I had to do a double-take when confronted with this report from Britain.
Ford could resort to limiting the sales of its petrol cars in the UK, as it struggles to meet the electric car sales targets laid down in the government’s Zero-Emissions Vehicle Mandate.
Introduced at the start of this year, the ZEV mandate requires manufacturers to ensure that a minimum percentage of their overall sales are battery-powered, or face fines of up to £15,000 for every ICE car sold over the limit. This year, the target is set at 22 per cent, however, while EV sales continue to grow due to fleet demand, private buyers are proving reluctant to make the transition and EV targets are looking hard to meet.
. . .
[Ford's] European boss of its ‘Model e’ electric car division, Martin Sander, told the Financial Times’ Future of the Car Summit: “We can’t push EVs into the market against demand. We’re not going to pay penalties. We are not going to sell EVs at huge losses just to buy compliance. The only alternative is to take our shipments of [engine-powered] vehicles to the UK down, and sell these vehicles somewhere else”.
Sander warned that the impact of such a move could mean inflated prices for traditional petrol and diesel cars if consumer demand for ICE engined vehicles can’t be met by potentially limited supply.
There's more at the link.
So a bureaucratic edict founded in "junk science" and hotly disputed by engineers and scientists will result in would-be motorists not being allowed to purchase the vehicles they want, but rather forced to buy alternatives that are less fit for purpose, a great deal more expensive (and polluting) to produce, and requiring extremely expensive battery replacement after a relatively short time in use. Doesn't that demonstrate the brilliance and ingenuity of bureaucrats? "If we can't change people's taste in cars, we'll simply force a third party (i.e. vehicle manufacturers) to deprive them of the opportunity to exercise that taste. That'll show them!"
What's even nicer for them, said bureaucrats are unelected, not subject to public scrutiny in their work, and insulated against kickback from the electorate they're supposed to serve and protect. This policy is like an automotive version of the famous "Yes, Minister" comedy clip.
Or, there's the old saw from the early days of the computer revolution (which I was taught as an entry-level programmer back in the 1970's): "If builders built buildings the way programmers write programs, then the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization." I daresay bureaucrats double the destruction factor!
Bureaucrats. Parasites. But then, I repeat myself . . . Sadly, we have too many of them in America. It's one area where Britain and the USA are proudly emulating one another in grinding their citizens' faces into the administrative mud.
Peter
10 comments:
It's not in our Constitution, although I think it should be: Every other presidential election there should be one, or more, questions on the ballot across the Several States:
"The Department of (insert name here) is part of the Executive Branch of the United States government but not specified within the Constitutionally-stipulated powers of the Federal Government; this Department should be:
1) Abolished, and its expenses returned to the Treasury
2) Maintained in its present form and size, without increase in appropriations or personnel
Probably a better way to manage this would be to require Executive Branch Departments not stipulated as Constitutionally required powers of the Federal Government to expire completely after a set time, say 6 years after creation by Congress, unless We The People vote to retain them. Congress, if it decided that Department X was justified, could go through the creation process again to reinstate the agency, assuming there was sufficient public support for it.
Pablo (nice initials, btw),
Your faith in the willingness of Congress to allow any program or department to sunset is touching. What would actually happen is that periodic reauthorizations would be rolled into omnibus bills and for all intents and purposes, happen automatically. The only people who would lobby to allow a program to expire would be a few diehard activists who would have hundreds of programs to lobby against, whereas every person employed by the department or dependent on that department would be actively lobbying for.
Let's take the Dept of Education as an example. It serves no purpose other than to impose mandates on states and local school districts, mandates which are difficult and expensive to meet. It also funnels taxpayer money to states to pay for education programs. Every time there is a discussion about getting rid of it the well funded teachers unions start screeching about being anti-education, the general public thinks that education is a good thing and supports a department supposedly working to improve it, the D party lines up solidly behind another big government program, and the Department stays and most likely gets more funding, not less. This in spite of repeated attempts by at least one President and maybe two (Reagan and Trump) to eliminate it. When Reagan tried to eliminate the dept it had only been around for a few years, since Sec of Ed was a Carter creation, and he still couldn't do it.
A constant refrain from the more car-oriented sites - "Well, looks like my 10 year truck/car just became more valuable".
The alternative to not buying a new ICE isn't necessarily to buy an electric, it's to keep/repair the old car or buy used. The current fleet of vehicles in the USA is at the oldest average age ever and continuing to get older. People will stop buying new and the streets will start to look like Cuba before long.
congress passes laws that create these agencies, you can sue on the basis that they don't have any authority to do someting, and sometimes those lawsuits win
re:ev mandates, it will result in a lot of older vehicles staying on the road longer instead of being replaced by newer, less polluting vehicles.
expect the prices of used cars to start climbing
Ford would do better to just add the £15,000 fine to the price of the vehicle, and make sure it is shown in large print on the vehicle's sticker.
@ Don W Curton
Yes! Those who go or are forced to go woke, go broke.
Is this what the various governments are trying to do, destroy all of our manufacturing capability?
What happens when you can't get parts to repair your old vehicle; the companies stop manufacturing them: by government (bureacratic edict or simple lack of profit)?
As a retired Electrical Engineer I see the EVs as a waste. The American Electrical Grid cannot handle the extra power consumption that massive EVs would require.
The cost of EVs at the start, for insurance, charging, and overall is much greater then Fuel vehicles. Charging stations do not exist across the country to support enough EVs on a trip. Most EVs require a home to have charging and not an apartment or condo. The charging stations cost are rising, less work, and many are full of users at all times. If an EV gets in a wreck (even minor) or has a battery problem they are out of use for likely at least a month or more.
If Car Makers try to sell only EVs to the public they will go out of business along with their Dealerships. Presently the US government is giving a mass amount of money to help sell these EVs. They also gave billions during Biden's Admin to expand charging stations yet only 7 were built however nobody knows where the money is.
@JG I agree with you that the grid cannot handle the load of switching to all electric.
And I agree that charging at home makes EVs work much better (even here in Southern California where electricity prices are very high), but it is possible to survive without it. But those who want to have EVs mandated keep tripping over the charging problem ("people will just charge at home", "what about apartments or even suburbs where street parking in all that's available", "uhh...")
For most of your other points, the usual (* except for Tesla) exception applies :-)
Disclaimer: I do not own an EV, and do not expect to own one for a long time (if ever, unless I take a job with a long commute, in which case a car that could drive itself would be extremely attractive), but do have about 200 shares of Tesla stock. Not because I believe that climate change is a thing, but because I believe that Tesla is building cars people want to drive that happen to be EVs and has the potential for a huge upside if their plans work.
Tesla has deployed lots of charging stations around the world, so doing a road trip in a Tesla is not impossible (many people are doing it). Starting in 2025, almost all other EVs in the US are switching to using Tesla charging sockets and will be able to use this network.
If a gas car gets in a wreck or has an engine/transmission problem it can be out of use for a month or more, so why would you expect an EV to be any different?
EV insurance is not being priced appropriately, which is why Tesla is offering insurance itself that is much cheaper than what other companies offer.
Tesla is the only EV manufacturer selling at a profit (both per-car and overall), except possibly BYD in China, but BYD muddles their numbers to make it hard to tell for sure. Tesla profits are far above any government money that's involved. Prior to the passage of the IRA, Tesla had long since passed the limit for rebates and so was operating profitably for several years without any rebates. Tesla is earning some money by selling regulatory credits to other companies (instead of paying that 15,000 fine per ICE vehicle, they could buy credit for an EV sale from Tesla and sell 4.5 ICE vehicles), Tesla earns a nice chunk of change this way (a few hundred million $ per quarter), but it hasn't been the difference between them being profitable or not for several years.
I know that there have been state handouts to build charging systems where the limit on what you can apply for is $X or Y% of the cost of the charger, and Tesla has applied for ~half the max figure while everyone else has applied for the max figure, but compared to the large number of chargers that Tesla has deployed each quarter, this is a drop in the bucket. In 2023 they deployed 12,473 at 1,274 locations taking their totals to about 55k chargers at 6k locations
or in other words, Tesla isn't being foolish and ignoring free money it can get, but it doesn't depend on it
@boron
> What happens when you can't get parts to repair your old vehicle; the companies stop manufacturing them: by government (bureacratic edict or simple lack of profit)?
If it's lack of profit, other people will start building them. Look at the number of parts being manufactured today for 60's hot rods, you can 'jack up the VIN plate and roll a new car under it'
manufacturing is getting cheaper and more flexible. One youtube channel I watch casts custom intake manifolds for cars, he designs them in CAD, cuts them from foam on a CNC, then casts them in aluminum in his suburban driveway and sells them online.
Now, if the government forbids people making car parts, I see massive law violation in the future.
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