catch on. They did and so did Big Oil and Democratized manufacturing and more importantly BUYING ON TIME. The product was not dependable then just like new technology now it’s just a shifting paradigm and people are reluctant to embrace change but ultimately it’s what we end up doing because it will end up ALL that is offered to you. It’s never liberating progression for common folk BUT someone is making MONEY. It’s cheaper to mine Lithium in the third world than pay living wages here to oil extractors. We have been burning whatever we could get our hands on since we lived in Caves. The more things change the more they stay the same our organic dependencies just change. Don’t whine for similar times. Invest wisely. Mr. Albero’s fortune itself is inherited from patented lighting technologies his father improved. That’s how it goes.
Are you freakin nuts? I never inherited a damn thing from my Father and in fact HE was one of my distributors in California for many years, he worked for ME. My father also never improved anything for my manufacturing company. Mind you, my father invented many things in his lifetime, he was a genius. I’m just not sure where you ever got the idea he had anything to do with my success. Keep in mind, I moved him from the west coast to the shore and I am the one who provided him a home at no charge in Powellville. Get you facts straight please.