As I’ve written before, there’s nothing wrong with the idea of electric vehicles. They could well be the future, and if the government wants to put a (small) thumb on the scales to encourage the development and adoption of what may be a promising, cleaner technology, that’s fine.
However, for governments to attempt to force through the adoption of these vehicles combines hubris with economic illiteracy, two flaws traditionally associated with exercises in central planning such as this. EVs (and, critically, the infrastructure needed to support them) simply are not ready for prime time — and are highly unlikely to be so in 2030–35, the period in which, on both sides of the Atlantic, various mandates will put a halt to the sale of new internal-combustion vehicles. In the U.S., so far, this is confined to certain states, and in Canada the deadline, depending on the type of vehicle, will either be 2035 or 2040. To stick to the timetable currently being pushed by climate fundamentalists looks like an invitation to disaster. The way things are going, it will be accepted.
So, a few more recent stories to add to a growing pile.
Bloomberg:
The world’s biggest car company, Toyota Motor Corp., reluctantly released an electric vehicle in May. Weeks later, it recalled 2,700 of them because there was a risk their wheels — the most fundamental component — would fall off. If that’s the level of quality and safety traditional auto giants are willing to commit to, then investors and regulators should increase their scrutiny.
Of course, recalls are not exactly a novelty when it comes to conventional cars either, as the author of the piece rightly mentions, and some of those are for engine fires (yes, I know we were talking about tires, not fires) but this was an interesting detail:
EVs, on the other hand, are a new breed — many models are still concepts and barely mass-produced. That means as more are made, more problems are bound to crop up. In the past two years alone, there have been thousands of recalls, costing billions of dollars.
“Forcing” a technology will do that, but that’s not the interesting detail; this is (my emphasis added):
[F]ires in electric cars are far worse and difficult to contain than those for traditional autos because of a process called thermal runaway, where the flames accelerate through chain reactions. General Motors Co. recalled all of the 142,000 of its electric Bolts sold because the risk of the battery — the core of the car — catching fire. LG Energy Solutions, with a market capitalization of $75 billion, made the fire-prone battery — the most expensive for green vehicles.
Meanwhile, the chief manufacturing officer of Stellantis, the world’s fifth largest automaker and a company led, as I’ve discussed before, by a CEO who is no fan of the way that governments are essentially mandating the switch to EVs, now has this to say:
Stellantis NV is aiming to cut the cost of making electric vehicles 40% by 2030, Chief Manufacturing Officer Arnaud Deboeuf said Wednesday. The producer of Fiats and Peugeots plans to manufacture some parts in-house and also pressure suppliers to cut the price of their products.
If EVs don’t get cheaper, “the market will collapse,” Deboeuf said at the company’s Tremery factory in France. “It’s a big challenge.” . . .
EV prices are going up at a dizzying pace these days. Tesla Inc. raised prices by as much as $6,000 per car this month, following similar hikes earlier this year from Rivian Automotive Inc. and Ford Motor Co. Rising raw-materials costs are rendering some battery-powered models unprofitable, Ford Chief Financial Officer John Lawler said at an investor conference earlier this month.
European Union countries this week endorsed a push to eliminate carbon emissions from new cars by 2035. With EU lawmakers in favor of giving up fossil fuels in the auto industry, it’s highly likely that most manufacturers will have to shift to producing EVs in little more than a decade.
While Stellantis will comply with the decision, policy makers appear to “not care” whether automakers have enough raw materials to underpin the shift, Chief Executive Officer Carlos Tavares said Wednesday.
Central planners are like that.
Meanwhile, writing from Canada, David Booth in the Financial Post (emphasis added):
The first variable, of course, is how rapidly we all buy into electric motors. [Canadians are] more than five years behind the Europeans in this regard, mainly because we insist on electrifying $80,000 pickups rather than econo-sedans that average people can afford, but that may be a good thing considering some of the side effects of the recent uptick in popularity in Europe. That wonderful grace period where everyone keeps charging prices low in the hopes of encouraging emissions reduction is wearing off overseas.
Even before the Russia-Ukraine war turned energy into the most important item on political agendas, some German roadside charging stations were charging as much to fill an EV “tank” as petrol stations.
Oh.
That doesn’t quite fit the narrative.
And Booth has a couple of other things to say about charging (emphasis again added):
Public charging points are the other infrastructure problem that could be a roadblock to widespread EV adoption. Two issues exist here. The first is the speed of current chargers. Range anxiety is clearly an impediment to EV adoption. Less understood is that said anxiety is not based solely on how far a car can go on one charge, but how quickly all those cells can replenish when it does have to stop. Despite widespread claims of ultra-fast charging, topping up all those lithium ions is still a very slow affair, much slower than filling an internal combustion engine vehicle.
The second issue is that there’s simply nowhere near enough public charging points available to serve all the EVs the government hopes to have on the road. Nor are there nearly enough planned in the immediate future. The federal government recently made a big deal about committing some $700 million to build up to 50,000 new public charging stations. That number might initially sound impressive, but Canada is a huge country, one in which a significant portion of the year is spent in the gloom of winter, and low temperatures typically halve an EV’s range, making an adequate infrastructure imperative.
Fortunately, anyone who has basked in the warmth of, say, an Illinois winter will know that unlike chilly Canada, drivers in the balmy, more northern parts of the U.S. will never have to confront such problems. Frontiers can produce miracles. Manitobans may shiver through those grim winter months, but at that time of year neighboring North Dakota is merely a mildly more bracing Florida.
Booth goes onto to discuss just how many charging stations will be needed.
What he has to say is well worth reading. Takeaway: All is well.