The Canary Just Chirped

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Well, the canary in the coal mine just chirped.

Arnaud Deboeuf – who is Chief Manufacturing Officer at Stellantis, the automotive combine that owns the Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep/Ram truck brands, among others – said publicly the other day that the automotive industry is doomed if it continues to pretend it can sell electric vehicles at the prices electric vehicles are currently selling for.

“The market will collapse,” he said.

No doubt. For the obvious-but-adamantly-unacknowledged reason that only a small percentage of the car market buyer pool is affluent enough to pay at least 30-50 percent more for their next new car – which is the price differential between electric cars and their non-electric equivalents.

The disparity being greatest in the economy and family car segments – the segments that account for the bulk of new vehicle purchases.

The actual disparity is even more than that, courtesy of the Biden Thing – who has caused the purchasing power of the money people have to use to buy everything to decline by 15 percent in just one year. This means that a Nissan Leaf that cost about $28k last year (for the version that can maybe get you 150 miles down the road) now costs 15 percent more than it did,  courtesy of the Thing.

And not just 15 percent more, when you consider that in addition to needing more devaluing dollars to buy electric cars like the Leaf, everyone needs 15 percent more dollars to buy everything else, including things like food. This leaves fewer of those depreciating dollars to buy things like electric cars.

Or any cars, for that matter.

But electric cars are the most expensive cars because of all the hidden costs the “media” refuses to inform the populace about – including the cost of having to spend many thousands of additional devalued dollars on a new battery pack probably right around the time the mark who bought the EV is close to having paid off the EV. Not to mention the cost of the wiring upgrades needed at home to get back on the road in anything less than overnight – all this talk of “fast” charging notwithstanding. Even after those wiring upgrades, the EV won’t move for several hours – the time it takes to recover a partial charge on the “fastest” charging (240 volts) you can do at a private residence.

Have fun cooling your heels at those places that aren’t home, where it is possible to “fast” charge an EV (partially, again) in about 30-45 minutes.

EVs have been sold to people – most of whom cannot afford to buy them – on a combination of high-performance (e.g., the ability to accelerate very quickly, albeit very briefly), techno snob appeal and virtue-signaling. Owning a $50,000-plus EV is the modern way to do what Minnie Pearl did back on HeeHaw – some will remember the show – which was to show off her latest hat and how much she paid for it, by dangling the price tag.

But it is impossible for most Americans to do what Minnie Pearl did – as regards electric cars – and that was the warning emanating from Deboeuf.

It does not matter whether EVs are “green” – though the assertion is almost as silly as the assertion that wearing a “mask” prevents people from getting or giving sickness, given that more supposedly “climate changing” C02 is “emitted” (fatuous, dishonest term) in the process of manufacturing an EV and powering one than is produced during the manufacturing and driving of a gas-burning economy car – which does not consume anywhere near the amount of power that energy hog electric cars burn up.

Italics to emphasize the fact that about 80 percent of the power used up by electric cars – to power up the massive battery packs that power their “clean” electric motors (that part is true) is generated by turbines at utility plants that burn coal, oil and natural gas to power them. EVs are thus as “clean” – as far as “climate-changing” carbon dioxide “emissions” – as it is “clean” to dump your used motor oil down the storm drain in someone else’s neighborhood.

Leaving aside the fact that while dumping oil down the storm drain anywhere isn’t “clean,” there is nothing “dirty” about carbon dioxide, of which there is so little in the air at the present time we could probably use more rather than less; life-giving C02 levels being low, relative to pre Ice Age levels. And in any event, the assertion that the “climate” is “changing” in a “catastrophic” way due to “human action” is bait for the boobs, of a piece with similar assertions that millions will die on account of a “virus” that didn’t kill 99.8-something percent of us.

But even if it were true that the “climate” is “changing” – and because of us not driving electric cars that aren’t “clean” – it would be irrelevant. For precisely the same reason that it is an irrelevance, for almost everyone who isn’t very affluent, that there are some really nice beach houses available for sale at Martha’s Vineyard.

Deboeuf also said that Stallantis is “aiming to cut the cost of electric vehicles by 40 percent by 2030” – there’s that date, again – though he said nothing about how Stellantis expects to accomplish this.

Some believe it will follow the course of electronics, which have gotten less expensive over time. But there is a big difference between electronics that don’t have to move under their own power – and so can be powered by very small batteries – and an electric car that requires 1,000-plus pounds of battery pack, in order to move. The energy and raw material inputs are staggering – and for that reason, so is the cost. How will the cost go down when the materials themselves are expensive, especially in quantity? How will the cost of energy go down, when there is more demand for it – and less generating capacity?

Deboeuf isn’t an idiot. He knows the answers to these questions. It is why he said what he said. The real question, then, is why is this forced-electrification of transportation being pushed harder than a time-share condo?

And the answer to that question is far uglier.

It is that the powers-that-be do not want most of us driving anything. “Electrification” is the means by which that is to be accomplished; “climate change,” the guilt-trip meant to get the boobs to accept it.

Deboeuf knows it. And he just tried to say that, too.

. . .

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39 COMMENTS

  1. The EV sham is predicated on the belief that ALL the power to run them will eventually be generated by wind and solar… thus 100% “clean.”

    But that’s such an unrealistic fantasy they might as well just say the Electric Fairy is going to sprinkle magic pixie dust to power them.

    • Hi X,

      Yup – very true. And even if the necessary terawatts of power are generated “cleanly” – how will they be transmitted to the users?

      Electricity by its nature is centralized and tethered.

  2. Henry Ford, we miss ya buddy. He actually gave a shit about working people. Now we got Yale and Harvard shitheads turning America into a 3rd world ghetto. Fuck the neworldorder.

    • Hi Dennis,

      Indeed.

      And the process has accelerated rapidly over the past 30 years – which I have personally seen up close, because that’s how long I’ve been covering the car business. When I began covering it – way back in the ’90s – a Human Resources termagant such as Mary Barra becoming the CEO of GM would have been . . . laughable. As in, the automotive press would have laughed, openly. But here we are – and there we go.

      • Hi Eric

        she is a moron……

        What a moron….lol
        GM CEO Admits Electric Vehicle Is Charged On Natural Gas

        Most electricity is generated burning hydrocarbons, how green is that?

        90% of electricity is generated by burning coal, gas and oil, 5% is nuclear, solar and wind turbines are a joke, there is a small amount of geothermal and hydro, depending on the location. In U.S. 40% is coal.
        Thermal efficiency of power plants using coal, petroleum, natural gas or nuclear fuel and converting it to electricity are around 33% efficiency, natural gas is around 40%. Then there is average 6% loss in transmission, then there is a 5% loss in the charger, another 5% loss in the inverter, the electric motor is 90% efficient so another 10% loss before turning the electricity into mechanical power at the wheels.
        33% – 6% – 5% – 5% – 10% = 25% efficiency for EV’s.
        (under not ideal conditions it might be 12% efficient).

        NOTE: a diesel is 50% efficient….lol…

        the 2014 Volkswagen Golf BlueMotion diesel, is capable of a claimed 88.3 mpg imperial, or 73.5 mpg U.S.

        The average EV gets 25 mpg….lol

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf3PT-vBDsg

  3. It is abundantly clear, the evidence is obvious, the current regime illegally occupying the seat of the US gov must be removed.

    It is going to happen in any event, the sooner the better.

  4. The obvious answer in all of this is that previous and current ev technology is an inferior product to icev. Ev total cost of ownership is higher with less desirable overall performance and user experience. The battery issue or on board electric generation of ev has not been solved to a level that surpasses ice. The obvious answer is that if ev technology becomes technologically superior to ice then the world will embrace ev as an obvious evolution but not before – technological superiority is determined by the end result of all scientific and engineering advancements integrated in to the final configured product. If idiots claiming to be government have an agenda for everyone that is not aligned in harmony with the natural progression human technological advancement then those idiots are not ‘following the science’. If those clowns actually conspire and initiate injury upon everyone to force them to an unsustainable and undesired technological paradigm then they are not the government, they are criminals who are a clear and present danger as the single largest existential threat to the safety and security of everyone.

    • Hi Nobody,

      Well-said. If EVs offered more in the way of economy/practicality/affordability, they would naturally have a market. But because they offer less – a decrease of all those qualities – it is necessary find an excuse (“climate change”) to force them onto the market. The whole discussion has been so contrived as to avoid discussing the obvious fact – by getting people to accept a false premise; i.e., that it is necessary accept less for the sake of ameliorating “climate change.”

  5. Just so you all know, here in northern Wisconsin, we were told we are likely going to have to do rolling blackouts, thanks to WEC Energy Group’s insistence on shuttering coal plants and opening “green” plants. In addition, for a nearby gas station to add just ONE EV charger, the power company will have to do a five million dollar substation upgrade to accommodate that. Furthermore, MISO says that if we can’t get our power supply/demand act together, they are just going to shut down the entire Midwest, and it could take up to two weeks to restore power after that. This is without the strain of EV vehicles! One of the marks of being America and not Somalia is usually that we have clean, reliable energy, but I guess we can’t have that. What an idiotic government we have.

    • Whatch you mean, Willis? “they are just going to shut down the entire Midwest” ?

      Who said this?

      Got any links?

      • That’s just the weekly report my power company gets from MISO. It would be hard to get said documents, but I’ll take it on faith the utility knows what they are talking about. They said they don’t want a repeat of California a few years ago, so shutting off the Midwest (especially the upper part) is preferable. As soon as we start causing under-frequency problems for everyone else (most likely caused by A/C load during a heat wave), they’ll just shut us off. Better that than a total grid collapse and a months-long black start process.

        I would check out MISOs website. There’s a bulletin board on there somewhere where they post advisories. I can’t for the life of me find it, but it’s there somewhere.

        • Thanks for the reply.

          I guess this is just a primer for things to come during our transition to a third world status?

          ” … “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

          So declared Barack Obama […]

          Many people think that America has many problems, but those can be addressed without a fundamental transformation. Ask professors who teach history or political ideologies (as I have for two decades), and we will tell you that totalitarianism is the ideology that fundamentally transforms.” …

          https://www.ncregister.com/news/how-barack-obama-fundamentally-transformed-the-united-states

          Just something I thought of while imagining rolling blackouts in the Midwest.

  6. The canary chirped the day Pres. Mumbles took office.

    The canary has been claws up at the bottom of the cage for quite a while.

  7. Hi Rich,
    “…more 90’s tech in cars.” Spot on. In the 1980s, the newspaper I worked for ran an automotive advice column. Almost every question from readers amounted to the same thing: “Dear Dave, my [fill in make and model] surges and stalls. What could be the problem?”
    After owning a 1978 Rabbit diesel and then a 1983 Jetta turbodiesel, I made up my mind that I would never buy another gas-burner. But then along came computer controls and fuel systems that made gas engines actually start and run pretty well. They should have quit while they were ahead.

  8. Re: “The Canary Just Chirped”

    Government response: The canary is the problem, and Putin…

    Great canary/mine picture 🙂

  9. Electric cars are being pushed onto us by a myth, a popular yet wrong notion that CO2 warms the planet. It does not and here are some charts that prove that CO2 can not and has never warmed earth:

    1. In this first chart, we see CO2 vs temp over 4.5 billion years, and how ice ages come and go with CO2 over 3,000ppm or how ice ages end with CO2 at lows!

    https://i.imgur.com/555u81S.png

    2. In this next chart, we see that CO2 always follows temperatures up and down during natural ice age cycles:

    https://i.imgur.com/wsKSVgl.png

    3. Carbon dioxide is a trace gas and no a climate driver chart:

    https://i.imgur.com/IfqB61B.png

    (note how water vapor is the primary greenhouse gas that is never mentioned, and that a minor trace gas would not be expected to drive the thermodynamics of an entire planet!)

    4. Man made CO2 global warming effect is so low it is not even measurable, this next chart is a high school greenhouse gas chart showing natural vs man made:

    https://i.imgur.com/IGWlTWa.png

    (note how man made CO2 only cause 0.117% of the greenhouse effect – that is so low as to not be measurable – and when rounded to the nearest integer it is zero)

    5. When the last glacial maximum ended, 18,000 years ago, CO2 was at all time lows of 140 ppm. So earth warmed at record low CO2 – the exact opposite of the warming by CO2 claim. So this causal effect of CO2 warming is utter bullshit, but everyone believes it because the public is never shown charts like I have presented here, that is intentional malfeasence and I recommend all MSM be shut down for causing great societal harm.

    https://i.imgur.com/ObxI8Ao.png

    It took 10,000 years for the ice to melt at the end of the last glacial maximum. Polar ice declined 50%, sea levels went up 300 feet, and at around 7,000 years ago the peak in warmth ended and earth has steadily been cooling, and now that cooling trend is accelerating.

    This global warming hoax is not just wrong and stupid, it is deadly, because society is acting on bad information – we are in fact still in the ice age, we are past interglacial warming peak, and we are cooling just like it has every time previously.

  10. What are the future of domestic auto sales if the death vaxx does what us conspiracy researches say it will do?

    My friend Northern Truth Seeker up in the great white north Canada posted this interesting article today:

    https://northerntruthseekersblog.wordpress.com/2022/07/02/doctor-david-martin-700-million-worldwide-will-die-from-covid-19-kill-shots-by-2028-i-say-a-lot-more/

    “And yes, I am not sold on the ‘700 Million dead’ assumption for the number of dead by the year 2028 as I say it will be a LOT more, and I will explain it here…

    Presently according to government figures from around the world, there are an estimated 5.2 BILLION people that have taken these KILL SHOTS into their bodies through these deadly injections….

    And lets say that somewhere around 10% or so have luckily received ‘only saline’ depending on the number of shots that they take into their bodies.. Thus it is now known that even ONE injection of the ‘real mccoy’ aka the lethal mRNA crap in these injections will lead to permanent genetic damage to the individual taking these shots and potentially certain death… Thus we have some 4.5 BILLION that have had their bodies permanently turned into spike protein manufacturers…

    But of course I do trust in how our bodies will do everything possible to survive, and out of those 4.5 BILLION permanent spike protein manufacturing ‘sub humans’, I do estimate some 30% will probably survive beyond 2028 due to the resiliency of the human body in trying everything possible to survive… That means nearly 3 BILLION will most probably be DEAD within the next 6 years…. The other estimated 1.5 BILLION ‘survivors’ of taking these KILL SHOTS will be permanently crippled and turned into ‘subhumans’ which are genetically modified creatures that are NO LONGER HUMAN….

    I also have ZERO doubt about the authenticity of all of the shocking articles that claim that ANYONE that has taken these KILL SHOTS is not only no longer human, but their DNA is permanently damaged to the point that they can NO LONGER HAVE HUMAN CHILDREN… This is fact, and it means that there are presently some 2.3 to 2.5 BILLION women that have taken these KILL SHOTS that have made themselves either permanently sterile and unable to bear children forever, OR if they do even attempt to have ‘children’ those children are NO LONGER HUMAN as these ‘children’ are carriers of the corrupted DNA from their parents….(I have seen so many videos of the increasing number of ‘black eyed’ weird looking and acting “babies” being born to those who have taken these death jabs, and that alone is frightening..)

    Thus we have the combination of a weapon that will genocide BILLIONS of human beings in the next 3-6 years (if not sooner..) while also making nearly ALL of the ‘survivors’ permanently genetically modified that they are no longer human AND are basically sterile and can never have human offspring….

    Therefore to me, that ‘700 MILLION’ figure for total deaths may seem enormous, but to me it is at least 5 fold too small… I can see, from the evidence that I have seen so far, at least 3 to 3.5 BILLION dead by 2028 with some 1.5 BILLION ‘survivors’ turned permanently into non humans…”

    ——————

    Like I always say, it is not only way worse than you want to imagine and it is worse than you can imagine. We are only in the eye of the vaxx death jab storm, just wait until the delayed kill features kick in.

    The post-vaccine WIPEOUT of children’s immune systems has arrived
    https://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/?p=255565

    So now they are targeting infants to 5 year olds, my friend Jeff Rense lays it out in this radio clip:

    https://mediaarchives.gsradio.net/rense/special

    More Adults Dropping Dead
    Of SADS – Hideous Walensky Announces
    Open Season On Infants, Toddlers With
    BioWeapon Shots – Parents Already Injecting
    Their Children, Many Funerals Just Ahead –
    More Human Injury Reports /rense_062422_hr3.mp3

    • Hi Jack,

      I agree – if we’re right. If the “vaccines” are intentional population control measures, then 700 million is hardly a fart in the wind. If they are competent, the makers of these “vaccines” would have engineered then to cull at least a third of the population for it to have been worth the effort (as such) from their point of view.

      I think we’ll know what the truth is soon enough, either way.

  11. quote: “This leaves fewer of those depreciating dollars to buy things like electric cars. Or any cars, for that matter.”

    That is exactly what is going on and here are the charts that proves it:

    1. Domestic Auto Production is heading toward zero
    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DAUPSA

    (note how in 2020 production actually went to zero – an omen)

    2. Motor Vehicle Retail Sales: Domestic Autos

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DAUTOSA

    3. Rapidly rising prices = demand destruction

    https://wolfstreet.com/2022/06/26/consumer-still-pay-no-matter-what-for-new-vehicles-as-average-transaction-price-hits-record-45844-in-june-amid-inventory-shortages-record-per-unit-gross-profits/

    https://wolfstreet.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/US-auto-sales-new-average-transaction-price-2022-06-26.png

  12. Eric,

    Did you hear the relatively good news that Japan didnt agree to the co2 reduction crap at the G7, basically because Toyota said something similar, and realised it would not be able to survive in an electric car world, as its simple, affordable reliable car model will never work….

  13. They are killing off mobility, no more cheap ice cars, or fuel, no more driving around, you won’t be flying either….

    but the elite nobiliity will fly around in private jets, drive Porsches and Ferraris and eat steak..

    WEF Agenda 2030
    The airline industry is now being systematically and deliberately demolished

    read through many of the WEF documents and all of UN’s Agenda 2020/30/50/etc. said that this is all actually written down as an explicit objective. She said that the ultimate intent is to do away with travelling and to establish a feudal arrangement where people remain fixed in place and all travel is banned.

    Three of the participants on the call had deep inside knowledge of the airline industry (one of them a pilot) who said in no uncertain terms that the industry is now being systematically and deliberately demolished. Apparently, the ultimate purpose is to kill airline travel altogether.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2022-07-02/small-short-coming-collapse-air-travel-industry

    globalist/wef/nwo planned future
    for the few remaining useless eaters, after their 7 billion cull.

    turning people into appliances plugged into an all-seeing internet, more transhuman robots than people, dutifully following orders but unable to produce anything beyond what is programmed into their quantum microchips, bereft of the sparks of inquiry, innovation and joy in a electric panopticon that’s sterile and joyless, you are better off dead.

    they implant an operating system in you and connect you to the grid, they also connect an AI robot to the grid, this is so you can train the robot to do your job. you won’t be needed then = soylent green.

    the elite nobility/wef/nwo always see themselves as altruistic, the reality is they are satanists, monsters. (they believe in slavery, eugenics, transhumanism, fake science).

    globalist/nwo/who cabal who is in it? the elite nobility and their billionaire friends with their huge corporations, big tech, big pharma, big oil, big media (all the media, facebook, google, twitter), big banks, etc, china was chosen to lead it. a satanic occult death cult, run by witches.

    the dissenting and disenfranchised will find themselves branded as “terrorists”, gathered up into the box cars, and shipped away to be disappeared by the millions.

    Clean, efficient, cheap elimination, sustainable and always environmentally friendly. And it will be at that point, in these cramped box cars, within these hot and stinking quarters during that collective silence where time is suspended between repeating clanks of iron on iron and the hypnotic rhythm of the carriage roll, it is here where “of the people” will ponder upon why they did not wake up, why they did not wise up, and why they did not rise up.

    And so these thoughts go, box car after box car, train after train, day after day. And as the trains slow into the camps, “of the People” will finally experience the epiphany of just how few individuals there were who ruled over the world, but will also discover too late just how few bu…ll,,,,,ets would have fixed things early, how little blood need be shed to derail this Road to Zero.

  14. I like to look at this EV push from the supply side, i.e. where’s the power coming from to charge multitudes of EV’s? The nimbys have blocked any proposals for new power plants or transmission lines while existing generation is slowly being phased out. Having retired from the local utility after 42 years I will bet my pension there is no way in hell they can meet the additional demand of thousands of EV chargers; they can barely keep from having brownouts or rolling blackouts after a few days of a heat wave due to the heavy a/c load.
    Another factoid never mentioned is that electricity isn’t free, just got about a 15% increase around here, so about $.25 a kwh now and only going up in the future. $5/gallon gas isn’t that bad by comparison, not to mention the convenience of fill up in less than five minutes and be on your way.

    • Yep, the price of electricity is going way up and quickly. I have inside information from our small local municipal utility, we’re currently billing .10/kWhr, we’re currently paying about .045/kWhr, and have just been notified that at least 30% increases are in the pipeline in the next 3 months.

      The price of energy will necessarily skyrocket when you change from cheap clean plentiful and reliable sources like coal and nuclear, (around .01/kWhr to generate) to windmills and solar banks (.10/kWhr and up).

      Freeze and starve peasant. Watch your kids and grandkids fall to disease and starvation. More for us, the rightful masters of the world.

  15. I’m in my semi-rural interior location for the summer and I haven’t seen a charging station anywhere. I just did a quick search online and it says there’s 2 within a 40-50m radius and the telsa one is ‘currently closed’. I don’t see rural folks getting into EV’s at all. They will run anything else as long as they can to avoid them like the plague that they are.
    With the exception of the US metro areas, the rest is rural and very rural with large distances to cover to go anywhere. I read a definition of rural vs urban and it’s 60M rural vs 280M urban living. I think it’s less skewed than that. We’ll see how this pans out.

  16. I was concerned the new Stellantis group was going to go along. This is good news that they’re at least adding some realities. Ram appears to be last for an EV, but it appears they are first focusing on a hybrid. We all know the v8 is gone but the Inline6 turbo coming soon is a not-to-far step considering current politics. Hopefully the latest scotus EPA ruling will help sway us back a little if they can rein in the insane CAFE rules.
    IMO, the West is, and probably has been, in a defacto ponzi scheme. They know they can’t keep selling 90’s era vehicles for fear and truth that the 3rd world copies them eventually and makes/sells the same thing for a fraction. That’s why the rules/regs have to keep changing to keep the 3rd world out.

  17. Even the radical watermelons are singing the same tune, albeit from a different angle.

    https://www.infowars.com/posts/radical-climate-activists-say-theyll-deflate-suv-tires-across-america-after-hitting-40-vehicles-in-nyc/

    From link:

    The radical leftists say they’ll continue deflating tires across the globe until SUVs are “banned in urban areas” and eventually taxed out of existence while being replaced with “free, comprehensive public transport.”

    One thing worth noting is the group also targets hybrids and electric cars, saying they’re “fair game” because, “We cannot electrify our way out of the climate crisis.”

    “There are not enough rare earth metals to replace everyone’s car and the mining of these metals causes suffering. Plus, the danger to other road users still stands, as does the air pollution,” the group states.

  18. I get so frustrated about the CO2 nonsense. Why can people not understand negative feedback, and how it makes systems stable? The relationship between plant and animal life here on earth is a perfect example. Plants use CO2 for photosynthesis, and emit oxygen as a waste product (which, to the plant, it is). Animal life, including a party animal like me, does the opposite: oxygen in, CO2 out. Atmospheric CO2 increases? That means more plant life, which counteracts such an increase (and also provides us with tasty sweet corn in the summer). Also trees, providing us with handy lumber, and a shady place to sit and enjoy that perfectly-grilled ear of sweet corn.

    I logged 152 miles on my road bike this week. Lefty would no doubt find this an admirably “green” form of transportation. But I burned carbon in order to power my bicycle, in the form of ketones and sugars, and emitted CO2. Oh, the horror! Fortunately, there were plenty of grasses, weeds, bushes, and trees along both sides of the road that were happy to have me come panting by. I believe I saw them putting on their bibs, calling out to each other, “Soup’s on!”

    And “climate change.” The part of the country where I live was once ocean bottom, based on the fossils you can find by paying some casual attention to the rocks underfoot when you’re walking. At a later time, it was covered by glaciers said to have been hundreds of feet thick (not sure how they know that, but they did plane off the terrain around here pretty flat, and those Great Lakes a little to my north took some excavating). Both with no help from human industry, cars, etc. Somebody tell me what the “correct” average temperature of earth is — and why.

    Sorry — rant over. Every now and then, I could swear that The Stupid is just washing over me like a big wave.

  19. The electric vehicle industry is doomed, the market will collapse. The demand just is not there like the demand there is for automobiles with internal combustion engines. Numbers are the proof, all that is needed.

    Everybody wants petroleum products, the demand is there every day.

    From Texas Highways:

    “The discovery of the Spindletop oil field had an almost incalculable effect on world history, as well as Texas history,” summarizes the New Handbook of Texas. “Eager to find similar deposits, investors spent billions of dollars throughout the Lone Star State in search of oil and natural gas. The cheap fuel they found helped to revolutionize American transportation and industry.”

    Adds Gray, “Up until then there had been debate on whether cars would be gas or electric. This settled that for the next century, and then you think about how it came to fuel ships and trains. It helped push America into becoming a modern society.”

    Anthony Francis Lucas drilled the hole, an Austrian geologist who changed how oil was explored and developed. The Lucas Gusher changed the entire world on how energy is produced and consumed.

    John D. Rockefeller was a market maven, not an oil explorer, somebody else’s job. Rockefeller almost quit the oil business and returned to his original business interest, marketing produce.

    John hired Herman Frasch, a chemist who discovered how to remove sulfur from malodorous oil, improved the refining process, thus Standard Oil refined kerosene that was stable and wasn’t a fire hazard.

    In the beginning, refiners could process five barrels per day at best.

    If the plan is to stop using hydrocarbons, there will be upheaval.

    Idiot Biden has no brain, he’s also in la-la land.

    No fixing it, no saving Biden.

    Who’s ever pulling the strings must be having some fun, a laugh a minute.

    Just who in the hell do these people think they are?

    Putin has them worried, that’s for sure.

  20. Welcome to the liberal world order.

    “It is that the powers-that-be do not want most of us driving anything. “Electrification” is the means by which that is to be accomplished” – This is the exact thought I was having while reading this. Excellent conclusion Eric.

  21. RE: Electronic components will get less less expensive over time. This is completely wrong. This is wrongly applying Moore’s law where it doesn’t apply. DC brushless motors are made of copper windings and permanent magnets. Motors, even “high tech” DC brushless motors, are just copper and steel, and the only real variability is the quality of the bearings and machining tolerances.

    They’re driven by electronic speed controllers (ESC) that pulse the windings in sequence. The faster you send pulses, the faster the motor shaft will turn. The ESC is just a set of MOSFETs that are controlled by a relatively simple microcontroller. The ESC gets its input from a computer that’s about the same as an engine management computer in a gasoline engine. You don’t need much of a processor to do any of that, so they’re typically several generations old designs, built in low-end chip fabs in China and Vietnam. They’re already about as cheap as they’re going to get. They’re so cheap it doesn’t pay to make them in the United States, unless you’re building for a “blue” (Defense Department) contract.

    And then there’s the elephant in the room, the battery. It is chemistry, not electronics. Chemestry doesn’t use transistors or chip fabs. Molecules don’t get smaller/cheaper/faster without a nuclear reactor, and the greens are afriad of that.

    Speaking of nuclear, the research into stable fusion reactors continues. The Europeans and Chinese alchemists seem/claim to be making some progress in producing more energy than input for a few seconds at a time. Enough net energy to run a few incandecent lights, if one is lucky enough to have them on hand. The plan is still to hand wave away the problems with electrics until we have fusion and that battery breakthrough that should happen any day now.

    • ‘This is wrongly applying Moore’s law where it doesn’t apply.’ — Ready Kilowatt

      Damned straight.

      Listen up, Kongress Klowns: Moore’s Law don’t apply to 5,000-pound hunks of steel, glass, copper, rubber, plastic and aluminum.

      Over a century, the prices of such commodities tend to decline by perhaps one percent annually, owing to incremental improvements in mining and manufacturing.

      But that one percent annual decline is in real (after inflation) terms. Nominal prices, in Biden bucks, are rising smartly. In parallel, so are wages and the interest rate on loans.

      Cornering the entire auto market into a pig-in-a-poke EV corral is an extermination event.

      Wait
      There’s been a slaughter here

      Not to touch the earth
      Not to see the sun
      Nothing left to do, but
      Run, run, run

      — The Doors, Celebration of the Lizard

  22. I think he did say it Eric. Which makes plain the intent is to keep us from going where we want, when we want. Haven’t seen any stats, but haven’t looked to hard for something I don’t expect to find, but I wonder, how many of those who own an EV also own one or more ICVs?
    We don’t have the battery tech to make them work.
    We don’t have a power grid capable of maintaining air conditioning and heat, much less power EVs.
    The manufacturing energy cost of any vehicle is a significantly high fraction of its lifetime energy cost. EVs manufacturing energy cost is likewise a significantly higher fraction of its lifetime energy cost compared to ICVs.
    It’s a primrose path of unicorn farts and fairy pixie dust to a destination we will never reach.
    Which is the plan. That none will ever go anywhere without being tracked exactly when we went where and when. On public transportation. If there is any. We could be relegated to where we can go being limited to walking or riding a bike.
    They want us all living in mud huts, farming our half acre of beans with hand tools, if lucky enough to have them. With half our production being confiscated to feed the “worthy”. Along with “special permit” farms to supply their steaks.

  23. “The market will collapse,” Deboeuf said. — eric

    Auto makers cater to luxury demand in boom times, but with an unavoidable lag of three years owing to the design and tooling cycle. V12s and V16s, developed during the late 1920s boom, were available like never before in the 1930s. But solvent buyers were scarce.

    “Ludicrous speed” EVs and $80,000 electric pickups are our era’s version of late 1920s luxury: nice but ephemeral. Manufacturers can’t serve the utilitarian general market with high-priced luxury vehicles. Like Stutz and Packard and Auburn, they just won’t survive.

    If auto makers are perpetually three years out of step with the economy, Big Gov (always the last to get a clue) is a decade, a generation out of sync. Mandating a radical change in propulsion technology is the ultimate in hubris by mindless legislative mobs.

    It won’t work. The turbulent 2020s already threaten the survival of auto makers, even if they were sticking with proven IC engines. Simultaneously negotiating a fraught transition to materials-intensive EVs that most customers don’t want is as unlikely as the Federal Reserve engineering a mythical ‘soft landing.’

    Stellantis sees the writing on the wall: the fulminating mass delusion of climate change, embraced by crusading governments, threatens their very existence.

    After destroying most existing auto makers in the next ten years, will Big Gov relent and sponsor a new, economical People’s Car in 2032, the hundred-year anniversary of the bitter bottom of the last depression?

    • The sad thing Chrysler could be and should be spending it’s developmental money on vehicles people would actually buy. Like RAM pickups, the more expensive Jeeps and Hellcats. All vehicles with high margins and big profits. Vehicles people are willing to pay a premium to buy FROM Chrysler!!

      All vehicles the government is making impossible for them to even have!

      I am sure Chrysler has far less money for developing future products than the other automakers. Its not just because the late Sergio Marchionne didn’t think much of electric. They just don’t have the money to waste on developing also-ran electric. Because that is what they will have the “also ran” car. Yes, people are willing to pay 70k for a Hellcat or a decked out RAM pickup, but yeah, no way on something electric. And don’t forget most people AREN”T buying 70k cars.

      They don’t have the billions to waste on electric cars nobody wants. Ford and GM are wasting so much money IMHO.

      I would mind going back to more 90’s tech in cars. Just enough to make them work a bit easier, but not so complex they become problems themselves like they do now.

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