We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars
Three signs EVs are not catching on.
This is one of them.
You probably missed the Friday news dump. Biden’s final EV rules make it easier for China to get billions in Biden’s EV tax credits – with Biden acknowledging that the U.S. supply chain can’t meet the timeline for his green transition.
Y2Kyoto: State Of Anorexia Envirosa
Public opinion is beginning to shift. Maybe it’s the blackouts.
A year ago I noted that the discourse around climate policy had changed, prompted by the security of supply and affordability concerns emerging in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a conflict that sadly continues. The trilemma was back with a vengeance and has not gone away – recently the UK Government announced a renewed desire to see the delivery of more gas power station this decade, despite the lack of available abatement technology. […]
But probably the most seismic change in past year came in July when the Labour Party failed to win the Uxbridge by-election as voters rebelled against the expansion of London’s emissions charging scheme known as “Ulez” (Ultra-low emissions zone). As a result, councils up and down the country abandoned plans for similar schemes, and the unpopular incumbent Conservative Party saw an electoral opportunity, shortly afterwards watering down the electric car mandate and plans for heat pumps. The Labour Party is not immune to climate u-turns having recently abandoned its green-spending pledge.
However, it hasn’t all been good news. In February I took part in IE Week, speaking on the final day of the conference in a session devoted to electricity. Too many of the speakers spouted out-of-date mantras about renewables being “cheap” and painting a naïve picture of a green utopia with green energy, green jobs, sunshine and flowers. I likened it to a child’s picture of a house – ask any child to draw such a picture and you get something along the lines of the image shown – charming, but hardly realistic.
When asked about people sitting in the cold and dark in order to save a few pennies under the Demand Flexibility Scheme, one speaker hailed the “social media buzz” they were generating, failing to recognise that they were driven by poverty and not a desire to be “down with the kidz”. However on a more positive note these remarks did not go down well with the audience, many of whom thanked me for being the “voice of reason” in the room. Still, we need to do more to avoid designing energy markets with the affluent in mind, while ignoring the reality of the majority.
Chain Reaction
In the final year in which both nuclear reactors were operational, the Indian Point Energy Center (IPEC) generated 16.7 terawatt hours of reliable baseload power from its 2.1GW of combined capacity—enough to meet roughly 25% of New York City’s total demand. By mid-2020, only one of those reactors was still running, but it managed to do so for the entire calendar year without interruption, turning in a perfect capacity factor of 100%. Not bad for a facility that sits on just 240 acres of land.
We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars
Ford’s electric vehicle unit reported that losses soared in the first quarter to $1.3 billion, or $132,000 for each of the 10,000 vehicles it sold in the first three months of the year, helping to drag down earnings for the company overall.
Ford, like most automakers, has announced plans to shift from traditional gas-powered vehicles to EVs in coming years. But it is the only traditional automaker to break out results of its retail EV sales. And the results it reported Wednesday show another sign of the profit pressures on the EV business at Ford and other automakers.
We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars
Spectator: Desperate manufacturers are struggling to shift electric cars
The real reason for hefty discounts on electric cars is desperation. Since 1 January, manufacturers have been under the zero emissions mandate (ZEV), which demands that 22 per cent of the cars they sell in 2024 are pure electric cars. Should they fail to reach this target, they will be fined £15,000 for every vehicle by which they fall short.
How are they doing? Not very well, it seems. In the first three months of 2024, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) electric cars accounted for only 15.5 per cent of the market – virtually unchanged from the same period in 2023. Moreover, the target is not going to stay at 22 per cent. In 2025 it will rise to 28 per cent, then in stages to 80 per cent by 2030 and 100 per cent by 2035. Unless electric car sales pick up dramatically in the next few months, manufacturers are going to find themselves with an enormous bill at the end of the year. The situation is worse for many carmakers than the above figures suggest because some carmakers, like Tesla, are already electric-only. That means that the sales being achieved by others must be well below 15 per cent.
It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Analysts were not expecting manufacturers to miss the 22 per cent target. Just last December, S&P forecast that sales of electric cars would surge by 41 per cent in Europe in 2024, and by 66 per cent in the US. In Europe, it was believed, EVs would be accounting for 22 per cent of the market across 2024.
We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars
GM killing it on big trucks and SUVs and is showing it off.
Sold only 16,400 EVs in Q1.
Who could’ve seen this coming ..
More: Talk to any dealer … resale is so horrendous most wont keep the cars on the lot (they immediately wholesale a trade in if they can).
We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars
Where, oh where, did the stupid rich people go?
As automakers continue to delay their electric-vehicle plans and report lower-than-expected sales, Canada’s goal of ensuring that at least 20 per cent of new vehicles sold by 2026 are electric seems to be in jeopardy.
Ford Motor Co. last week said it was going to delay EV production at its assembly plant in Oakville, Ont., by two years to 2027 from 2025. The additional time will allow the company to take advantage of an emerging battery technology and let the number of consumers grow.
Earlier this month, Tesla Inc. reported a decline in quarterly deliveries for the first time in nearly four years. The Elon Musk-led company attributed the fall to logistical issues, but analysts say that slowing demand for EVs also played a role.
General Motors Co.’s chief executive Mary Barra referred to this slowdown as well on an earnings call in January, when she said the slowing pace of EV growth had created some uncertainty. She still expects EV sales in 2024 to improve, but said “if demand conditions change, we’ll take advantage of our manufacturing flexibility … to build more internal combustion engine models and fewer EVs.”
Emphasis mine.
We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Mirrors
So cheap and efficient only the rich can afford it: South Africa’s Solar Boom Is Worsening Inequality
If you want something done, sometimes you just have to do it yourself. That’s the attitude taken by many South African households and companies as they invest in alternative-energy sources to avoid blackouts and soaring electricity tariffs. This movement has clear winners and losers.
Fed up with weathering the worst power crisis on record as state-owned utility Eskom struggles with debts and aging coal-fired power plants, businesses are finding ways to generate their own electricity. Most recently, Africa’s biggest mobile phone group, MTN, announced that it’ll spend 1.9 billion rand ($101 million) by the middle of the year on generators, batteries and renewable energy.
Being free of the creaky grid, which shuts down periodically in what’s known locally as load shedding, could help South Africa’s economy get back on track after being derailed by rolling blackouts. Consumers are saving money on their steeply rising energy bills and regaining a sense of control over their power access. It’s also reduced the severity and frequency of load shedding, as demand for Eskom-generated power drops.
But the full picture is more complicated.
Pollspotting!
Have at ‘er: SaskPower Future Supply Plan
“You didn’t receive any grants? That’s weird.”
B.C.’s three opposition parties united this week to demand the auditor general probe a so-called “kickback scheme” involving one of the companies responsible for administering millions of dollars of government grants to clean technology projects.
BC United, BC Green and BC Conservative MLAs voted for an independent probe of accounting firm MNP, which the government has hired to administer at least two grant programs, but which is also facing allegations it demanded so-called “success fees” of as high as 20 per cent of the grant amount to help firms win money.
We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars
We just don’t have the stupid rich people necessary to support the industry.
Ford Motor Company delaying retooling of it’s EV plant for 3 years after Ford and Trudeau gave them $600 million of your money. What does this say about the $30 billion handout to fund EV battery manufacturing?
We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars
… paid $1.7 million for CEO Tony Aquila’s private jet bills, twice its total revenue last year. According to its earnings report released this week, Canoo lost $302 million in 2023 – but it’s apparently been champagne and caviar for its top executive.
Canoo, which hasn’t turned a profit as a public company, brought in $886,000 last year in revenue, according to its full-year earnings report filed Monday. But, as TechCrunch first cited, Aquila’s hefty travel bill included “air travel expenses for either, at our option, first-class airfare or the business use of his private jet,” the company said in the filing.”
Related: HAHAHAHAHA
We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Fans
The cost to consumers of two offshore wind projects expected to support New York’s self-imposed climate goals has more than doubled from their original estimates, which were high to begin with. Developers had threatened to cancel their offshore wind projects without higher prices, citing inflation, supply chain challenges and rising costs driven by the pandemic, Bidenomics and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The agreements, which still need to be finalized, are expected to keep 1,700 megawatts of offshore wind on schedule for 2026. New York wants to reach 70 percent renewable energy by 2030, but to reach that goal—the highest renewable goal in the nation for 2030, the state will need to dump huge costs on its utility customers.
I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords
It takes massive amounts of energy to power the data center brains of popular artificial intelligence models. That demand is only growing. In 2024, many of Silicon Valley’s largest tech giants and hoards of budding, well-funded startups have (very publically) aligned themselves with climate action–awash with PR about their sustainability goals, their carbon neutral pledges, and their promises to prioritize recycled materials. But as AI’s intensive energy demands become more apparent, it seems like many of those supposed green priorities could be jeopardized.
We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars
Electric cars will decide the outcome of the American election
If Joe Biden loses to Donald Trump this November, he can apportion blame towards his administration’s many unforced errors, from the botched Afghanistan bug-out to the mess at the southern border. But the biggest blunder of all has yet to fully reveal itself: the ill-conceived drive to push electric vehicles into making up over three-fifths of all car purchases by the 2030s.
Just last week the administration issued a draconian mileage requirement, one of many ‘nudge’ policies attempting to usher in an all-electric future. Replacing a massive $3 trillion industry with a singular technology represents a severe economic threat under any circumstances, but ramming through changes just as EV sales are slowing is nothing less than madness.
We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Mirrors
7M dollars.
52 homes.
18 years.
We Don’t Need No Shattered Giant Mirrors
Video: Hail storm in Damon, TX destroys 1,000’s of acres of solar farms.
We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Mirrors
As go the subsidies, so go the subsidized.
Massive layoffs, production cuts, project delays and cancellations. As China’s world-leading solar manufacturers grapple with excess capacity and a fierce price war, the industry looks poised to enter a period of brutal consolidation.
There have been no reports of major bankruptcies yet. But Longi Green Energy Technology Co.’s warning in May that more than half the nation’s solar companies could go under no longer seems far-fetched.
We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars
Stick to space rockets and speech: Living with the Tesla Cybertruck So You Don’t Have To!