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As regular readers know—the SMM electric Vehicle archive is here—nothing about EVs, EV mandates, or any part of green ideology makes the least economic sense.  In fact, virtually everything about them is a repudiation of capitalism and basic economics.

Basic supply and demand is simple. Make a product people want and/or need at the price they can afford, and you’ll make money.  Make an even better product, even if it costs more, and as long as it’s still affordable, you’ll make even more money.

Building products as complex and expensive as motor vehicles—the second most costly thing most Americans will ever purchase—requires strict attention to economic detail, which is why our economy is currently so absurd.  Why would any manufacturer willingly lose $60,000 and more on every vehicle it builds?  How can government spend $7.5 billion on building EV chargers and manage to build a total of seven in two years?  How can government mandate EVs while simultaneously destroying American energy independence and shutting down the only reliable means we have of producing electricity?  How can government mandate EVs knowing there aren’t enough materials in the world to build them, and exploiting the materials that exist will strengthen our worst enemies?  How can government be that stupid?  We got an indication of that last week:

A particularly dumb interviewer asked Jared Bernstein, the chairman of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers why, since the government can print as much money as it wants, government bothers to borrow money?

Well, um, the – er – so the – I mean – again, some of the stuff gets – some of the language that the – erm – some of the language and concepts are just confusing. I mean, the government definitely prints money, and it definitely lends that money, which is why – erm, er – the government definitely prints money, and then it lends that money by – er – by selling bonds – er – is that what they do? They, they – erm – they – yeah, they, they – erm – they sell bonds – yeah, they sell bonds, right, so as they sell bonds and people buy bonds and lend them the money – yup – so a lot of times, a lot of times – at least to my ear – with [Modern Monetary Theory] the language and the concepts can be kind of unnecessarily confusing, but there is no question that the government prints money and then it uses that money to – um, er, uh – er – so – um – yeah, I – I – I guess I’m just – I don’t – I can’t really talk – eh, I don’t – I don’t get it – I don’t know what they’re talking about, like, ’cos – it’s like – the government clearly prints money, it does it all the time, and it clearly borrows, otherwise we wouldn’t be having this that ’n’ defic – conversation, so I don’t think there’s anything confusing there.

Is it any wonder, gentle readers, why we have rampant inflation, and why the dimwits running our government think things are true simply because they say they are?  Can they really not know printing more money, spending like drunken sailors and dramatically increasing the national debt drives inflation, or don’t they care?

As I previously mentioned, the Mummified Meat Puppet Administration allocated $7.5 billion in money we don’t have to build 500,000 EV chargers across the nation by 2030.  Seven so far, but that’s far from the only charger problem:

Viral video shared on TikTok by Joshua Beckler shows the aftermath of a recent theft at a Tesla Supercharger station in Vallejo, California.

The nine stations are seen without any of the cables attached to them as Beckler shows the core of the heavy duty cable, which is clearly rich in copper, whose value has soared in recent years.

The incident happened sometime over the weekend before it was reported to Vallejo police on Sunday morning.

This is the veritable definition of “snatch and run.”  As long as the thieves have sufficiently large and sharp cutters, this kind of theft can be accomplished in seconds.  It’s not just happening in CA either:

It’s a trend that’s being seen across Minneapolis and St. Paul. Some locations have been targeted more than once, making it a costly crime. Minneapolis’s Public Works Department says there’s not that much copper inside the charging cables for thieves to steal since the cable has other materials and insulation.

What do Minneapolis, St. Paul and CA have in common?  Hatred for police, leftist ideology and lawlessness.

So, if you build the charging stations, they will come.  Unfortunately, “they” are copper thieves and the more remote the charging station, the more likely they’ll be eternally unusable.

As regular readers also know, lithium-ion batteries are made from volatile materials that must be kept separated.  If combined through so much as a pinhole, they spontaneously combust, even explode.  The fire is self-sustaining and virtually impossible to put out, which is why Chevy has long recommended Bolt owners never charge their vehicles inside a garage and sit watching them for hours while they charge. It’s also why Chevy has recently announced it’s going to focus its EV efforts on building the subcompact Bolt(?!).  That makes sense, doesn’t it?  So does this, from my colleague Olivia Murray at American Thinker:

Fire flares up again at battery storage facility in Otay Mesa

An unpredictable blaze that sparked at a battery storage facility on Wednesday in Otay Mesa picked up again Thursday night, and firefighters worked to bring the flames back under control, a Cal Fire captain said Friday. [skip][

Now, the fire at the Gateway Energy Storage Facility first broke out around four o’clock in the afternoon this past Wednesday, and as is the case with lithium ion battery fires, they don’t really extinguish—lithium ion batteries are subject to what is called “thermal runaway,” or a chain reaction type of blaze. Fighting a fire like this means cooling down the battery as much as possible until the fire appears to extinguish or is at least under control; then you simply hope it doesn’t reignite, but you can’t actually know because you don’t know how many of the cells inside the battery pack have actually burned. If all the battery cells are burned, then it doesn’t reignite; if cooling the battery during the fire-fighting process halted the chain reaction, then the battery is at a serious risk of reigniting.

Now, Captain Mike Cornette’s crew cooled the battery storage blaze enough to get the fire to a manageable state, at which point they handed the work off to Gateway’s “mitigation team” to take over the job. However, as is obvious, the battery didn’t burn all the way, and reignited just a short time later. Here’s more, from SDUT:

Firefighters were still working from a distance due to the toxic fumes the fire created, Cornette said. The agency’s goal is to put out enough of the blaze so they can get close enough to extinguish it more fully — a process that will likely continue overnight and into Saturday . Firefighters set up additional monitoring equipment to keep an eye on the air quality surrounding the location.

Once the area is safe, the clean-up effort will again be handed over to the site’s property manager, which has its own hazardous materials team.

Good luck with that.

I’ve long been writing about a largely nonexistent technology that would allow an EV to power one’s home during an electric outage.  Now, GM is ready to make that technology a real, unaffordable miracle:

GM Energy sells bundle dubbed Ultium Home V2H Bundle that includes a bi-directional charger, an inverter, a home hub, and a dark start battery. This kit can dispense 9.6kW of power and can safely disconnect your home from the grid. Separately, GM Energy also offers a PowerBank to store energy from solar or off-peak grid power in case you want to prepare for the worst.

The answer depends on the size of your home and what’s exactly running while your EV is powering it. GM Energy executives say a fully-charged EV can power your home for three to six days depending on the battery size. On average, a house uses 30 kWh in one day, meaning the Silverado EV’s 200-kWh battery pack could power a home for six days.

Yeah, about that… Few, if any EVs are ever charged beyond 80% because it takes a very long time and reduces battery life.  And notice the qualifiers.  Try to run your home as you normally do and you can be certain you’re not going to get 3-6 days of power. Then there’s the cost:

The whole GM Energy V2H bundle (without the PowerBank) retails for $7,500 not including installation. Because each home is different, there might be upgrades needed to your home for the charger, inverter, and dark start battery to work properly.

“Might be upgrades needed?”  Let’s make that there damned will be upgrades needed.

Last year, MotorTrend’s Features Editor Christian Seabaugh did an estimate to see how much it would cost him to install a charger and inverter from Ford and Sunrun to use our long-term Ford F-150 Lightning to power his house. The estimate was outrageous­—it would cost $17,340 for the installation and electrical upgrades, given that Seabaugh’s 1950s-era home has a 100-amp electrical panel, which is common in California. However, this price varies for everyone, and some might find a cheaper avenue to get it done. Qmerit didn’t specify how much their installations costs because everyone’s home is different, but assured MT that prices are coming down as more people get this kind of technology.

Yow.  Home generators capable of running all one’s home power needs continuously are much cheaper.  And of course, they’re overlooking one thing: from where is the power going to come to recharge your EV after you’ve drained it powering some small portion of your home during a power outage?  As with everything relating to EVs, basic economics reveal how incredibly stupid this is.

And how is the great Hertz used Tesla sell-off going?  I’m sure you recall, gentle readers, how Hertz went all in on Teslas, only to discover their customers didn’t want them at any price, so they’ve flooded the used market with them.  Here’s one customer’s experience:

New York magazine told the story this week of one of those Hertz buyers, Bijay Pandey of Texas. He got a screaming deal on a 2022 Long Range Model 3 with 70,000 miles that ended up costing him about $25,000. They’re almost $50k new.

But almost immediately, there were problems. After getting a temporary title, he found the car wasn’t reading voltage correctly. Soon, a body shop found a quarter-size hole in the undercarriage he hadn’t seen before, which led to revelations of deeper issues inside. ‘The high-voltage battery pack is damaged and could cause extreme safety concerns,’ a Tesla technician texted him. Because the hole was ‘exterior damage,’ it wasn’t covered by the warranty, which meant a $13,078.58 repair bill. [skip]

To their credit, Hertz was willing to work with Pandey and swap out his damaged Tesla for another one, but the process took two months. And, of course, two $500 car payments for a car he couldn’t drive.

Which means Hertz took a total bath on the damaged Tesla and Pandey lost $1000, at least. 

And speaking of financial baths, in August of 2022 I wrote Dodge: Get Woke; Go Broke. 

It’s the sad story of Dodge’s intention to eliminate its popular and profitable Challenger and Charge muscle cars in favor of all-electric versions.  The new vehicles will have systems that will provide the feeling of fake “shifts” and produce the sound of powerful gas engines.  Dodge obviously thinks its customers are idiots:

Part of the deception is the ‘800 volt’ propulsion system.  That’s an attempt to conflate volts with the 700+ horsepower top of the line current engines.

Here’s another example:

Let us assume, gentle readers, you’re a skeptical muscle car enthusiast, willing to potentially spend $87,000 bucks minimum on a real muscle car.  But since you’re into muscle cars, you also know quite a bit about automotive technology and history, and you’re going to ask impertinent questions like: ‘If these EV wonder cars are so hot, how far can they go?’  Kuniskis doesn’t give a rat’s ass about your question:

Kuniskis said some of the design elements and technologies are expected to impact the electric range of the vehicles, but it’s not something Dodge is necessarily worried about.

‘Don’t care; it’s badass … it’s a muscle car,’ Kuniskis said.

Which means it might be real fast—to the end of your driveway.  Then it will need to be recharged.  Obviously I’m exaggerating—a little.  But if they’re unwilling to provide any range, it has to be truly awful, perhaps in the 100 mile range.  Vehicles that powerful with heavy batteries are also going to go through tires at warp speed.

Well, Dodge doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Kuniskis either:

Tim Kuniskis, one-time host of MT‘s Last Call drag racing event celebrating the Hemi V-8, and CEO of Dodge and Ram in the U.S., is now retiring out of his executive roles at Stellantis this summer. The shuffle at the top comes amid a shift in corporate strategy to downsized internal combustion and electrified powertrains going forward, and the CEO’s replacement has already been announced.

Nobody should envy the person at Dodge that has to convince a sales base of high-horsepower V-8 muscle car owners to eventually switch to electric power, but that person won’t be Tim Kuniskis, who is retiring from his roles at Dodge and Ram on June 1 this year.

And that, gentle readers, is the problem: people buy gas-powered Challengers and Chargers for their high-performance engines.  Not just the horsepower, the entire sight, sound and feel experience.  Dodge, despite the bottom falling out of the EV market, apparently still thinks they can trick those car-savvy buyers into grotesquely over-priced, under-ranged slot cars.  It seems GM is thinking the same way:

The Chevrolet Camaro as we’ve come to know it since 1967 is no more. The gasoline-powered pony car ended production in December 2023, with no solid hints from Chevrolet about the future of the nameplate. General Motors president Mark Reuss has just shared some ideas about the future of an electrified Camaro product, however, and it sounds nothing like Ford’s Mustang Mach-E.

The news comes by way of an interview conducted by the folks at Motor Trend. According to the report, Reuss wants to see the Camaro nameplate make a return to the U.S. market but doesn’t particularly want to slap the badge on an electric crossover or SUV. Instead, the executive wants whatever vehicle that gets to wear the pony-car badge next to honor the story established over the last six decades. He wants a genuine pony car, with a focus on affordability and engagement over output figures and track capability. It needs to appeal to customers outside of the enthusiast community, and it needs to have a coupe-like look.

Translation: just like Dodge, they’re going to try to trick their customers into buying greenie street cred and appearance rather than performance.

Final Thoughts:  With consumers convinced they don’t want EVs at any price the MMPA has doubled down on mandates, even pushing them to encompass trucks of all sizes.  How manufacturers imagine they’re going to make any money on EVs, particularly when they’re losing truckloads on every EV they’re currently making, is something only someone like Jared Bernstein could defend.  He, and the rest of them, obviously have no idea of economic reality, or of the intelligence and building anger of the American people.

This isn’t going to end well.