Tuesday

9.3 out of 10 based on 12 ratings

Monday

8.3 out of 10 based on 18 ratings

Surprise!? CEO of JP Morgan says “Trump was kinda right” and his supporters deserve respect

By Jo Nova

Did Wall Street just step away from the poisonous left?

The head of the largest bank in the US said the unthinkable in Davos this week. Jamie Dimon, CEO of J.P. Morgan, and perhaps the most important banker in New York and thus the US, warned the Democrats that they were making a mistake demonizing Trump supporters. He even admitted Trump got some things “kind of” right, suggested rather radically that it was time people grew up “I mean, really?” he said “Can we stop that stuff” and  “treat other people with respect and listen to them a little bit?”

Normally, JP Morgan can be counted to be on the same side as the big banker WEF cabal, or to some extent, driving it. Dimon has spent the last three months talking up Nikki Haley. So he is going right off the ranch here.

“I wish the Democrats would think a little more carefully when they talk about MAGA,” Dimon told CNBC on Wednesday from the World Economic Forum in Davos.

“I don’t think they are voting for Trump because of his family values,” Dimon said. “Just take a step back and be honest: He was kind of right about NATO. He was kind of right about immigration. He grew the economy quite well. Tax reform worked.”

Jamie Dimon seems be aware not only that Trump might win, but that the Democrats are fueling his campaign by maligning his supporters, in much the same way Hillary did when she called half the nation “Deplorables”. Obviously, if Trump wins, Dimon doesn’t want The President as an enemy. But it’s more than that — even though he’s speaking as if he’s a Democrat fan giving them advice — really he is backing slowly away from a trainwreck.

Earlier in the same interview he was passionate about the disaster that is uncontrolled immigration. He said “if you do not control the borders you are going to destroy the country”. Those are fighting words, not the tip-toeing “kinda right” verbiage, and it’s an implicit endorsement of the Trump trademark Build the Wall policy of 2016.

It’s as if he might have realized they created a monster. Destroying the country is a dynamite phrase. Even though both sides of the political spectrum will be listening to his every word, this is not kindly advice to the Democrats.  Even if Democrats promised to “build a wall,” it’s too late now. Who would believe they’d do it come inauguration day? It’s way past that.

Quite possibly there’s another event cracking the socialist facade across the West, and that’s the unspoken dark hellfire of October 7th in Israel. That lifted the veil on the crazy pro-terrorist part of the Democrats — the apologists for baby beheading. Jamie Dimon didn’t mention that, but there are plenty of Jewish folk on Wall Street, and plenty of their non-Jewish colleagues have been mortified by the glee, the jubilation of barbarism inflicted on democratic voters that was expressed by large parts of today’s Democratic Party. The activist left are calling Donald Trump an existential threat to democracy, but then cheering on invaders who rape and murder women and send their mom a video of their “great success”. And who are those people coming uninvited and unvetted over the border of the USA?

Maybe we’ve reached a point where some of those pumping for Big-Gov have glimpsed the heart of darkness inside the Trojan Socialist Horse?

If the bankers of Wall Street are stepping away from the Democrats, even cheating may not save the political left in this election. (Though jail or assassination are still in the toolkit).

If the person saying this was just a wayward billionaire, the talking heads on CNN and CNBC would be outraged. But Jamie Dimon controls a company with $4 trillion dollars in assets. He eats small banks for breakfast. After 200+ years on Wall Street, JP Morgan Chase is embedded at the core of the largest financial centre of the largest economy on Earth.

Notice how the CNN team quickly adopted his stance (albeit through gritted teeth for some). Then they steered the conversation back to their favorite hunting grounds of “personality” and character politics — and away from dangerous talk of actual policies and things that might affect millions of Americans.

Below in a longer part of the interview, Dimon stays “on the WEF ranch” until about 3:10 when he talks about immigration:

“We have to control the borders, … if you do not control the borders you are going to destroy the country.”

 

When the CEO of a $500 billion dollar company speaks, everyone listens.

In other pieces of this puzzle, Dimon describes himself as “barely a Democrat” though he donates “serious cash” to the Democrats. He once said ‘My heart is Democratic but my brain is kind of Republican’.  Six months ago Dimon  hinted that he might consider serving his country (as President) himself.

And once, a long long time time ago, he was asked if he was interested in being the Treasury Secretary by the 45th President himself. He said he wasn’t interested at the time. Perhaps that’s changed?

hat tip to DD. It is extraordinary indeed.

 

 

 

9.8 out of 10 based on 93 ratings

Sunday

8.6 out of 10 based on 19 ratings

Saturday

9 out of 10 based on 21 ratings

WEF say World’s greatest threat is “Misinformation” — (The biggest threat to experts and billionaires is free speech)

Klaus-Schwab, WEF

By Jo Nova

Finally, they admit that Free Speech is more scary than climate change

The WEF, being the billionaire’s ski club — are of course, talking about the worlds greatest threat to them, not to you.

In the WEF Global Risks Report they asked 1,490 experts and leaders and their the list of biggest risks in the next two years was misinformation and disinformation. Forget bioweapons, nuclear bombs, wars, corruption, asteroids, inflation and global boiling — the thing that keeps the favored “experts” awake at night is whether people will point out their flaws and expose the rorts* that put them at the top of the pile.

The “Misinformation and Disinformation” line is dressed up as a concern that AI generated or false information is the problem, but note the giveaway — those in authority are most worried about public opinion shifting to distrust those in authority — as if “authority” could never be wrong.

Blind trust is how you build nations right?

Persistent false information (deliberate or otherwise) widely spread through media networks, shifting public opinion in a significant way towards distrust in facts and authority. Includes, but is not limited to: false, imposter, manipulated and fabricated content.

Fake news has been around since the StoneAge, and the only way to deal with it is to correct it with better information, not with gatekeepers of truth or government rules. Free speech works because anyone caught spreading lies got a bad reputation, and everyone else was free to repeat that.

How is it that those who control the research grants, the media licenses, and one third of the whole economy could be unable to defend themselves?  Do they lack a thousand paid agents with supercomputers, guns and security passes to find out the truth? Nay, these are the poor poppets who only have whole institutions, ministries, and public broadcasters with budgets of billions to tell their side of the story. The problem is they have everything on their side except the truth.

Their greatest fear is that you might hear the other side

Imagine the billionaires have puppets and allies among politics and bureaucrats, and have set up a system of grift and graft where they creamed off nice profits for fixing the weather, say, while they flew on their jets and cruised on their yachts. Imagine the plumbers and truckies found out that the medicines they were forced to take were contaminated, the climate was controlled by sun, not their car, and their children were being taught to hate the country the plumbers and truckies had built.

The WEF want to stop the workers getting angry, not by fixing the problem but by keeping the workers in the dark:

Misinformation and disinformation may radically disrupt electoral processes in several economies over the next two years.
A growing distrust of information, as well as media and governments as sources, will deepen polarized views – a vicious cycle that could trigger civil unrest and possibly confrontation.
– There is a risk of repression and erosion of rights as authorities seek to crack down on the proliferation of false information – as well as risks arising from inaction.

All around the world political puppets are saying the same things about the “dangers of misinformation”.

Although, Javier Milei, the new President of Argentina, was not. He warned that the Western world was in danger, and that the socialists changed their agenda and instead of dividing us by class, they created other social divisions instead — like women against men, (and presumably race against race). Collectivism and socialism, he said, were the path to poverty. And Argentina, with all it’s riches and skills lost the free market and still ended up poor.

His speech was a call to arms of the businessmen to stand up to the political class:

Do not be intimidated, either by the political caste or by parasites who live off the state. Do not surrender to a political class that only wants to stay in power and retain its privileges. Do not surrender to the advance of the state. The state is not the solution. The state is the problem itself. You are the true protagonists of this story and rest assured that as from today, Argentina is your staunch, unconditional ally.

Keep reading  →

9.6 out of 10 based on 131 ratings

Friday

8.7 out of 10 based on 15 ratings

EV’s stuck for days unable to charge in frozen Chicago : “A bunch of dead robots”

EV, electric cars, stuck at charging stations.

By Jo Nova

“Plugged in and not charging”

In the deep freeze this week, people all over Canada and the USA are finding out how complicated it is to own an EV in cold weather.

Not only do the cars lose a hefty 30 to 50% of their range, but the battery itself can’t accept charge if it gets too cold, so EV’s need to precondition their batteries before they can start to charge. (To precondition is EV-jargon for “warming them up”.) However, there is a point, as temperatures fall, where batteries cannot even heat themselves enough so they can start charging. They have to drain the battery to charge the battery. It’s a death-spiral towards a frozen singularity.

How cold is too cold? The ideal temperature for charging an EV is 15 – 35°C (or 60-95 F) so some advise preconditioning the battery when it’s below 15C. But the charging speed declines as the chemical reactions slow down, and it reaches nothing at about 0°C (32F). So if the car is minus five, the battery won’t even accept a charge.

At the supercharging station in Oak Brook Chicago, people have been trying for days to charge their EVs, which are stuck immobile at the charging station while the queues grow. People without a home charger are rather screwed:

“Dead cars line parking lot due to frigid temps”

Dane Placko, Fox News

“Nothing. No juice. Still on zero percent,” said Tyler Beard, who has been trying to recharge his Tesla at an Oak Brook Tesla supercharging station since Sunday afternoon. “And this is like three hours being out here after being out here three hours yesterday.”

Beard was among the dozens of Tesla owners trying desperately to power up their cars at the Tesla supercharging station in Oak Brook. It was a scene mirrored with long lines and abandoned cars at scores of other charging stations around the Chicago area.

“This is crazy. It’s a disaster. Seriously,” said Tesla owner Chalis Mizelle.

So not only do we “need” a lot more superchargers, and a bigger grid, and more electricity, but we probably need to enclose and heat those garages as well, and maybe put in some hotel rooms and office space for people to do something while they wait…

Just read the dramas of one poor EV driver who “forgot to plug the car in at -39°C one night.

The battery was at 28% but when he woke up the battery was 0% with warnings that the vehicle was shutting down. He tried to run to the house to grab the charger, but it was too late. When he returned — everything was dead to the point he couldn’t charge it. He rang the Tesla helpline and they sent someone out to jump start the 12V battery. But charging still didn’t work.

He pleaded for advice: “right now passenger side window is half down and stuck, both batteries are dead. I can’t charge main battery until I can charge 12V I guess. I bought 12V charger from Home Depot. Even this thing not charging 12V. I did some research and found out that this battery charger can’t charge a dead battery. Nearest Tesla station is Edmonton and I’m Grande Praire. Towing cost will be more than 500. I bought Tesla December 22. Any thoughts or suggestions…”

Maybe he can run an electric blanket out from the house and warm up the battery?

“In winter behavior must be adjusted”

Cars can lose 30-50% of their range in the cold. Allegedly this is mostly because the humans run the car heater to stay warm. In a combustion engine car there is waste heat to spare, but in an EV, every kWh of heating means a kWh of shorter range.

Perhaps drive in a ski suit?

The Biggest Evidence for the Folly of the EV Push May Be Happening Right Now

PJ MEdia

“All cars lose efficiency in the cold weather,” explains Andrew Garberson at Recurrent. “However, drivers only really worry about it when it comes to electric cars, since the lower efficiency translates directly to lower range. For EV owners in colder climates, like northern portions of the United States and Canada, daily driving and charging behaviors must be adjusted in winter months.

“Recurrent analyzed the cold-weather behavior of 18 different EVs and found that these batteries performed at about 70% capacity in temperatures below freezing. Obviously, each vehicle is different, but an average of 70% means that some vehicles did much worse. The worst offenders were the Volkswagen 1D4, which lost 46% of its capacity, and the Chevy Bolt, which saw a 42% drop.

What’s the main culprit? It’s drivers and passengers trying to keep warm.

“The major reason that EVs lose range in the winter is due to cabin heating to keep the driver and passengers warm”

So some of these dramas will be solved as people learn to “precondition” the car, stay home on cold days, wear warmer clothing, not run the car below 20%, or leave a car with low charge out on the street. Sounds like fun.

Right now there are a lot of very exasperated EV drivers who might not want to try “behaviour change” next winter.

The media and government have completely misled people about the practicalities of owning an EV in winter

A good summary of the situation:

It’s all just to much pain for too little gain, done in a rush, and for no good reason.

hat tip to Penguinite, Col A, Red Edwards, another ian, Willie Soon. Jim Simpson

9.9 out of 10 based on 111 ratings

Thursday

8.3 out of 10 based on 12 ratings

Former Greens candidate now warns wind turbines are lunacy and a scam

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-12/queensland-wind-farms-clearing-bushland/100683198

A wind farm near Emerald, Queensland (ABC)

By Jo Nova

After all these years, finally, signs that more Greens are waking up to the awful truth

Steve Nowakowski was a Greens candidate in Cairns in 2006. He was a co-founder of Rainforest Reserves Australia, and was hired as a photographer, but he didn’t like what he saw. Two years ago he was concerned at the environmental damage of the Emerald Wind farm, now he’s filming the destruction in the hope of stopping wind farms being built in Queensland. He’s calling it lunacy, and arguing we need nuclear power.

In a big leap, he even realizes the green groups are “colluding” with the government and the money making environmental vandals in the greatest land grab of the age. Mark my words, eventually this issue will split the Greens.

First Bob Brown former Greens leader, and now footsoldiers like Nowakowski and a few other conservationists are campaigning against wind turbines —  word is spreading…

John McCarthy InQueensland writes:

Former Greens eco-warrior says we should all fear wind turbines

“I have never seen such collusion in my environmental career as I do now between big business, NGO’s and state government in what I consider the greatest land grab of the age,” he said. He said the bulk of the wind farm projects have already slipped through while everyone was sleep-walking.

Nowakowski is shocked at the scale of the industrial wind plants being planned for Queensland.

For months Nowakowski has been trying to warn about the proliferation of wind farms in Queensland and the impacts the developments are having on the environment.

“Every high elevation ridge-line outside of National Parks and State Forests will have a turbine on it between Gladstone and Rockhampton along the Great Dividing Range,’’ Nowakowski claims.

“It now seems over 60,000ha of remnant forest to be cleared across Queensland for proposed projects with approximately 4600km of new haulage roads pushed into remote and wild forests along ridge lines and mountain tops,” he said.

On the Chalumbin wind farm he says “It blows my mind’.

On his youtube channel Nowakowski says it’s lunacy and a scam:

We will look back at the lunacy of our folly in years to come. There is already so much cleared and degraded land in Australia and here we are destroying some of the best high biodiverse remnant bits left.

Clearing and fragmenting some of the best habitat left in Australia for wind farm industrial estates is a delusional act that won’t save the climate. Real climate action is placing renewable energy projects in a planned and proper manner in appropriate locations that will lead to a net loss of carbon emissions and a net gain in increased biodiversity The environmental offsets given to these wind farm projects in high biodiverse locations are a scam.

There are more of these inappropriately placed projects in the pipeline including the Chalumbin Wind Farm, Upper Burdekin Wind Farm and the completely ridiculous Mount Fox Energy Park which is almost entirely contained in some of the best remnant wet sclerophyll forests outside of the protected estate.

Thankfully, Nowakowski is not the only environmentalist waking up. McCarthy mentions the Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland which he says has also changed position due to the large amount of land being cleared for wind turbines. Then there is Apple, which has pulled out of a wind farm near Burdekin because of environmental concerns. Even the group building the Chalumbin wind farm has scaled it back from 200 turbines to 86 (and it has been renamed Wooroora — presumably for PR’s sake?)

 


This video is remarkably like ones made by skeptics for the last ten years. (Nearly). He’s now supporting nuclear power…

It would have been better if he’d realized this ten years ago, but he’s doing a great job now. Wait til I tell him about the corruption in science…

One day he will realize climate-skeptics were the real environmentalists all along.

More info: Chris Kenny interviewed him six weeks ago on Sky News.

 

 

9.6 out of 10 based on 112 ratings

Wednesday

8.9 out of 10 based on 14 ratings

Next frontier in government waste: Giant space mirrors could beam the sun onto solar panels

Giant reflectors in spaceBy Jo Nova

We know it’s a cult when we have thousands of years of nuclear power available but scientists want to build giant mirrors in space to reflect the sun onto solar panels on Earth.

We know it’s corrupt when governments won’t pay for research into the suns role in our climate but they’ll give 2.5 million Euros to a wild idea that might rescue their banker and investment friends last technological white elephant. This was funded under “EXCELLENT SCIENCE – European Research Council (ERC)” don’t you know?

They figure we could get teams of robots into space to assemble vast mirrors about 1 km across that would reflect the sun from 900km above Earth onto solar plants so they make electricity a bit more often. What could possibly go wrong, apart from mishaps that blind drivers, hurt wildlife, screw body clocks and waste gazillions of dollars?

As the huge reflectors pass over a solar plant, they will spin around and point at it to illuminate it “and it’s immediate surroundings”. Thus theoretically extending the working day of the solar panels, and delivering energy at breakfast and dinner time when the peak hour demand is killing our new fragile grids.

Supposedly when the plant on the ground rolls out of view, the giant mirrors will spin themselves edge on to the sun so they stop reflecting sunlight. Just imagine the maintenance nightmare and cost blowouts possible with large precision space infrastructure? Not to mention what happens when the software goes wrong, or hostile cyberhackers play “spot light” with highways, airports and military installations. How much fun can you have with a 10 kilometer wide beam? (That’s just the inner intense core, the actual “stray light” could be an oval up to 70 km long.)

All the nasty surprises that make solar panels and wind farms so uneconomic on the planet would presumably multiply ten-fold in orbit as clouds get in the way, then solar flares and space junk damage the mirrors. How long will mirrors keep their smooth surface under the constant onslaught of the solar wind that runs at a million miles an hour?

Our supposedly best and brightest are publishing hallowed peer reviewed papers on frivolous new ways to rescue the low performing infrastructure that wasn’t economic to build in the first place. The whole plan is to somehow improve the weather on Earth by reducing fossil fuel use, starting by burning tankerloads of fossil fuels to mine and launch kilotons of metal into space?

The Conversion

Reflectors in space could make solar farms on Earth work for longer every day

Unlike proposals to build solar power stations in space and transmit energy down to earth, all the generation would still happen down here.

With the reflectors orbiting 900km above us – about twice the altitude of the International Space Station – we estimate that the illuminated area on the Earth would be approximately 10km across when at its brightest. Therefore, a system like this would not be aimed at individual rooftop solar panels but large solar power farms, typically located away from inhabited areas.

Wait for it:

Each pass would extend energy generation by about 15 to 20 minutes around the dawn or dusk hours.

So we’re spending billions of dollars for an extra 20 minutes of sacred solar sunshine?

Only government funded scientists could come up with something this exorbitantly ridiculous. Let the solar investors pay for their own damn feasibility study, their own giant mirrors, and their own research onto the effects of daylight shining at night on birds, bats, lizards and insects within some unnamed distance of the solar farm. Floating solar farms on the ocean could harass whales and corals too?

Does anyone even care about them?

REFERENCE (seriously)

Viale et al (2023) A reference architecture for orbiting solar reflectors to enhance terrestrial solar power plant output, Advances in Space Research, Volume 72, Issue 4, 15 August 2023, Pages 1304-1348

Grants: Enhancing Global Clean Energy Services Using Orbiting Solar Reflectors, grant agreement No. 883730 Cordis ERC: €2,496,392  ” CRM is also supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering under the Chair in Emerging Technologies scheme. We also thank Sun Cable for sharing information on their solar power farm.”

9.7 out of 10 based on 75 ratings

Tuesday

9.2 out of 10 based on 11 ratings

What crisis? We put out a trillion tons of man-made CO2 yet global disaster losses are shrinking

By Jo Nova

If man-made climate change does anything at all, it makes Global Disasters tamer

Humans produced 980 billion tons of CO2 in the last 32 years, yet global losses due to weather related damage are shrinking as a proportion of our economy.

Despite there being more humans on Earth than ever before, with more buildings, farms, and factories just waiting to be wrecked by bad weather, somehow global weather disaster losses are not as large a part of our economy as they used to be.

All those extra houses, tractors and cars are sitting-ducks for storms, floods, and hailstones, yet the “climate crisis” is doing less damage to our GDP than it used to when CO2 levels were much lower.

Back in 1990 global CO2 levels were just 355ppm, now it’s more like 417ppm.

Roger Piekle Junior investigated the economic losses of weather disasters for the last three decades. He found that when losses were adjusted for inflation, and measured as a proportion of global GDP, damages were shrinking.

Naturally this tells us nothing at all about what drives the climate, but shows the prophesies are bonkers, and the relentless weather porn on the news is like a pagan religion.

Global disaster losses 1990 to 2023

Since 1990, the toll of disasters as a proportion of the global economy has gone down from about 0.25% of GDP to less than 0.20%. That is good news and indicates progress with respect to the goals of the Sendai Framework.

He points out that the UN itself recognizes that this is the correct way to measure trends in losses, rather than just adding up “total dollar losses” as most of the mass media does.

The United Nations Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction identifies disaster losses as a proportion of GDP to be a key metric for tracking progress on disaster risk reduction.1 This makes obvious sense because as the global economy grows there is more “stuff” exposed and vulnerable to being damaged.

The UN, despite knowing the correct answer, is happy for the worlds journalists to propagate lies and errors as a way to screw more money from hapless taxpayers. UN experts could easily speak up, to point out how lives are getting easier as we emit more CO2, and how journalists are being naughty. But scaring the children is all in a days work for the global grifter cartel.

The UN is quite happy with incompetent media reporting and misinformation, it’s the truth they have a problem with. Time to dismantle the United Nations.

Congratulations to Taiwan tonight for their elections — shame on the UN for not recognizing a great democracy.

Roger Piekle Junior writes at The Honest Broker.

REFERENCES

Global CO2 levels: 355ppm – 417ppm

Cumulative human emissions of CO2 : 1990 – 2022, OWID.

Global Tropical Storm Energy, Ryan Maue

AI Tornado by Willgard Krause

 

 

9.8 out of 10 based on 101 ratings

Monday

8.8 out of 10 based on 13 ratings

Sunday

8.3 out of 10 based on 19 ratings

Net Zero uproar in Germany — mass Farmer protests spread to other workers and other countries…

German Government, storm

By Jo Nova

For weeks a huge uprising has been building in Germany against NetZero, green tape and rampant taxes. The Germany government gave a partial concession last week, but the protests only grew stronger. Not only are the autobahns and streets grid-locked with thousands of tractors and trucks, but the freight and passenger trains have also stopped in a three day strike. Cargo boats are blocking inland waterways and canals. There is a looming strike of doctors as well, and the cluster of discontent has been labelled “Mistgabelmop ” — the pitchfork mob. Convoys are up to 20 kilometers long, and are widespread. The protests appear to be spreading. There are rumors of protests gathering in support in France. Romania, Poland, and the UK

Pierre Gosselin, at NoTricksZone in Germany, writes “Never in postwar history has a ruling government been so unpopular“.

The things the BBC/ABC/CBC/NPR/etc didn’t tell you on the news tonight can be found in five minutes on Twitter. Vive Free Speech. Thank you Elon. Those who control most of the Western media don’t want the unwashed masses to know about these protests because they fear the protests will spread like wildfire.

“They feel like they are being ruled by people that hate them”

— Eva Vlaardingerbroek

The Wall Street Journal comments that “Radical environmentalists pioneered aggressive protest techniques, but they didn’t have tractors.”  Despite the inconvenience, nearly 70% of the German people support the farmers.

One irony, which Britain’s Just Stop Oil or Germany’s Fridays for Future lefties will be too dim to note, is that if everyone who is negatively affected by the costs of net zero starts taking to the streets, the net-zero fantasy will end in a flash.  —   Joseph C Sternberg, WSJ

Things are so dire the German “traffic light coalition”  government is thinking of using more coal. News has leaked that the German Economics Minister has shelved the old “power plant plan” which depended on gas, and is secretly planning on increasing old coal fired “reserve” power. Only in October the plan was to phase out the coal back up for next winter, but already it is clear this won’t work. –– Berliner Zeitung.


..




The protests are widespread (click to enlarge)

Maps of the widespread protests in Germany  Source


h/t Tegenwind, Another Ian. Krishna Gans, David E, Jim Simpson, NetZeroWatch and Connor.

Photos adapted from images by PayPal.me/FelixMittermeier from Pixabay and Presentsquare Presentsquare from Pixabay

 

 

 

9.8 out of 10 based on 137 ratings

Saturday

9.5 out of 10 based on 19 ratings

Hertz to sell one third of it’s EV’s — customers don’t want them and they cost too much to fix

 

rollercoaster

By Jo Nova

With the western world hurtling into new cars that are more costly, inconvenient, slower to refuel, and prone to burning down carparks and cargo ships, it was only a matter of time before the cracks in the socialist car market started to show.

Around the world tonight headlines are sharing the news that Hertz is selling off 20,000 EVs, one third of their fleet, in order to buy some more fossil fuel cars. That can’t be inspiring news for customers thinking of giving up their gas guzzlers. As Oilprice said: Hertz’s Big Move Into EVs Turned Out To Be A Dud.  And as Reuters headlined: Rental giant Hertz dumps EVs, including Teslas, for gas cars.EV, electric car.

It was the perfect storm in a bad way. Apparently the customers didn’t want to rent them, and when they did and they scratched them, they cost too much to fix. (Repair costs were twice as high).  Then the bottom fell out of the second-hand market, and to recover the depreciation losses, Hertz would have to raise the prices on a product customers already didn’t want. There was no way this was going to work.

The official dry Hertz announcement politely says that customers want fossil fueled cars and EV’s were too expensive to fix:

“..expenses related to collision and damage, primarily associated with EVs, remained high in the quarter”

“The Company expects to reinvest a portion of the proceeds from the sale of EVs into the purchase of internal combustion engine (“ICE”) vehicles to meet customer demand.”

Back in October 2021 it was all champagne and fireworks

Hertz put in an order for 100,000 EVs which was so exciting it pushed Tesla shares up 9% briefly to “a trillion dollar valuation”. (Two years later Tesla is worth 30% less.) At the time, Hertz expected to get the 100,000 cars by the end of 2022. Luckily for them, this didn’t happen. Instead they only got 50,000 by the end of 2022. This worked out to be about 11% of Tesla Hertz’s total fleet. So these EV’s are not even very old. No one can say “the new models are better, because these are new models.

Some of the cars are already on the market. Two year old Telsa Model 3 EV’s are going for $22,000 US.

Hertz will book a $250 million dollar loss, and stocks in both Hertz and Tesla fell on the news.

With uncanny timing the Australian Albanese government is about to launch emissions standards we don’t need to coerce people to buy a product they don’t want, in the hope, they say, of changing the weather.

The insanity would be hard to fathom if EV’s weren’t also the ideal tool for spying, data collection, law enforcement, and political control. Benefits that can launch a thousand political careers…

Rollercoaster photo by Itai Aarons on Unsplash

Tesla image by ben saida from Pixabay

 

9.8 out of 10 based on 123 ratings

Friday

9.2 out of 10 based on 18 ratings