Does your local supermarket put Whoohoo! stickers on stuff they’ve heavily discounted because it’s not selling and they’re desperate to get rid of it? Maybe there ought to be Whoohoo! stickers for articles such as this one: The EV Transition Isn’t Happening On Schedule, So Automakers Have To Hang On To Technologies They Wanted To Ditch
That’s as good a place as any to start.
The “EV Transition”? Such neutral – such blase! – language. It’s just sort of happening and naturally, too. Like the transition from tape decks to CD players to digital music. No mention of the fact that the government didn’t use its muscle to push people to give up tape decks for CD players and digital music because it wasn’t necessary to do that because CDs were better than tapes for storing and playing music and digital music was better still. The free market obsoleted tape decks – and then CD players. The free market has been greatly abused to impose a “transition” to battery powered vehicles for which there is perhaps a small market, absent government muscle.
This “transition” isn’t “happening on schedule.”
On schedule? Whose schedule would that be? Does the free market have schedules? The implicit acceptance of government planning – that is, of government subversion of the free market – is both astounding and depressing. Readers in their 20s who have grown up immersed in a planned economy take the latter as both a given as well as necessary and laudable. Kind of like the forced wearing of seatbelts and the forced buying of insurance and the mandatory feel-ups at the airports. If that’s all you know, it seems abnormal to question any of it.
“Hang on to technologies” – by which the headline writer means engines.
So why not just say that? Well, because saying it would perhaps cause some to think about it. Instead, the implication is one of foot-dragging Luddites who are “hanging on” to implicitly obsolescent “technology.” The image that comes to mind – that the headline writer probably has in mind – is of someone who won’t give up their tape deck or CD player because they’re afraid of new (and implicitly better) things.
The superciliousness reeks.
The automakers have been pushed – mightily – to “ditch” engines in favor of batteries and electric motors, which are (need it be said) not new “technology,” either. Electric motors and batteries are ancient “technology.” But there are lots of people who think that using them to power a vehicle is a new invention rather than an old idea that was tried and supplanted by a better “technology” more than a century ago.
The articles goes on to say:
“In the U.S. particularly, this has created a weird scenario in which internal-combustion has gained a new lease on life, hybrid powertrains are suddenly hip again.”
Italics added.
It’s a “weird scenario,” apparently, that the market’s rejection of central planning has given internal combustion engines a “new lease on life.” Is the person who wrote this simply ignorant or delusional or something worse – i.e., deliberately attempting to re-write history and skew the facts? What has happened is that Trump’s ending of the massive tax-rebates used as an artificial inducement to get people to buy EVs have been ended and – more fatally, to the EV “transition” – most people just aren’t interested in the tape-deck equivalent of transportation. It’s actually worse (for EVs) than that. Tape decks were the best thing going before there were CDs and digital music. EVs were pushed back onto the “market” after having already failed in the market, 100 years prior. Their government-pushed re-introduction of EVs – which got going circa 2012 or so, with Tesla leading the rent-seeking way – is analogous to a government force-reintroduction of tape decks after CDs and digital music had obsoleted tape decks
How about a federal tax rebate for people who buy tape decks and CD players?
Hybrid powertrains are not “hip,” either. Excepting in models such as the Prius – which are designed specifically to deliver very high gas mileage – the all-of-a-sudden proliferation of hybrid drivetrains in everything else (including incongruent models such as the latest-iteration of the Toyota 4Runner, which I recently wrote about here) is all about compliance. It has nothing whatever to do with being “hip.” Well, other than in the sense that it has become “hip” to comply.
The hybrid system is used to shut off the engine as often as possible, not to save gas but to reduce “emissions” of C02, the gas that cannot be “cleaned up” because it isn’t dirty.
The writer does not explain these facts, either because he does not comprehend or does not want readers to comprehend them. Instead he writes: “If the customer is meh on EVs, then you can’t try to force them into acceptance, lacking serious government support.“
Italics added.
“Serious government support” was deployed to try to force people who were “meh” on masks and whatever-it-was-in-those-needles, too. “Serious government support” is always necessary when a thing is viewed correctly by the “hesitant” as being unnecessary.
No surprise, the writer of the article just dissected used to work for Fisker, the failed electric device-maker. Kind of like those “news” stories during the “pandemic” about the cases! the cases! that were sponsored by Pfizer.
And they ask me why I drink.
. . .
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All this climate nonsense is backed up by computer models, not observed facts.
What is a computer model anyway?
Someone sets a scenario that has predetermined environmental factor cause/effect, then gives it numbers to emulate what could happen under that defined environment.
It is little different than if I calculated a mortgage based on a 10% interest rate and only changed the amount borrowed to determine what house I can afford, never taking into account that interest rates, taxes, insurance premiums always change.
NC Pig Charged With Murder After Executing Unarmed, Surrendering Motorcyclist
https://www.wbtv.com/2025/07/22/prosecutors-reveal-new-details-after-newton-police-officer-charged-with-murder/
Fry the bastard
Morning, X!
Yup. Another case of “stop resisting”!
Digital music isn’t “better” only more convenient. One can stick so much more music on a phone or USB devise compared to a CD, which was a definite improvement over tape in durability and sound, not to mention being able to access the tracks you wanted at will. However the sound quality of digital is NOT particularly good which is why there has been a move back to analog in some quarters. And the good news is that the market responded by making vinyl records available again. No force involved!
Now if only the market would be ALLOWED to let the auto equivalent of vinyl records available that would be a wonderful thing. But such nice things .gov will likely never let us have again.
I restored my 1977 turntable and replaced the cartridge, rebuilt my 1978 SpeakerLab 2.5s (better tweeters and new German caps for the crossovers). Got a ChiCom 300B tube amp. Pleased as punch, the richness and detail off 50 year old vinyl is great listening. Digital age grandson could not believe it. Don’t toss that old gear, restore it.
Newer is not always better. As the saying goes, “if it is not fixed, don’t break it”. I saw one of those Tesla/EV’s in town today. The one that had the weird, triangle hood shapes. I could not help but wonder how much charge the driver had, and how far he/she could go on a typical day? I dumped twenty bucks into the gas tank, nearly topping it off, and know I am good to go for over 400 miles. I cannot say the same for the EV owner. My friend has a newer Forester that has the start/stop technology. Which she can shut off-for now. I have to ask, as I do not know. That is, isn’t it hard on the engine and starter to be turning off and on all the time, especially with in-town driving? You “save the environment” at a cost to wearing out your starter and engine and that costing you more in the long run for the earth? Borrowing a movie line, “What a Stupid World”….
S
I saw one as well yesterday, it was a no go with no one in it. Parked on-the shoulder with nobody around and on a down grade I would Hazard a guess the contraptions will not coast.Just started laughing, as I blew by it at 75 mph.
We got one on a three year/36,OOO mile lease. And yes, the start/stop sucks ASS. Its easy to turn off, but if you forget, you’re driving along and the engine sometimes lugs for no particular rhyme or reason, often when you don’t expect it. It also makes the annoying chime alert if you get up on someone to fast. I suspect these things wont be for decades like the Subarus of old. The one we have is blue and I see tons of them all the time around here, LOL. They were cheap to lease, @ 35O a month. I’ll bet Subaru has a huge fire sale on lease returns in 2-3 years. I already know we’ll be turning ours back in.
Will the indignities being heaped on EeeVees never cease?? I ask you:
‘For the last two decades, more than a million motorists who have slapped “clean air vehicle” decals on their electric and hybrid cars have been free to cruise in carpool lanes with no passengers. But that perk could be coming to an end on Sept. 30.
‘Extending the decal program in California — or any other state — would require the approval of Congress and the signature of President Trump, said Bill Magavern, policy director for the Coalition for Clean Air. “I certainly would not bet on that,” Magavern said.
‘“We’re still at a very fragile point in the transition to all vehicles being electric,” Scott Hardman of UC-Davis said. “Only eight percent of the vehicles on the road are electric, and that’s not enough for you to reach the point where the vehicles are a social norm.”
“I think that you can make a good argument that [clean air vehicle decals for EeeVees] outlived their time and that it’s more important to have the carpool lanes be filled by vehicles that actually have carpools in them,” Magavern said.’ — LA Times
https://archive.ph/meOoV#selection-3035.0-3035.199
Who is this dude, asserting that carpool lanes should actually have carpools in them? That’s like demanding that government supermarkets in the former Soviet Union should actually have groceries in them. The damned cheek!
And it’s another reason that out-of-step Commiefornia is gonna be obliged to S-E-C-E-D-E. California libre! 🙂
Good.
Why buy an EeeVee to get HOV lane access, when you can just ride with a Hillary Clinton doll in the passenger seat?
https://tinyurl.com/4vjtv82f
As wages fail to keep up with GovCo induced inflation I suspect the smarter people out there will continue driving their paid for vehicles longer than they ever imagined and if they consider buying a new car it will probably be one that lasts the longest with the lowest maintenance cost.
The rest of the populace will continue to buy EV’s and looked surprised when they either need a new $25K battery or their EV burns their house down around them.
An electric vehicle can have a power system that will never have to be charged by electricity.
A futuristic thinking brain already exists on this planet, people have brains some know how to use them.
Install a radioisotope thermoelectric generator in the insides of the EV, connect it all to a motor so drive, propel the electric vehicle.
No plug in, gone, no need for electricity from the grid, you’re free as the breeze.
Cassini, Viking, Voyager – all had radioisotope power systems, kept the things alive.
One problem is plutonium is 4,000 USD per gram.
Considering the bloated costs of electric vehicles, all superfluous, a radioisotope thermoelectric generator looks like a bargain.
If you use 10 grams of plutonium in a radioisotope thermoelectric generator to see what happens to generate electricity, an experiment, to find some results, collect some data, you’ll have an idea of what to do.
Voyager had 4.5 kg of plutonium to generate the power for the power systems on the spacecraft. 4000×4500=18,000,000 USD for enough plutonium to make Voyager work like a dog.
Plenty of brainpower here on planet earth.
Trump ain’t got any.
So what we really need is a DeLorean with Mr. Fusion. 😆
The Schedule™ is all about 2030, just 4.5 short years away. If you’re paying attention to the con artists and political operatives (but I repeat myself), the year 2030 is going to be a humdinger of a time. Ray Kurzweil says not only will 2030 be when the Singularity becomes sentient, but also when medical “science” will stop/reverse aging and the first immortal people will emerge. Al Gore’s gang of thieves say 2030 will be when it’s too late to stop global warming. The UN wants to eliminate poverty and inequality by 2030. Saudi Arabia has set 2030 as the time when they reach their economic and social goals of becoming more westernized and diversify their economy (because EVs are going to eliminate the need for oil).
Hi RK,
Oh yes, the magic number of 2030, when (they hope) we’ll ALL be The Borg, we’ll have Digital ID, carbon footprint trackers, technocracy is fully implemented, ALL money is digital (and thus can be controlled & monitored by them) and we’re all taking whatever “recommended mRNA jabs” the WHO says to take. If there’s anything to needs to resisted on a mass scale, it is their sick 2030 agenda.
It cracks me up how these techie douchebags think they’re not going to die like the rest of us mere mortals. I might not make it to 2030 being 78 already but if I do I’ll track down Kurzweil and piss on his computer. There’s an outfit around here that freezes people hoping to some day be revived, Ted Williams (the baseball player) has his head frozen there. I wonder if his headless spirit is wandering around in heaven while the others wonder who it is.
Eric, I’m glad you read that horseshit so we didn’t have to.
Thanks, MH!
Someone’s got to do it; I suppose it might as well be me!
Serious Government Support. A euphemism for the ages. Like, this communism here is gonna need some serious government support. Hmmmm… what could that be? Oh, right, the barrel of a gun or maybe a couple of trillies from the printing press to further enserf you economically. Just being neighborly.
‘No surprise, the writer of the article just dissected used to work for Fisker, the failed electric device-maker.’ — eric
‘Why is the process [sic] taking so long?’ whinges the Jalopnik stenographer, a true believer who bet his career on Fisker, which proceeded to crash and burn.
Yes, this credulous scribbler has all the mainstream Lügenpresse credentials, with claims of having been published at leftist disinfo outlets such as the New York Slimes, the WaPo, and the Los Angeles Times. No wonder he’s such a simp: he believed his own bullshit.
When it comes to ‘hanging on to technologies,’ bitter clingers such as myself will hold tight to our IC-engined vehicles until the wheels fall off, or till they peel our cold, dead hands from the steering wheel.
Remember EeeVee Fever, comrades, during the so-called ‘Biden’ regime? Yeah, that was a hoot!
Gone are the days when my Mach-E was young and gay
Gone are the EeeVees from the cotton fields away
Gone from the earth to a better land, I know
I hear their gentle voices calling Old Daft Joe
— Stephen Foster, Old Black Joe