Locator: 48504EVS.
Updates
February 8, 2025, less than a day after updating current EV situation, we get this from Trump (as expected and "forecast" below), link here:
Original Post
Some months ago I said I wasn't going to blog about EVs any more and explained why.
But the story is incredibly compelling after Ford's 4Q24 earnings call.
Below the fold: re-posting a long post on EVs from last month.
- crisis? VW warns of closures and job losses amid EV struggles;
- today: Tesla lost ground to VW, SEAT in EU's top electric car market, BNN Bloomberg;
- holy mackerel, today: Volkswage cancels ID.7 EV for North America amid "challenging EV climate"; link here.
- today: exclusive -- VW's SEAT boss warns Spanish jobs at risk of China-made EV tariff is not lowered; link here; Reuters.
- this will be VW's cheapest electric car, but the production model isn't coming until 2027; the concept debuts next month (March, 2025); link here.
- last October: VW's state-of-the-art EV plant spirals toward collapse; link here;
- Fortune: electric mobility has "won the race" but VW hits brakes on EV strategy; link here.
Other links that caught my attention this morning:
- Porsche, perhaps the most startling EV story so far today, link here. Just the other day, everything suggested Porsche was all in.
- Eric Nuttall noted the same: link here.
EVs sell well when gasoline prices are high and there's a concern about shortage of oil going forward. Right now, gasoline prices are fairly high but stable; and there's no concern about any shortage of oil going forward.
Trump has yet to weigh in and we know where he stands on EVs.
Google California EV sales.
The problem with EVs, link here. To the best of my knowledge this has not changed, and this is why EVs will fail:
- I never ask about range
- I never ask about the kind of pump I need to use
- type of connector
- type of charging station
- the size of the tire which affects range
- range on a fully charged battery (see below)
- a very cold day
- a “normal” day
- a very hot day
- level charging station: level 1, 2, or 3
- how long does it take to fully charge the vehicle
- how do I know when it is optimally charged? What is the optimal charging range?
- advertised range vs actual range (this is more relevant than you will ever realize until after you’ve bought the car);
- EVs: the difference between kW and kWh;
- The Verge 2022 F-150 Lightning review: link here.
- EV energy ratings. Link here.
- EVs with longest range; depends on size of the tires: 18"; 19"; 20"; 21"
- there are 70 cars in this list, supposedly every EV available, ranked worse to best "efficiency"
- #70: the worst: the 2021 Hyundai IONIQ Electric
- #62: the 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EV
- #54: the 2022 Chevrolet Bolt EUV
- #1, the best: 2022 Audi 3-tron S 21"
- #3, third best, the 2022 Rivian R1S (large pack) 21"
- among the top 12: Audi (4); Rivian (2); Porsche Taycan / Taycan (6)
- charging your EV;
- charging stations;
- level 1 vs level 2 charging stations;
- the left side of the graph/chart:
- the charging stations you see in parking lots around town
- measured in kW (you don't even have to know what a kW is -- just know that's how EV charging station ports are "rated;
- in the example: one charging port is rated at 7.5 kW; the other charting port is rated at 60 kW
- some existing ports are now rated higher than 60 kW
- as time goes on, the ratings will increase in size (power)the right side of the chart:
- this is your car, your EV
- when you talk to your dealer or to you friend, you will ask about / talk about the "size of the battery" or the "battery's energy" -- or whatever the phrase is
- if you don't have much money, the EV you buy will have a battery with a lower energy rating, such as 15 kWh in this example;
- if you are rich, you will be able to afford an EV with a "bigger battery" -- such as 120 kWh in this example
- like most things in life (but not golf scores), bigger is better
- buy the "biggest" EV you can afford
- when you pull into a charging station, the greater the rating of the charging station, in this case 7.5 vs 56, the faster you can charge your EV
- so, why doesn't everyone just plug into the the charging port / station with the higher / highest rating, 56 in this case
- you can't plug your cheap little EV into a charging station that has too much power for your little pathetic EV
- so, in the example above, if your pathetic little EV is rated at 15 kWh, it cannot plug into a charging unit with a higher rating.
- so, in the example above, you can only plug your 15-kWh-rated pathetic little EV into the 7.5-kW-rated charging port / station
In the graphic above, the bigger car rated at 120kWh pulls up to the charging unit rated at 60kW. The car takes a charge for two hours. Two (2) hrs x 60 kW = 120 kWh which is what the bigger car in the graph above is rated.
Charging Stations
- 120 volts — AC
- your garage
- absolutely worthless
- 240 volts — AC
- can be installed in your garage
- In the Target parking lot
- at 60 kW, two hours to “achieve” 120 kWh, so four hours to fully charge a soccer mom’s SUV
- 480 volts — DC
- not at your house, ever
Connectors
- J1772: level 1 and level 2
- CCS1: level 3
Miscellaneous
- hybrids are fake EVs -- they are the worst thing one can buy in the "EV family" but Ford is now transitioning to hybrids ... more on that later. Ford will sell a lot of hybrids, as well as Toyota will sell a lot of hybrids. That's good for the car companies but bad for you; really bad for the roads (but you won't care about that); and really, really, bad for the environment (again, something you won't care about. You will be happy just knowing that you are part of the EV community).
- Ford is "going all out" with hybrids. Link here.
- charging stations prone to “breaking down”; generally, outside of big cities, if the charging station you visit is “out of order,” you are really “out of luck.” If you thought running out of gas is bad, you haven’t experienced the seventh level of hell until you experience a dead battery and a broken charging unit.
********************************
EVs
From the blog, January 9, 2025.
Wow,
this was talked about on the blog years ago -- how this would
absolutely devastate the automobile industry -- trapped between the
California mandates and the reality almost everywhere else. The
Obama/Biden legacy/reputation, with regard to EVs, will go the way of
Angela Merkel in Germany.
The years just keep getting warmer. I mean this facetiously. At first, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told us 2016 was 0.94 degree warmer than the 20th-century average. Then the agency raised its estimate by several steps to 1 degree in 2020 before dropping it back to 0.99 perhaps under Trump influence. With Democrats back in charge under President Biden, 2016 started getting warmer again, reaching 1.03 degrees in 2023. The latest NOAA chart shows it 1.04 degrees warmer than the baseline.
Consider it a small evidence of what David Samuels, in a widely noted article, calls the legacy of Obama-era “permission structures.” By permission structures, he means a “whole of society” strategy of pressure and subtle bullying to force buy-in of Obama goals. I hit on a similar formula in 2012 when I explained that Mr. Obama imposed his will by giving voters “permission to think highly of themselves for thinking highly of him.”
One residue, which NOAA obviously participated in, was the permission structure behind today’s gathering boondoggle created by Obama-era mandated investment in electric vehicles.
A feature Mr. Samuels stresses is an Obamaesque ability to substitute new, instantly embraced ideas for old, instantly embraced ideas. In his first two years, Joe Biden justified his giant increase in EV subsidies and mandates by citing the “existential risk” of global climate change. Then that argument was junked overnight. EVs became a “strategic” technology that must be protected from Chinese competition.
Both arguments were nonsense, as I belabored here, yet were seamlessly echoed in the media in turn. Subsidizing green-energy consumption is simply to subsidize energy consumption, including fossil energy. EVs are “strategic” only for China, to reduce its reliance on imported oil in anticipation of military conflict with the U.S. For the rest of the world, including the U.S., electric cars are a consumer technology, albeit a fast-emerging and promising one. Sensibly, they’re also a technology that should have been left to consumers and carmakers to adapt and develop without distorting handouts and mandates.
The result is finally in view: a colossal self-destruction of the Western auto industry, with Germany’s at the forefront. Volkswagen is in a panic about Chinese competition to the money-losing EVs that Berlin forces the company to sell. Germany’s export-led economy is in free fall. Its bellwether auto giant, VW, is pursuing its first-ever domestic factory closures and layoffs.
Likewise, Ford CEO Jim Farley sees his company’s survival in the U.S. threatened by Chinese EVs given the tens of thousands of dollars Ford already loses on each of its government-mandated electric vehicles. The author of Germany’s auto mess, Angela Merkel, is now reviled as an unprincipled bandwagon grabber.
Don’t kid yourself.
The same reputational fate is coming for Messrs. Obama and Biden. Mr. Biden’s EV protectionism is America’s admission of defeat. The U.S. went from “Americans must buy EVs to save the planet” to “Americans must be prevented from buying cheap, high-quality Chinese EVs to preserve a government-created domestic boondoggle.”
Much more at the link.
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