Forget the Hype, the EV Industry Is A Rapidly Bursting Bubble, and for Good Reason

A largely pro-EV article at ARS Technica answers its own question of “Why Americans aren’t buying more EVs.” The article suggests it’s mainly about the costs of EVs, and while that’s clearly an important factor, it’s far from the only one. The others are revealed in the lengthy text, but only in the form of what are effectively sidebar comments and omissions.

Consider the following for example:

While there are about 120,000 petrol stations nationwide, according to the US Department of Energy, there are only 64,000 public charging stations in the US—and only 10,000 of them are direct current chargers, which can replenish a battery in 30 minutes rather than several hours. Charging stations also can be inoperative or have long lines when drivers arrive, forcing them to go elsewhere.

The problem isn't the lack of stations, maintenance or long lines. It’s the 30 minutes!

I had to take a trip Tuesday that required me to drive almost 4 hours in both directions. I had to leave home at 4 AM drive to Connecticut, meet with a new client for three hours and then drive back home. I was tired, and loaded up on caffeine to ensure I stayed alert, but I needed gasoline. It took me but 5 minutes to refuel and grab a large size Diet Pepsi and I was on the road again. The last thing I wanted was to sit at some stupid charging station twiddling my thumbs for aa half-hour when what I really needed was to just get home. What makes anyone think a 30-minute refuel is acceptable?

How much taxpayer money went into this pointless charging station?

Then, there are these concluding paragraphs to the story, which focus on US tariffs being imposed on Chinese EVs:

Van Jackson, previously an official in the Obama administration and now a senior lecturer in international relations at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, says electric cars still need to fall in price if the market is to grow substantially.

“How do you bring workers along and increase their wages, and have a growth market for these products, given how expensive they are?” he asks. “I’m an upper-middle-class person and I cannot afford an EV.”

He is skeptical about whether shutting the world’s dominant producer of EVs and related componentry out of the US market will reduce the price of the cars and encourage uptake.

“The tariffs are buying time,” he says. “But towards no particular end.”

Henry Ford addressed this issue long ago:

“I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one...”

Ford, in other words, built cars for a market composed of the same people he hired to build them. What we are doing with EVs is building cars to please everyone but the buyer. And, not even an upper-middle-class person can afford them despite big subsidies of everything connected with them, from the cars to the charging stations. Building and selling against the market are never good strategies for the long-term. There are always a limited number of customers who just want to be different, but no one can build an industry on those few customers.

The omissions from the story are even more revealing:

• There is no discussion of EV trade-in values, for example, which are terrible and a big disincentive to buying one.

• There is no discussion of battery issues, which include weight vs. tire wear, replacement/repair costs and, of course, the restrictions on where one can park in the parking garage for fear of spontaneous fires.

• There is no mention of the radically reduced performance of EVs in cold weather and the danger of getting trapped on a closed snow clogged interstate with a dead battery and no way to start the car periodically to keep warm.

Put it all together and what anyone with common sense can readily see is that the EV bubble is bursting and for very simple to understand reasons; reasons apparently not grasped by those hyping the things.

#EVs #Batteries #Subsidies #Bubble #Climate