The infamous event in Jonestown took place so long ago that most readers probably have no personal memory of them. In November 1978, in the jungles of Guyana, under the powerful spell of a religious sect with a charismatic leader, and of an all-encompassing collective ideology, about 900 people by somehow agreed to participate in a mass suicide. It was a shocking example of the kind of collective madness that humans can be prone to.
You might think that the Jonestown massacre was a single extreme example of such mass psychosis, perhaps largely due to the unusually sensitive subjects or the isolated location. Surely our best and brightest government and business leaders would never fall prey to such collective madness.
If you think so, then perhaps you should consider what is currently going on in the automotive sector of the economy, under the spell of climate cults and loyal government officials. with anti-carbon theories.
On April 12, 2023, the EPA issued its most recent proposed regulation on automotive emissions. Document titled “Multi-pollutant emission standards for vehicle models from 2027 onwards for light and midsize vehicles.” It is 262 pages long in the standard three-column one-spaced format of the Federal Register, and is therefore designed to be virtually unreadable to anyone who is not being paid to do so. But the heart of the proposed new rule is that, over a period of several years, it becomes difficult or impossible for automakers to continue to sell any significant number of internal combustion engine vehicles. Of course, the EPA never explicitly stated that and made the game as difficult to decipher as possible for any average person. But try this language from page 29.196 (12 pages in the document and still at the beginning of the Summary):
Greenhouse gas emission standards. . . . The proposed standards are expected to lead to an industry-wide average target for light truck fleets of 82 grams/mile (g/mile) of CO2 into MY 2032, representing a 56% reduction in the target level. projected fleet average GHG emissions from existing MY 2026 standards.
As far as I understand, no internal combustion car can meet this 82 g/mile CO2 emission standard on its own, so this standard means that a manufacturer can only sell IC cars if they also have could produce and sell enough “zero-emissions” cars to get an average down to this level. As a result, the EPA slyly announced its intention to force manufacturers and consumers to buy all or nearly all electric vehicles.
Now, at this point, this is just a suggested rule. Nowadays, although there are many electric vehicles, they only have about 7% market share In the US, they also have many disadvantages compared to internal combustion media, including higher price, difficult to repair when damaged, poor resale value, limited operating range, long recharge time, etc. all of that before you tackle the most important problem with electric cars, which is the fact that government geniuses are working simultaneously to destroy the grid that is supposed to power these things.
Can you think that automakers would push back on the behalf of themselves and their customers on behalf of internal combustion vehicles? You will be wrong. From all appearances, manufacturers are doing their best to enter the electric car race. The EPA document itself contains a long list of industry announcements (pages 12,190 – 12.191):
The increase in automaker announcements over the past two years signals a rapid shift in automakers’ product development focus away from internal combustion technology and toward electrification. For example, in January 2021, General Motors announced plans to become carbon neutral by 2040, including an effort to completely transition light vehicles to zero emissions by 2035. In March of this year. 2021, Volvo announces plans to make only electric cars by 2030, and Volkswagen announces that it expects half of its sales in the US to be fully electric by 2030. In April 2021, Honda has announced plans for full electrification to take effect by 2040, with 40% of North American sales expected to be electric or fully fuel mobile vehicles by 2030, 80% in 2035 and 100% in 2040. In May 2021, Ford announced that it expects 40% of its global sales to be electric by 2030. In June 2021, Fiat announced transition to all-electric vehicles by 2030, and in July 2021 its parent group Stellantis announced an increased focus on electrification across all of its brands. Also in July 2021, Mercedes-Benz announced that all of its new architectures will run on electricity only from 2025, with plans ready to go all-electric by 2030 if possible. .
But for the transition of the grid — where we move forward without proving feasibility or cost — automakers are also moving mass forward with electric vehicles without proving that. The electric car can become a successful mass product that fulfills all the functions that an IC car can perform. Lately, Tesla seems to have turned to profit, but with an expensive niche product that only the wealthy can afford and almost always a second (or third or fourth) car. .
How is it going with other manufacturers? The Wall Street Journal has an editorial on May 3 summarizes the results to date for a collection of EV startups. There is Lordstown:
Lordstown produced only 31 vehicles by the end of February 2023—most of which must be recalled. Impatient, Foxconn on April 21 threatened to withdraw its investment, prompting Lordstown to warn of bankruptcy.
And Rivian:
Rivian commands a market capitalization of $153.3 billion. Now it’s worth less than $12 billion.
The WSJ summarizes the stock trends of other EV startups:
[O]EV startups that have collapsed from their pandemic highs, including Canoe (down 96%), Nicholas (99%), Faraday Smart Electric Future (99%), Rivian (90%), lucid (87%) and Fisher(81%).
How about at the big traditional manufacturers. Robert Bryce at his Substack on May 3 Gather some recent information about Ford:
In March, Ford Motor Company announced that it lost $2.1 billion in its electric vehicle business last year. Those losses are double the losses it has on electric vehicles in 2021. As I noted in a the video I posted on TikTok on March 23, Ford to produce 61,575 electric vehicles by 2022. As a result, the company lost about $34,000 per electric vehicle sold last year. I also note that the cost of producing electric vehicles has not decreased. Last year, the battery pack costs for electric vehicles increased by 7%. . . . Indeed, it looks like Ford’s 2022 loss is just a warm-up. Yesterday afternoon, Ford reported a $722 million loss on its electric vehicle business for the first three months of 2023. In that period of time, Ford sold 10,866 electric vehiclesThat means it loses $66,446 on every electric vehicle it sells.
Bryce goes on to quote a JD Power report from May 1: “[M]any new vehicle buyer is becoming more adamant about their decision not to consider buying an electric vehicle for their next purchase.”
The last time I had a post on EVs (February 23), some commenters expressed the view that they think that manufacturers can fix all production problems (cost, battery capacity, charging, etc.) soon become the preeminent product in the market. I suppose it’s possible, although if central planning succeeds in this case it would be a first anywhere. And what’s more, there’s nothing manufacturers can do to get a country of some 200 million electric vehicles up and running when all the reliable generation on the grid has been phased out and home heating has been electrified. gasification. Automakers only seem willing to accept a mass suicide, a la Jonestown.
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