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It’s time once again, gentle readers, for an electric vehicle update.  As I’ve previously noted, there is so much EV news—all of it bad for America and Americans—coming so fast I’m having to pick and choose the media gems–actually, doggie droppings–upon which to report.  I suffer so you don’t have to.  You’re welcome.  Things are tough all over, even in the White House, as The Washington Examiner explains:

As the White House continues to push for more electric vehicles by 2030, here are three electric vehicle companies that are struggling financially.

Proterra, which has been praised by President Joe Biden on several occasions, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Monday night when it valued its assets and liabilities between $500 million and $1 billion. This value is down from $1.6 billion since January 2021.

This is bad news for Biden’s green energy plan, considering he previously lauded Proterra as the future of the electric vehicle industry in 2021. The president claimed Proterra was ‘getting us in the game’ and predicted electric vehicle companies would ‘end up owning the future.’

credit: cowboy state daily

Regular readers will recall I recently wrote of Jackson, Wyoming’s recent Proterra bus woes.  Lordstown Motors and Nikola Corporation, all beneficiaries of White House EV largess, are also in serious financial trouble.  Government picks winners–Solyndra comes to mind–and they quickly become losers as millions is taxpayer money vanishes.  As I’m sure regular readers also know, Joe Biden recently spent a very few minutes on a UAW picket line.  He’s all for the workers, America!

On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s ‘The Lead,’ UAW President Shawn Fain discussed endorsing a candidate in the 2024 presidential race and stated that there are issues with workers possibly being left behind in the transition from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles, and stated that ‘20% of the powertrain workers in the Big Three stand to lose their jobs down the road’ if that transition occurs. He also argued that ‘you can’t call this a just transition if you’re going to go from $32 an hour wages down to $16 an hour.’

Host Bianna Golodryga asked, ‘So, is an endorsement contingent upon a deal with the administration on these specific asks that you have?’

Fain answered, ‘We’ll see. It’s — there’s a lot of work to be done still. But, I mean, naturally, all of these things are a big part of it. Again, workers can’t be left behind in this transition. When we talk about the EV transition, you’re talking about 20% of the powertrain workers in the Big Three stand to lose their jobs down the road if we go from [internal combustion] engines to the battery power. And you can’t call this a just transition if you’re going to go from $32 an hour wages down to $16 an hour.’

Hmmm.  So when the Big Three transition to EVs, auto workers transition to unemployment and those that remain transition to much lower wages?  Let’s go Brandon!  That and spiraling inflation are great ideas!  Here’s another example of just how much Biden loves auto workers:

On Friday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s ‘Wall Street Week,’ Steve Rattner, who ran President Obama’s task force on the auto industry, stated that if jobs in electric battery plants are unionized and have the same rules as traditional assembly plants, ‘then a lot of those jobs may not end up coming here, whatever number of jobs there are in the electric battery area, some of them will not come here, because it will just become too expensive to make the stuff here.’

And where will those battery jobs go?  China, perhaps?  Ford is determined to drive itself into bankruptcy:

On Thursday’s broadcast of CNN’s ‘The Lead,’ Ford President and CEO Jim Farley stated that he’s not opposed to giving workers pay increases, ‘But if it prevents us from investing in this transition to EVs and in future products like the ones we have now like a new F-150,’ they won’t do that because they’ll go bankrupt.

No, they’ll go bankrupt when Americans refuse to buy their electric vehicles—which are so expensive they can’t afford them in the first place–and can’t get parts for conventional Fords because the entire American parts industry has collapsed.  One would think a car manufacturer would be smart enough to see that far down the road to ruin.  The Mummified Meat Puppet Administration’s brilliance isn’t just in its greenie mandates, but in its economic policies driving inflation every higher.  It’s hard to buy an EV one can’t afford today when one makes less money tomorrow.  Mark P. Mills, at City Journal, explains “The EV Jobs Myth:”

We are talking about trillions, not mere hundreds of billions, of dollars deployed to force a ‘transition’ to an all-EV future that will be fueled, in the grand green plan, by wind and solar electricity. Nearly half of the subsidies in the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) are directed at transportation ‘decarbonization,’ and in a remarkable feat of political camouflage, some subsidies continue without limit, including for EV batteries. For perspective, NASA’s entire budget to return to the Moon is barely a few percent of the total flooding into the automobile and energy markets.

The auto industry is getting disrupted by government interventions, not technology. At no time in modern history has the government committed so much in money and mandates to a single goal as it has now to cars and how they’re fueled. This is industrial policy on a scale never before witnessed in America, outside of wartime.

As I keep writing, these people have no idea from where electricity comes, and it’s all bad for America:

The bottom line, by now, should be obvious. A monomaniacal attempt to create an all-EV future, especially in the time frames envisioned, involves not only more overall labor but an unprecedented offshoring of labor, as well as a massive misallocation of capital. The ultimate result will be economic havoc and bankruptcies—and that will certainly lead to fewer jobs.

Take the link, gentle readers.  It’s worse than you think.  EVs spontaneously bursting into flame is rapidly becoming a “dog bites man” story, this one from Down Under:

A Tesla burst into flames on a busy highway on Monday in the Southern Highlands region of Australia, sending firefighters on a difficult mission to battle the blaze. The fire started after the electric vehicle built by Elon Musk’s company hit debris that fell off another vehicle.

The Tesla Model 3, which costs upwards of $60,000, likely caught on fire due to a lithium battery that was damaged after a piece of debris fell from a truck onto the battery shell, according to a report by Daily Mail.

What they likely mean is debris from a truck bounced up into the Tesla’s battery, and when the slightest battery damage happens fire, and possibly explosion, is the inevitable result.  Here’s a bit of delicious irony: 

credit: cowboy state daily

The Harris Ranch Tesla Supercharger station is an impressive beast. With 98 charging bays, the facility in Coalinga, California, is the largest charging station in the world. But to provide that kind of power takes something solar can’t provide — diesel generators.

See what I mean about greenies having no idea from where electricity comes?

In 2017, Tesla CEO said that all Superchargers in the automaker’s network were being converted to solar.

No they won’t.

Superchargers charge vehicles up to the 80% sweet spot in as little as 20 minutes, but to provide that kind of power for nearly 100 bays takes something solar can’t provide — diesel generators.

And the most powerful and advanced charging stations, provided electricity by sources far more powerful and reliable than solar and wind.

Investigative journalist Edward Niedermeyer discovered that the station was powered by diesel generators hidden behind a Shell station. Reporters at SF Gate tried to find out how much of the station’s electricity was from the generators, but couldn’t get a response from Tesla.

The station isn’t connected to any dedicated solar farms, which means that absent the diesel generators, the station is powered by California’s grid.

Which gets much of its power from out of state.

Just as these charging stations find they can’t run without some fossil fuel backup, the retirement of a coal-fired power plant in Kansas is being delayed to accommodate the energy demands of an electric vehicle battery factory that’s under construction.

[Energy writer Davie] Blackmon said that these stories illustrate well the lack of thought going into the demands that will be placed on the grid with increasing amounts of electric vehicle adoption.

As those demands pile on, U.S. energy policy pushes to remove coal, nuclear and natural gas from the grid.

Blackmon said he watched all summer as the Texas grid, which operates separately from the rest of the county, nearly collapsed with the incessant heat.

‘We almost had blackouts on Aug. 24,’ he said.

State Sen. Cheri Steinmetz, R-Lingle, told Cowboy State Daily that despite claims that wind and solar alone can power the grid, they lack the reliability needed to satisfy energy demand. So, parts of the country, such as Texas, are facing shortages.

‘Adding the load required for electric vehicles and the transportation network to support them would exacerbate the looming shortages we already face in the near future if energy policies are not reformed,’ Steinmetz said.

“Reform” means building sane, reliable power sources, which is not going to happen under d/S/Cs.  No, we’re not going to be powering EV chargers with solar or wind power:

[Elon] Musk has also been taken to task for his solar promises. Energy expert Alex Epstein ran a fact check on Musk’s claim that we could power the world with a small area of the Sahara Desert and ‘some batteries.’

“Some batteries?”

Epstein calculated that enough battery storage to create a reliable grid would cost $590 trillion for the batteries alone. It doesn’t include the cost of all the transmission infrastructure. And the batteries would have to be replaced every decade.

Hey, America’s only $33 trillion in debt so no problem!  In DeSoto, Kansas, an EV battery factory isn’t exactly going green, as Cowboy State Daily, which is doing great work on the EV debacle, reports:

A $4 billion Panasonic electric vehicle battery factory in De Soto, Kansas, will help satisfy the Biden administration’s efforts to get everyone into an EV.

It also will help extend the life of a coal-fired power plant.

Panasonic broke ground on the facility last year. The Japanese company was slated to receive $6.8 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act, which has been pouring billions into electric vehicles and battery factories as part of its effort to transition America away from fossil fuels.

The Kansas City Star reports that the factory will require between 200 and 250 megawatts of electricity to operate. That’s roughly the amount of power needed for a small city.

In testimony to the Kansas City Corporation Commission, which is the state’s equivalent of the Wyoming Public Service Commission, a representative of Evergy, the utility serving the factory, said that the 4 million-square-foot Panasonic facility creates ‘near term challenges from a resource adequacy perspective,’ according to the newspaper.

Translation: electricity doesn’t come from unicorn farts and fairy dust.

As a result, the utility will continue to burn coal at a power plant near Lawrence, Kansas, and it will delay plants to transition units at the plant to natural gas.

Here’s another dollop of reality that makes greenies weep—when they can’t hide it from the public:

The situation reflects an ignored fact about EVs — they require enormous amounts of energy to produce.

A 15-pound lithium-ion battery holds about the same amount of energy as a pound of oil. To make that battery requires 7,000 pounds of rock and dirt to get the minerals that go into that battery. The average EV battery weighs around 1,000 pounds.

All of that mining and factory processing produces a lot more carbon dioxide emissions than a gas-powered car, so EVs have to be driven around 50,000 to 60,000 miles before there’s a net reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

Final Thoughts:  but other all that, the “transition” to nothing but electric vehicles and wind and solar is the best of all possible worlds.