This week, newspapers in the UK appear to be full of Carmageddon headlines.
Thanks to NetZeroWatch and Ballyb, for the compilation of EV warning signs on the road to West Debacle.
The big advantage of an EV used to be the cheap fill but that’s all changed in the least year with the energy crisis. If the workers can’t afford to turn on the oven to cook a Sunday Roast, they can hardly afford to power up a car.
In a bit of a bombshell last week, Volkswagon admitted that people weren’t buying their electric cars, quaintly referring to this phenomenon as “strong consumer reluctance”. Sales were so bad though, 30% down on forecasts, that they have closed the factory at Emden, Germany for six weeks and are sacking 300 out of 1,500 staff.
Meanwhile, the UK is speeding towards the 2030 EV mandate five years faster than the rest of the world, and the backlash is growing. A Daily Mail poll finds only 1 in 4 people think it’s a good idea to ban sales of petrol and diesel cars by 2030. Fully 53% of people don’t like it. Is the UK a democracy or not? Manufacturing and industry leaders are using words like “ruinous” and talking of “the end of UK car production.” They’re warning that 800,000 UK jobs are at risk. Nothing about this makes sense. EV’s are a lousy way to change the weather. No one even knows if EV’s will reduce carbon dioxide.
At the moment in the UK 36 cars are fighting over every public charging site. Electricity demand is expected to double in the UK due to EV’s yet there is no plan to provide the extra capacity. Perhaps the real plan is to get half the country onto electric buses…?
The electric car ‘revolution’ is a disaster before it’s begun
Politicians are forcing electric cars on a public that doesn’t want them
Ben Marlow, The Telegraph
The electric car revolution is stalling, of that there can no longer be any doubt. It has left the big global carmakers floundering…
But it’s the setback at VW that stands out, raising serious questions about whether politicians are making the catastrophic mistake of forcing electric cars on a public that doesn’t want them.
Think about it for a second: an entire industry not only forced to abandon a product that the vast majority of people still want and use, but also bullied into channelling all its resources into making something on a colossal level that there simply isn’t the market for – at least not within the horrendously short timeframe that is being imposed on car manufacturers.
It’s industrial self-sabotage and a commercial, economic and social catastrophe in the making.
Mandating EVs is an “assault on the working class” says Joel Kotkin.
EV owners are wealthier, the cars are more expensive, and mandates will put owning a car out of reach of the unwashed masses…
This rush to electric cars is a colossal mistake
Spiked Online
Replacing the massive $3 trillion global car industry is an extremely high-risk economic gamble, particularly for the West.
In simple terms, the push for EVs represents an assault on the working class. Two-thirds of all EV owners have incomes in excess of $100,000.
EV mandates are also likely to force up the price of now restricted traditional cars. In the meantime, greens will demand higher fuel prices to reduce drivers’ consumption of the demon petrol. Ultimately, as even the Washington Post recently admitted, electric vehicles are hastening a return to conditions not seen since the early 20th century, when the automobile was a luxury item. ‘New cars, once part of the American Dream, [are] now out of reach for many’, it notes.
Just to repeat… None of this makes sense. Even if people have a religious fixation on climate change, this isn’t the path to salvation:
Economist Bjorn Lomborg calculates that a wholesale shift to EVs will lead to a reduction of global temperatures of no more than 0.0002 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.
Kotkin asks “who benefits”:
So, who wins here? Certainly not middle- or working-class families for whom climate change barely registers as a primary concern.
…the biggest winner is China.
Today, China produces twice as many EVs as the US and the EU combined. Its leading EV maker, BYD, is now the world’s largest. Its electric-car exports are expected to almost double this year, helping it to overtake Japan as the biggest car exporter worldwide, according to the South China Morning Post.
China has control of much of the worlds rare metals. Giving up an industry with a century of expertise and mass public support for a new high risk industry that depends on foreign supply lines needs some explanation. No one believes we’re doing it to fix the weather.
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Joel Kotkin is a spiked columnist, the presidential fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and executive director of the Urban Reform Institute. His latest book, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism, is out now. Follow him on Twitter: @joelkotkin
Image by OpenIcons from Pixabay | Das Logo der Marke Volkswagen Nutzfahrzeuge | VW EV Photo by Vogler,
There was a young climate-change tzar,
Bought a brand new all E.V. car,
Found that very few joints,
Had quick charging points,
Means this car can’t venture too far.
–Ruairi