European EV Dynamics

The Biden Administration believes China has installed malware on U.S. networks that could affect military operations and other domestic communications, officials told the New York Times, following earlier reports suggesting state-sponsored Chinese hackers had infiltrated American infrastructure networks.

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"Contemporary woke progressivism…is better understood as a quasi-religious, intellectual virus that has infected the minds of a large portion of Western intellectual elites. Like other religions, the progressive mind virus spreads itself by taking advantage of the human psychological needs for meaning and community, and it deploys intellectual defense mechanisms designed to short-circuit critical examination of its tenets.

…the belief system defenses deployed by progressivism directly attack the norms of free expression and rational inquiry that are necessary not only for identifying truth but for peacefully negotiating disagreements…

the virus, once lodged in a person’s mind, deactivates one’s truth-seeking capacities…"

--Michael Huemer’s book, Progressive Myths. 

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European EV Dynamics

Sales of Chinese EVs have been taking market share. This will make it more difficult for European manufacturers to fill their EV sales quotas.

Traditional carmakers have been funding their investments in EV production, at least in part, with the profits from traditional car sales. If those sales are capped (and the cap keeps falling), how are they going to pay for the investment in EV production?

Renault’s CEO has recently sounded the alarm, warning that similar rules in the EU in 2025 could mean that the EU auto sector might have to suspend production of two million cars (that won’t have pleasant implications for employment) or face fines of €15 billion.

[I]n August 2024, new EU car registrations saw a sharp decrease (-18.3%) with negative results across the region’s four major markets: double-digit losses were witnessed in Germany (-27.8%), France (-24.3%), and Italy (-13.4%), with the Spanish market declining by 6.5%.

Battery-electric vehicles (BEVS, “full” electric vehicles) saw their market share drop from around 21 percent in August 2023 to 14.4 percent in August 2024. Sales dropped from 165,000 to 92,000. This decline was above all driven by massive falls in Germany and France. Germany abruptly ended its subsidy program in December

European manufacturers are moving production to China to manufacture cheaper (€20,000 or less) models, a familiar pattern — green jobs are created in China(see solar and wind) — and ominous news for those working in (or supplying) the EU auto sector. According to those same EU officials, some 13 million jobs in that area are at risk.

if EVs were to be bought by drivers on the planners’ schedule they would account for 13.5 per cent of total electricity demand by 2035. According to the Financial Times, that would involve investing €800 billion in transmission grids alone.

Sacrifice Inequality

Trump has a long-standing relationship with Vince McMahon and the WWE. He has been involved with the company for more than three decades. His involvement includes multiple appearances at WWE events, including as a guest ring announcer, on-screen talent, and even as the "owner" of WWE's flagship show, "WWE Raw." In 2013 he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame.

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SpaceX plans to launch 90 rockets into space from a Santa Barbara County military base by 2026.

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The world’s big banks have handed nearly $7tn (£5.6tn) in funding to the fossil fuel industry since the Paris agreement to limit carbon emissions.

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Sacrifice Inequality

The -50% for "other countries" is, of course, an error. It should be +50%. But there are a lot of errors to share space with. Certainly, the efforts to qualify 'climate change' in a culture that has obvious disdain for rigorous science investigations and has spent months withdrawing studies and reports, bankrupting some journals, and undermining the very notions of science and integrity have damaged such a movement. And the grafting of 'climate change' onto other radical world movements has raised serious questions.

And there is the practical. A 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicles, announced Tuesday, will make American EV cars more competitive--but at a much higher price. 

As the graph shows, some will sacrifice for the perceived greater global good, and some will not. And the Americans will be doing the sacrificing.

Leading the Recalcitrant

Leading the Recalcitrant

A poll taken last month shows that 48% of consumers would not consider buying an EV. That’s up seven percentage points from last year. Only 35% of those who responded to the Gallup poll said they might consider buying one, down from 43% just a year ago. A mere 9% said they were seriously considering an EV purchase. That portion was 12% in 2023.

EV ownership has increased. In 2024, 7% of Americans own a battery-powered car. Last year only 4% owned an EV.

But maybe the fever has broken. Even 27% of Democrats are saying in 2024 they would not buy an EV compared to 17% last year. Among independents, the “would nots” have grown to 47% from 38%.

Of course, EVs aren’t the only choice Democrats want to make for the country.  

Democrats insist that they have to manage the production of household appliances, limit the choices of sneakers and deodorants, and design dishwashers and gas cans. They have banned or restricted a host of modern conveniences, from single-use plastic bags to plastic utensils to natural gas, condiment packs, and incandescent bulbs. They’ve outlawed shower heads and toilets they don’t like. They have targeted heating and cooling systems with obstructive guidelines.

There is so much to do.

These people clearly believe we need help in making decisions and living. Their idea of democracy must be limited to voting and must not be connected to the idea of freedom itself.

Pro-Consumer Report

 

Pro-Consumer Report

An update on the evil American corporations and their arbitrary, anti-competitive, predatory pricing policies as wonderfully, if haltingly, exposed by our glorious leader.

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is concerned that consumers are buying low-cost electric vehicles from China rather than higher-priced American creations. The government may have to intervene. How? Tariffs; a tax on imports. How does this fit with Biden's unending drumbeat of unreasonable corporate profits, American price-gouging, and consumer victimization?

It doesn't. It creates all those distortions.

Protectionism, remarkably, does just what it says. It protects American producers from foreign competition by raising those foreign competitors' prices with tariffs. There may be some reasons The Powers That Be may want to raise domestic prices on their citizens--none of them of any economic merit--but any benefit to the beleaguered consumer is nonsense.

At some point, inconsistencies become incoherent.

EVs and Labor

Mike Babcock resigned as coach of the Columbus Blue Jackets on Sunday after just two months on the job, less than a week after his requests for personal photos from players in a bonding effort drew criticism as too invasive.

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There is a surprising number of articles on liberal TV about Sen. Tim Scott's secret girlfriend. Is this a subtle effort to raise the 'gay' question about him without appearing to do so?

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EVs and Labor

The traditional internal combustion engine has more than 1,000 parts. New electric engines have about 50. That means fewer jobs because EVs are much simpler and therefore easier to make and assemble.

In late 2022, Ford CEO Jim Farley told the Financial Times that manufacturing EVs requires about 40% less labor than making the same number of internal combustion vehicles. VW's CEO in 2019 estimated that building EVs involves about 30% less effort than making gas-powered cars.

So a political group claiming to support 'workers' would take what position on EVs?

China and EVs

Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind, always.--Robin Williams

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Did the U.S. admit they have sabotaged Nord Stream 2?

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How big a climate disaster was the explosion of Nord Stream 2?

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There are illegal immigrant activists.

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China and EVs

The island of unintended consequences is becoming a continent. The growth is so big and unreasonable that one becomes suspicious that 'unintended' is appropriate.

This is from Forbes at an EV conference:

China’s carmakers will take a 12–15 percent market share in Western Europe by 2025. To date, a key selling point for Chinese EVs has been a cheaper sticker price, an advantage reinforced by the fact that European EV manufacturers have targeted a more upmarket segment, in part perhaps because (at a guess) they have not yet mastered the ability to make cheaper models at the margins they need. But the prospect that China will also be aiming at the higher-end market should worry the German auto sector. As a reminder, the German auto sector is the backbone of Germany’s vital industrial sector, much of which is dependent on exports. The largest market for German auto-sector exports is China. How long will that last?

The EU charges a 10 percent tariff on Chinese car imports, while China imposes duties between 15–25 percent on autos headed east. He wonders how long that regime will continue. Meanwhile, the U.S. imposes tariffs of 25 percent.

In short, by forcing this switch to EVs, the West (and Europe in particular) is not only throwing away its longstanding lead in auto manufacturing but handing a great chunk of that market to s geopolitical rival. Even by the dismal standards of central planning, this is remarkably stupid.

EVs: Mining and Impact

EVs: Mining and Impact

Today, a typical EV battery weighs one thousand pounds. 1000.  It contains twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds of cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells.

All those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just one battery. 

We don't know what Mother Gaia thinks, but that's a big hole.

To repeat, 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just one battery.

80 percent of the electricity generated to charge the batteries is from coal, natural gas, and nuclear.

Since twenty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S is from coal-fired plants, it follows that twenty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered.
Since forty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S is from natural gas, it follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are natural gas-powered.
Since twenty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S is from nuclear, it follows that twenty percent of the EVs on the road are nuclear-powered.

EVs are not a solution to the perceived world's energy problem. It is a middleman in the chain from fossil fuel to work. That middleman is expensive and dangerous to produce, expensive and dangerous to dispose of, and benefits a very, well-connected few.

Bad Guys with Leverage

 

                     Bad Guys with Leverage

From an Issues and Insights editorial:


"The birthplace of most electric cars is the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country where the diamond trade has helped finance civil war. There, “slave labor” is feeding “big tech’s quest for cobalt,” an element used in the batteries that drive EVs.

“Our children are dying like dogs,” a Congolese mother whose son and cousin died while working in the Congo’s cobalt mines. She and others have filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court that “insists companies are simply turning a blind eye to the egregious abuses that include children killed in tunnel collapses or losing limbs or suffering from other horrific injuries caused by mining accidents.”

The United Nations says that “nearly 50% of world cobalt reserves” are found in the Congo. But it’s not the only element needed to build “green” batteries. They require lithium, natural graphite, and manganese, raw materials that are “highly concentrated,” according to the U.N., “in a few countries.”

“Nearly 50% of world cobalt reserves are in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), 58% of lithium reserves are in Chile, 80% of natural graphite reserves are in China, Brazil and Turkey, while 75% of manganese reserves are in Australia, Brazil, South Africa and Ukraine,” says the U.N.

Look at the list again. What do some of those nations have in common? They are, the U.N. admits, “susceptible to disruption by political instability.” They also create by their Third World nature “social and environmental impacts” directly linked to “the extraction of raw materials for car batteries.”

The hypocrisy of the green movement emits a bad odor. The political left hates mining, but apparently only in the U.S., and maybe Canada. Seems that dirty mining is OK as long it’s out of sight. It’s the same with kids. “It’s for the children,” Democrats and progressives claim when their big-spending plans are challenged. Yet none on the left are calling for a halt to the green agenda until child slave labor has been eradicated from the supply chain."

I do not know Issues and Insights. This is how they describe themselves: Issues & Insights is a new site launched by the seasoned journalists behind the legendary IBD Editorials page.

Markle, Art and EVs

My Place in History:
According to the Genealogy Radio Show presenter, genealogist Lorna Moloney, Megan Markle  is connected to Galway native Mary McCague, who was born to William McCague and Brigid Galaher in October, 1829.
Publishing the details on Irish Clans and Surnames, Moloney believes that McCague moved overseas with her husband Thomas Bird and raised her children for a spell in Malta.
Researchers got this information from her daughter Hattie Bird's marriage records in Massachusetts. Hattie Bird was a sister to Mary Bird - the direct ancestor of Meghan Markle.
Hattie was born in 1866 on the Island of Malta to Thomas Bird and Mary McCague.
McCague is actually a surname which is derived from Irish kings, according to Adrian Martyn, en expert and writer on Galway tribes, who researched the McCague surname.
According to Adrian, the surname McCague derives from MacThaidhg or Mac Thaidhg, meaning "son of Tadhg".
Now widespread as a surname in the province of Ulster, Tadhg was the brother of Connor O'Conor, King of Connacht.
Kings. And Markle has ended up where she--and all the McCague descendants--should be.

Art:
One of the signals of decline is when art neither celebrates nor teaches.
In 2011, a lifelike German sculpture depicting a policewoman squatting and urinating — even the puddle is sculpted — received an award from a prestigious German foundation, the Leinemann Foundation for Fine Art.
In 2013, the Orange County Museum of Art in California placed a huge 28-foot sculpture of a dog outside the museum, where it periodically urinates a yellow fluid onto a museum wall.
In 2016, one of the most prestigious art museums in the world, the Guggenheim in New York, featured a pure-gold working toilet bowl, which visitors were invited to use. The name of the exhibit was “America” — so one could literally relieve oneself on America.
The Philadelphia Orchestra recently featured the premiere of Philadelphia Voices. In the fifth movement, titled “My House Is Full of Black People,” the black teen narrator chants the following lines: “The county is full of black people/ All wanting to be heard/ While old white men draw lines on maps/ To shut all of them up.” Later in the movement, he yells, “If you would all just f—ing listen!”

EVs:
From a biased American Petroleum Institute report that created the spin but not the numbers:
The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that two-thirds of households that buy EVs have annual income in excess of $100,000, nearly twice the nationwide average (see chart above). The result is the tax credit becomes a subsidy for the rich. Households in this income bracket also are more likely to have multiple vehicles, so the EV serves a niche of their transportation needs and is a luxury. The obvious question, then, is whether U.S. taxpayers should be subsidizing the affluent.

Spend More, Save More

In the subsidies and tax credits for electric and hybrid vehicles, "The U.S. government will spend anywhere from $3 to $7 for each gallon of gasoline saved by consumers" according to a recent CBO report from Reuters.
 
Think about that for a minute.

Seeking Alpha vs. NRG on EV

A Deloitt Touch survey revealed that 2 to 4 per cent of the car buying populations (multiple nations) would buy an ultr-high efficiency vehicle (Hybrid electric, clean diesel and plug-in ev). Below is a graph of U.S. UHE vehicle buying stats over the last years. It looks as if the manufacturers are fighting over a fixed market.
http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2011/10/20/saupload_11.20.11_20UHE_20Vehicles.png
Yet:
http://johnhanger.blogspot.com/2011/10/nrg-ceo-sees-50-million-evs.html

Electric Vehicles and Seeking Alpha

A great battle has broken out on Seeking Alpha over the electric vehicle. Proponents see it as the answer to pollution and foreign oil dependence. Opponents see it as an unrealizable dream. Wonderful words and phrases have developed like "Hopium", "EVangelist" and Moore's Curse (vs. "law"). Acronyms are everywhere (ICE, EV and, of course, stock abbreviations.) The battle is heartfelt and clever.

The instigator is John Petersen, an investment lawyer with a long and deep history with battery companies. (He has an ax to grind; he owns a lot of a battery company.) He is also scornfully knowledgeable. His points: The information revolution has let the western cat out of the bag. Now 6 billion people know how the 600 million people live in the west and they want to play too. If only 10% are successful, that will double the demand on resources (water, construction materials, food, energy and commodities.) Consequently prices will rise. Since 80% of battery costs are raw materials and most are rare earth, those prices will rise as well. Already the price of metals is rising faster than oil. A single individual annually uses energy measured in metric tons, his annual use of metals is in kilograms. As alternative energy and electric power use metals as a base source of storage and conversion of energy, there is simply no way that metals will be able to accept the shift of the energy burden from oil. Oil is just too cheap and metals are too limited. So, when looking at energy, metals supplies are more constraining than petroleum supplies. Consequently conservation and improved efficiency of existing systems are the future; substitutions of new energy sources for petroleum are fantasies. (He loves eBikes and stop-start vehicle systems.)

An example: The UPS has just ordered 100 electric trucks. Each has a 72,000 dollar battery pack. The whole truck costs 180,000 dollars. If the electric plug-in cost is not considered--that is if the daily cost of charging the batteries is ignored-- each truck will save 5000 dollars a year in gasoline.

How long do you think that can go on?

The link.A bit technical. Be sure to read the comments.: http//seekingalpha.com/article/289828-it-s-time-to-kill-the-electric-car-drive-a-stake-through-its-heart-and-burn-the-corpse?source=yahoo