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We begin, gentle readers, with Powerline: 

Then we come to the availability of needed natural resources. Apart from the fact that the Chinese control the current supply, we have the question: how will the vastly increased demand for raw materials be met?

[I]f [Richard Herrington, the head of earth sciences at the Natural History Museum in London, and seven colleagues’] numbers are right, electrifying all of U.S. motor vehicles would require roughly 18 times the world’s current cobalt production, about nine times global neodymium output, nearly seven times global lithium production, and about four times world copper production. Even if there were sufficient political will — and money — to attempt an electric overhaul of the transportation sector, there may not be enough cobalt or rare earth elements to meet demand.

And that is just for the U.S. Western European countries are electrifying (or pretending to electrify) their automobile fleets, too. And you could do a comparable calculation for the alleged transition from fossil fuels to wind and solar energy. Even if you assume that the Earth somewhere holds enough raw materials to meet this enormous demand, the mining, manufacturing and transportation effort needed to carry out these mandates would be the greatest since the Industrial Revolution. And how much of that mining do you think would take place in the U.S.? Little or none, under current political conditions.

Exactly.

Electric vehicles are a novelty item and have been for over a century. There is no way that our automobile fleet will be converted from internal combustion to batteries, just as there is no way we can or will replace fossil fuels and nuclear power with wind- and solar-generated electricity. The whole thing is a fantasy. But the damage that will be done to our economy, our livelihoods and our national security, in pursuing that fantasy, is incalculable.

The electric vehicle (EV) doom loop spirals into eternity. Absent massive government subsidies—in effect, everyone else paying to subsidize EV purchases and infrastructure for the virtue-signaling wealthy—EVs fail of their own uselessness and inefficiency.  Without a massive, nation-wide system of EV fast chargers, EVs are useless.  But without that charging network, few are going to buy EVs.  The Mummified Meat Puppet Administration (MMPA) allocated billions to build a charging network, and in a typical display of governmental efficiency and ability, has managed, in several years, to build a handful, all on the east coast.

It’s as I recently noted in The Coal Doom Loop, the Mummified Meat Puppet Administration (MMPA) is gleefully doing the work of America’s enemies, who won’t have to spend a penny to destroy us.  The MMPA is doing it for them.  How bad is it becoming?  Legal Insurrection explains:  

As we listen to Biden make promises during the 2024 campaign, it might be good to remember what his promises related to Bidenomics have led to since his last one.

For example, his infamous ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ and his green energy policies have caused energy prices to skyrocket nearly 30 percent.

Since January 2021, electricity prices have soared 29.4% — 50% more than overall inflation — rising 13 times faster than the previous seven years, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Meanwhile, in those seven years before Biden took office, electricity prices rose just 5%.

It’s often said, as goes California, so goes the rest of America.  God forbid:

Meanwhile, in California, Democratic legislators are beginning to regret the fee increases in energy prices they tacked on to their wealthy customers to fight ‘climate change.’ Angry constituents are contacting them, upset with bills that have risen over 100% in the past 10 years.

Actually, in some places in California, those bills have increased up to 127% over the same period.  Who can afford that?  Even a TikTok “influencer” is turning EV traitor.  He bought a used Tesla and is having second thoughts:

‘If you don’t have an at-home charger, or your apartment doesn’t have one, then you have to every couple of days literally physically get in your car, drive to a station and then wait for it to charge,’ the TikTok star explained. ‘I liked it a lot more when I had accessible charging. Now it’s kind of a pain.’

‘I got lucky because I have a supercharger that’s pretty close to me, it’s about half a mile away, but all people don’t have that luxury,’ he continued.

Macdonald admitted he once had to pay nearly $1,000 to get his Tesla towed after the battery died. On another occasion, he attempted a haphazard jump start of his own.

‘I often travel for various shoots and whatnot, and sometimes I’ll be gone for several weeks at a time, and sometimes my Tesla will just sit there and lose battery while I’m gone… So that happened one time where I was in my garage, I’m next to my charger, this was when I used to live in my old building that had a charger… but when it dies, it won’t even allow you to charge it,’ Macdonald started to explain.

‘I call Tesla, I go, ‘Hey, is there no other option? I have it right next to the charger. Is there no override for me to be able to plug this in?’ … and they say, ‘No, there’s nothing we can do,’ he further detailed, before saying he turned to the internet for solutions.

Macdonald illustrates the plight of the apartment dweller.  With no garage and no home charger, one is entirely dependent on public chargers, which in much of America don’t exist, and which are everywhere unreliable and even more expensive than filling a gas tank.

America’s only semi-profitable EV manufacturer is Tesla, but not for much longer:

Tesla has certainly seen better days. In 2023, Tesla sold 55% of the EVs in America, far ahead of the second-place EV seller, Ford, which sold 6% of the total EVs sold. This makes Tesla a barometer by which much of the entire market can be measured. Experts say that some of Tesla’s difficulties are a result of how Tesla is run, but some of the problems are systemic to the industry as a whole.

On Tuesday, Tesla reported a 9% drop in revenue in the first quarter, which was the largest drop the company had seen since 2012. Net income dropped 55% to $1.13 billion from a year ago, which was an even bigger drop than was seen during the 2020 pandemic. It was also below analysts’ consensus estimates, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Telsa’s stock has been battered over the last week, but bulls have rallied around it. Over the past five days, shares sunk to a low of $140.90 and climbed back to $158.96 on Thursday’s opening bell, according to data from Barron’s. The stock’s performance YTD peaked at $299.29, and its lowest point was as low as $138.00. According to Marketwatch, currently 15 analysts placed a ‘buy’ recommendation and 22 others rated Tesla stock as a ‘hold.’ Nine analysts rate the stock as a ‘sell.’

Tesla’s Cybertruck rollout has been a disaster.  It’s a tiny niche product anyway, and the few vehicles thus far produced have already been recalled.

Finally, let’s revisit Ford, with a reminder from former Senator Sam Ervin, who said “a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

Ford Motor Company reported a whopping $132,000 loss on each electric vehicle (EV) sold during the first three months of 2024, amassing a $1.3 billion loss.

Yow.  That’s far more than the MSRP of each vehicle, and far, far more than Ford’s production costs.  As regular readers recall, last year Ford lost truckloads of cash, and finally, belatedly, sort of acknowledged its fiscal responsibility to its shareholders:

The recent figures are part of a trend of loss for Ford, with their Model e reporting a full-year EBIT loss of $4.7 billion on the sale of 116,000 units. This is an average loss of $40,525 per vehicle — and even that is just a third of the per-vehicle loss seen in the first three months of 2024.

As with government in general, it’s reasonable to believe whatever loss figures Ford is willing to admit are probably worse.

The auto manufacturer’s electric vehicle unit revealed Thursday that they experienced a 20 percent decrease in sales volume and were forced to slash prices due to low consumer demand, CNN reported.

The revenue for Ford’s EV car, the Model e, plunged by 84 percent to about $100 million, which the company blamed on EV price cuts across the auto industry.

‘That resulted in the $1.3 billion loss before interest and taxes (EBIT), and the massive per-vehicle loss in the Model e unit,’ the publication noted.​

Ford announced earlier this month that the company will delay producing two new electric models, opting for hybrid vehicles instead.

“Delay.”  Right.  As regular readers will surely recall, last year Ford announced it was going to cut EV production in half, and laid off thousands.  Now there is “delay,” which probably means Ford is going to all but end EV production before it bankrupts the company.

Part of the continuing EV doom loop is as purchasers of previous Ford EVs watch Ford shutting down EV production, their vehicles are going to depreciate to negative numbers.  They’ll have no trade-in value, and they’ll have to pay people to take them off their hands.

Final Thoughts:  The EV doom loop is also a significant part of the overall economic doom loop into which the MMPA has locked us.  The MMPA seems to be ready to drive the American automobile industry into bankruptcy, which will allow the Chinese to flood the US market with cheap EVs, all of which will be fully subsidized by the Chinese Communist Party.  Every EV will surely be loaded with spy devices and software, the better to help the Chinese achieve the destruction of American from within without having to spend a penny on military conquest.

We must always remember that the collapse of any significant American industry, automobile, coal, steel, you name it, has ripple effects.  Every business that supplies those industries is also bankrupted.  All of those workers lose the money to patronize local businesses, and to buy cars and other big ticket items like home appliances and homes, which further destroys the economy, to say nothing of inflation devaluing the dollar.

The Chinese have always played the long game, a game of generations and centuries, while we fitfully spasm in four-year cycles.  As goes the ancient Chinese curse, we live in interesting times, and they’re on track to make our times even more interesting.