Guest Post by Eric Peters
A convergence is coming. It is already here.
It is no mere coincidence that EVs have so much in common with smartphones in that both are excellent devices for controlling your driving by monitoring it – and charging you for it. (Double entendre intended.)
No “dongle” required.
Continue reading “Your Smartphone and the Mafia”
While test driving the new Mercedes GLE 450 (you can read about that, here) I glanced down at the instrument cluster and noticed something you might be interested in.
The Benz is not an EV but it has something every EV has – a range remaining indicator. The difference is that the range remaining – in the Benz and in every vehicle that isn’t an EV – stays the same for longer.
We have all heard the term, “gas hog” and also that, in the “hoggiest” of them, you could watch the fuel gauge needle move as you pushed down on the accelerator pedal.
That’s the age of the average car in daily use – and a new record.
Several things can be gleaned from this number. The first is that cars made that long ago were – are – probably among the best cars ever made, if by that one means durable and reliable. Because it’s not really feasible to drive one that isn’t every day for as long as this.
It’s testimony to how good we’ve had it, as well.
And for a long time – now ending.
Cars were durable – and affordable. Almost anyone could afford to buy one – new – and after it was paid for, you could keep on driving it for a decade (or longer) after it was paid for. This meant not having to make payments for a decade or longer – which meant having money to pay for other things, including fuel and insurance, the two major peripheral costs associated with owning a car. But these were small costs relative to the monthly payment and once the latter was done with easy enough to pay for. Continue reading “Almost 14”
Guest Post by Eric Peters
The problem with getting hooked on something – whether it’s booze, or subsidies – is that it’s hard to quit once you are.
Just ask the car industry.
It has become dependent on subsidies – in the form of “tax breaks” – to get people to “buy” electric vehicles; the “buying” in air-fingers-quotation marks to mock the fact that when someone else is paying, you’re not really buying.
Tesla built its business model on this form of grift, elaborated in several ways. The way most people don’t even know about was using federal/state regulations that required other car companies – which at the time did not build any electric vehicles – to either build electric vehicles, in order to to satisfy “zero emissions” vehicle manufacturing quotas – or buy credits from Tesla that satisfied the requirement without having to actually build (and try to sell) EVs themselves.
In this manner, Tesla got his rivals to finance his business.
Not unlike having to pay salary of the cop who “pulled you over” via the “fine” you are made to pay for some conjured “offense.”
The lesser offense was using the government to make it easier to “sell” electric cars by paying the “buyer” a large sum of money – via tax rebates – to offset their otherwise unmarketable prices. Take $7,500 off the price (or cost) of any car and it is probable you’ll sell more of them.
Conversely, do not take $7,500 off and fewer people will buy them.
Chiefly because they can’t.
You can perhaps see why the industry got hooked on subsidies. Not just Tesla. The rest emulated Tesla’s business model, which – courtesy of the subsidies – was guided by glitz as well as grift. Market forces were subverted. Massive subsidies allowed Tesla to forget about cost and by dint of that, pursue an almost-cost-no-object approach to designing its cars, which have always emphasized power/performance primarily, with very little thought given to whether people can afford to buy that.
A few can, of course.
But the whole point – ostensibly – of the EV juggernaut is to largely replace existing non-electric vehicles with electric ones, in order to stave off the supposed “climate crisis.”
But – thanks to the subsidies – most electric cars cost as much or even more than non-electric luxury cars, with the average EV price tag just shy of $50,000. Put another way, subsidies have resulted in a juggernaut of $50k-plus electric vehicles flooding a market for which there are simply not enough market. Because there are only so many people who can afford $50k-plus vehicles – electric or not.
Replacing the existing fleet of internal-combustion powered Lexus, BMWs Porsche and Mercedes-Benz vehicles – which combined represents less than 20 percent of new vehicle sales because most people cannot afford a BMW, Porsche or Mercedes – is not going to stave off “climate change.”
The good news there, of course, is that the “climate” isn’t “changing” – at least not in the catastrophic way that serves as the artificial fuel of this artificially engendered hysteria.
The bad news – for the car industry – is that it’s hard to sell people on a Hyundai budget an electric Lexus.
Much less a $100,000 electric Hummer.
But the industry has bought into this cost-no-object business model – and the rest of us get to pay for it. Via the subsidies – which just got expanded – after the industry roused itself from its stupor and realized that, under the rubric of the recently passed “Inflation Reduction act” (which had as much to do with “inflation” as Social Security has to do with an annuity) the subsidies for many EVs would no longer apply to many EVs that cost more than $55,000.
This being dangerously close to the price of a Tesla Model 3 or Ford Mach3. Add a few options – including the optional “long range” battery” – and many EVs exceeded the subsidy threshold. The would-be buyer discovers he’ll be paying the full price – as opposed to getting a $7,500 kickback from the government – and decides not to buy.
Cue the hue and cry.
And it was heard. The subsidy qualification has been expanded by redefining which EVs qualify.
Guess which ones?
The very ones that cost too much for too many people to buy without the subsidies – i.e., models like the Model 3 and Mach-e “Mustang” (which is a “Mustang” to the same extent that Rachel Levine is a “she”). Sales were decreasing because the price of these models increased once the subsidy was no longer available.
Right on cue – as a result of the cry – the previous (very temporary, as it turned out) $55,000 “cap” – on subsidization of electric coupes, sedans and crossovers – has been lifted.
One can “buy” an $80,000 electric truck or SUV and still qualify for the $7,500 subsidy.
The time is probably not far distant when people who buy $800,000 homes will qualify for subsidies, too – if they use “green” building materials.
But the point – as regards EVs – is that the subsidies have turned the industry into a lumbering junkie who has become dependent on subsidies, just the same as a heroin addict is on his “fix.” Both get excitable when they think they might not be able to get their next one, too.
The great irony here is that the subsidization of EVs has badly hurt the case for EVs, if there ever was one to begin with.
If you believe that “climate change” is an existential crisis, it won’t be solved by encouraging the manufacture of $50k-plus EVs that emphasize luxury and performance (often at the cost of practicality) that most people can’t afford to indulge – rather than economy, efficiency and practicality.
The problem with the latter, of course, is that economy, efficiency and practicality aren’t as appealing as luxury and performance, especially to the affluent – who aren’t interested in making “sacrifices” to stave off the supposed “climate crisis.”
They just want to look as if they are.
And they want you to “help” them pay for it.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
There is a creepy consanguinity between the marketing and selling of the “masks” and then “vaccines” – and the marketing and selling of electric vehicles. It makes you wonder whether there might be a relationship . . .
They arose as the “solution” to supposedly dire problems that – we were told – required immediate, right now amelioration. No time to wait and see – or even think before we’re obliged to act. The rush-rush tactics of the time-share selling fraudster, in other words. The “virus” is going to kill tens of millions – maybe more! – unless everyone “masks,” right now (and forever more). Stays home – and stays away from others. The “climate” is going to “change” – unless we change, overnight, to driving electric cars.
And never mind whether they actually “work,” either.
Just as it was with “masks” – and then the “vaccines” – all the accruing evidence that they don’t was suppressed and pilloried. We were told half-truths and outright lies to get us to “mask” – and then to take the drugs that didn’t confer immunity on anyone, either. But did confer myocarditis – and god-only-knows-what-else – on many who were tricked into taking them.
Just the same with electric cars. Continue reading “First, They Lied About the Range . . .”
Guest Post by Eric Peters
It’s not so much that the future is “electric.” It is that in the future they have planned for us, only the affluent will drive electric cars.
Everyone else will not be able to drive.
If that sounds extravagant, consider two facts. The first is that – aside from a very few, very small models like the Chevy Bolt and Nissan Leaf – the entry price point of the typical electric car is about $50,000. Most “transact” – that is, sell – for considerably more than that. Leaving aside the fact that we are talking about electric cars, that price point defines luxury cars – which are cars that by definition are bought by affluent people only.
And there are only so many of those.
The price of these electric luxury vehicles is going up, too. Not down – as the electric car propagandists have insisted they would, when they were selling the gullible public on EVs.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
At what point does the plug get pulled? Not the one that plugs into the wall. The one that plugs into our wallets – to subsidize the ongoing “purchase” of electric cars?
Air-fingers-quote-marks to emphasize the point.
The subsidies for electric cars were supposed to only be a temporary measure. We were told – as they always tell us, when it comes to this kind of thing – that it was necessary to make nascent electric cars more “affordable” by using the tax code to bribe people to buy them, using other people’s money – because EVs could not otherwise “compete” with non-electric cars.
Guest Post by The Zman
Most everyone has looked down at the fuel gauge and suddenly realized the tank is very close to empty. Maybe it is the idiot light going on as you pass the sign that reads “last stop for food or fuel for X miles.” The worst one is when this happens in a rural area or at night. The prospect of being stranded on the side of the road for a very long time quickly crowds out other thoughts. It is a terrible feeling. Almost all of us are conditioned to make sure this never happens.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
A number of problems stand athwart the Electrification Agenda, which is supposed to be accomplished fact less than nine years from now – come 2030. Perhaps the single biggest problem is the fact that even if every car maker makes nothing but electric cars by then – or sooner, as several have “committed to” already – there will still be a lot of non-electric cars for a long time to come.
Well beyond 2030.
Continue reading “A Pothole in the Path of the Electrification Agenda”
Guest Post by Eric Peters
Would you wait 15 minutes to get a fast-food hamburger?
Electric cars will make you wait longer. This includes even those which are touted as being capable of receiving a “fast” charge in 15 minutes or so. Because you’ll have to wait for the car plugged-in ahead of you to “fast” charge.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
A vampire’s continued existence depends on the continuous flow of the blood of the living. The same principle animates Tesla and other purveyors of electric cars – who are about to receive another $2 billion-plus from FiatChrysler (FCA) over the course of the next three years.
This ought to stave off bankruptcy long enough to bankrupt legitimate car companies like FCA (which choose not to purvey electric cars, because people aren’t buying them).
Guest Post by Eric Peters
There’s only so much lipstick you can put on a pig. Eventually, even Stevie Wonder can tell what it is – if only by feel.
Well, some EV owners were feeling mighty cold last week. Nervous, too. About the effect of cold weather on their electric cars. Apparently, no one told them that using electrically powered accessories – like the heater – draws power from the battery which propels the electric car.
Resulting in it being propelled less far.
Guest Post by Eric Peters
The verbiage is interesting. As the country relies ever more on force to coerce, it resorts to soft language to hide what is going on.
For example, this news story about what the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers – which is the lobby for the car industry – is up to. The Alliance published an open letter to nine governors of states it wants to emulate California’s policy of coercively – legislatively – force-feeding electric cars down the throats of a largely uninterested and unwilling buying public.
It’s not put that way in the letter, of course. Nor the news articles about it – the journalists who write them having learned to parrot the oleaginous verbiage of coercion, whether consciously or not.