EVs are a passing fad. By John Hinderaker.
Does this quote sound familiar?
“The electric automobile will quickly and easily take precedence over all other kinds of motor carriages as soon as an effective battery of light weight is discovered.”
That’s the Los Angeles Times in 1901. How about this one?
“Prices on electric cars will continue to drop until they are within reach of the average family.”
That’s the Washington Post, 1915. …
There are now murmurings that Tesla could go bankrupt. I like Elon Musk, and we need him: I fervently hope that he has gotten most of his money out of Tesla.
Robert Bryce has lots of information, including:
China controls EV materials, especially magnets:
John Hinderaker again:
Why is the Biden Administration trying to turn our future over to the Chinese Communist Party? One explanation is that Biden was the Manchurian Candidate, and the millions of dollars the Chinese have paid him and his family have put him in their pocket. That seems hard to believe. But what is the alternative explanation?
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? ..
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.
Batteries are not good enough for land transport, let alone sea or air transport. It will take a massive technical breakthrough to change that, but none are on the horizon. Liquid hydrocarbons are very difficult to beat for energy density, safety, and ease of handling.
I predict that the avenue to low-carbon transport will be liquid hydrocarbons made from carbon dioxide in the air and energy from fusion or fission, or via genetically-modified bacteria that use solar power to make hydrocarbons (they already exist, but are not yet cost effective). It’s low carbon because the carbon is endlessly recycled between the air and the liquid hydrocarbons, thereby not increasing the atmospheric concentration of CO2.
