Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
Germany’s Blackout News here reports that only 4 electric car manufacturers world wide are managing to make a profit, three of which are Chinese: BYD, Li Auto and Seres. And all the rest “are struggling to survive.”
How Artificial Intelligence is Revolutionizing the World of Tesla
Germany’s Blackout News here reports that only 4 electric car manufacturers world wide are managing to make a profit, three of which are Chinese: BYD, Li Auto and Seres. And all the rest “are struggling to survive.”
Only four electric car manufacturers are managing to make a profit. Image generated by Grok AI.
“Chinese brands are increasingly taking the lead in the global market. More than 120 brands are competing in the electromobility segment,” reports Blackout News. “Many benefit from low production costs and massive government support. BYD is expanding aggressively, including in Europe, and is becoming a real threat to Tesla.”
Tesla still leads with an operating margin of 7.2 percent, but its growth has stagnated. China’s BYD is expanding aggressively and benefiting from innovation and government support.
Many other manufacturers, especially start-ups such as Lucid Motors and Rivian, are posting high losses. Traditional car manufacturers are also under pressure as electrification incurs high costs. The EU is forcing the switch to e-mobility by 2035, which increases the pressure to adapt. The future of the electric car market depends on innovation, scaling and political framework conditions.
If left to the free-market forces and consumer wishes, electric cars would fare very poorly. Few people really want them, and they really are neither good for the environment nor the economy.
The Driver Vehicle Standards Agency issued the emergency recall of 1,758 buses. A fire risk has been identified in the £800m fleet’s aircon and heating system.
The Driver Vehicle Standards Agency issued the emergency recall of 1,758 buses.A fire risk has been identified in the £800m fleet’s aircon and heating system.
Safety watchdogs have ordered the recall of almost 2,000 electric buses over fears they can catch fire if left unattended.
The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency has warned operators who use the Alexander Dennis Enviro200 and Enviro400 single and double decker buses of the critical safety issue.
The buses are currently operational across the UK, with more than 600 in London and a further 100 in Manchester. The Daily Mail Online has the story.
All of the affected vehicles were manufactured between May 3, 2019 and February 6, 2024. They all contain batteries supplied by Chinese firm BYD.
Initial investigations suggest the fault may be in the air conditioning and heating system. The alert was issued following a scare on board one of the buses – which can cost up to £450,000 each – putting the value of the entire fleet at £800m.
At present, there is no permanent solution to prevent future fires. Instead, operators using the high-tech buses are warned to ‘switch off the Hipsacold HVAC system when the vehicle is left unattended’.
To remind drivers to isolate the power supply were they allowed to pay
Alexander Dennis told MailOnline they are working on the problem with regulators and their suppliers. They stressed the issue is not related to a string of recent fires involving ‘different vehicle types and technologies’.
In September 2021, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan announced that all new buses in London would be ‘zero emission’.
As of March 31, 2023 – most recent figures available. London had a total of 476 of the buses subject to recall in their fleet.
A further 100 of the same bus type has been supplied to Manchester as part of their move to electric buses.
Although, according to the DVSA there are almost 1,800 of the affected vehicle type on British streets.
Certain routes in the capital are now entirely electric as part of Sadiq Khan’s commitment to reduce harmful emissions in the city.
Cities such as Coventry, Birmingham, Cambridge, Leeds, Glasgow and Aberdeen also use the buses.
In London they are fitted a dedicated wheelchair space that is accessed via and electric ramp on the centre doors.
The vehicles are powered by a pair of 150kW motors from BYD on the rear drive axle.
They contain BYD Lithium-iron-phosphate batteries providing between 339kWh to 382kWh of power and are recharged at a rate of 112kW using a DC CCS2 plug.
It has been obvious for several years now that this government-subsidized energy transition away from fossil fuels and towards wind, solar, and electric vehicles will necessarily leave the western world highly dependent on China.
Plans designed to protect US industry will bankroll China’s expansion.
It has been obvious for several years now that this government-subsidized energy transition away from fossil fuels and towards wind, solar, and electric vehicles will necessarily leave the western world highly dependent on China. This is an unavoidable truth given China’s overwhelming control of supplies and supply chains for minerals, processing, and components integral to the three rent-seeking industries presented as climate solutions by globalist elites.
In America, Joe Biden and congressional Democrats presented their Orwellian-titled Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) as a plan that would help the US to build independence from China in this realm by subsidizing projects that would create competitive domestic sectors. But recent developments make it apparent that exactly the opposite is happening.
A report by the Wall Street Journal details the fact that domestic content requirements for some domestic electric vehicles aren’t comprehensive enough to prevent Chinese encroachment into the US market. Chinese EV maker BYD is exploring opportunities to invest in plants in Mexico that would enable it to enter the US market by exploiting provisions in the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) that would allow it to avoid heavy US tariffs on imports of Chinese-made cars.
The Journal reports that “at least a dozen” Chinese makers of EV components have already established factories in Mexico to exploit provisions in the USMCA that encourage US automakers to use parts made there. Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares likens expansion plans by Chinese automakers into Mexico to the arrival of Japanese car companies into the US during the 1970s. Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk echoes Tavares’s concerns, saying, “If there are not trade barriers established, they will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world.”
Another story at the Daily Mail details concerns from various industry experts about growing efforts by Chinese companies to tap directly into the US by exploiting the various subsidies and tax breaks contained in the IRA. Access to the array of IRA goodies was left open to all comers without consideration of their country of origin, providing Chinese makers of solar cells, EV batteries and other relevant components – who already dominate global markets – the opportunity to seize a major share of the US market as well.
Jeff Ferry, chief economist at the non-profit Coalition for a Prosperous America, called the IRA structure “naïve,” adding that “The bottom line is that if you take markets like electric vehicle (EV) batteries, or solar cells, where China already has a dominant global position, and you allow its firms to own facilities in the US and access the US taxpayer, you’re allowing them to extend their global monopoly.”
The non-partisan business NGO E2 says Chinese companies are already tied to at least a dozen US-based projects with capital investments of over $10 billion that will be able to exploit IRA provisions. Biden’s own Treasury Department admits that Chinese firms already represent about 15 per cent of new solar-related investment in the US market since the IRA was passed into law in September 2022.
In one of his earliest actions upon assuming office, President Biden issued an executive order directing his administration to mount a “whole of government” approach to establish supply chains independent of China related to minerals and components integral to the expansion of the three chosen rent-seeking industries: wind, solar and EVs. Last November, the White House finally got around to convening a new Council on Supply Chain Resilience that will consider acting on a list of about 30 separate actions to advance that lofty goal.
It’s a classic slow-moving bureaucratic process that likely amounts to too little, too late, as Chinese interests are already exploiting ill-considered provisions in the IRA and USMCA to gain footholds into American markets. Any thoughts that an asleep-at-the-wheel White House and paralyzed congress will be willing or able to move quickly and effectively to address the matter are absurd. That’s just not how Washington, DC works.
David Blackmon had a 40 year career in the US energy industry, the last 23 years of which were spent in the public policy arena, managing regulatory and legislative issues for various companies. He continues to write and podcast on energy matters
BYD, China’s largest EV auto maker, which recently surpassed Tesla as the world’s biggest seller of electric vehicles, is reviewing potential locations for a plant in Mexico that would allow it to bring its low-cost electric vehicles into the United States.
China’s BYD, the world’s largest EV maker, is scoping out Mexico, where labor costs are low, to locate a new EV plant as a backdoor manufacturing hub for their entrance into the U.S. market.
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Cars imported directly into the United States from China are assessed a 27.5 percent tariff, while those from Mexico are assessed at most a 2.5 percent tariff.
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American manufacturers are concerned because China can manufacture cars at a much lower cost as it dominates and controls the EV energy supply chain, including the processing of necessary minerals.
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BYD currently sells most of its vehicles domestically in China but is making inroads by offshoring manufacturing in obliging countries.
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The U.S. EV market is ripe due to Biden’s strident push for electric vehicles including subsidies and mandates designed to force people out of internal combustion vehicles.
BYD, China’s largest EV auto maker, which recently surpassed Tesla as the world’s biggest seller of electric vehicles, is reviewing potential locations for a plant in Mexico that would allow it to bring its low-cost electric vehicles into the United States. Mexico offers close proximity to U.S. markets, relatively low labor costs and the opportunity to take advantage of low or zero tariffs on made-in-Mexico vehicles. Some of the locations BYD is considering are near the U.S. border. At least a dozen Chinese electric-car component suppliers have also announced new factories or added to their existing investments in Mexico in recent years. They are responding to a U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade deal that encourages carmakers in North America to use locally sourced materials.
BYD is looking to expand globally as it has an excess domestic EV inventory. CEOs at rival automakers have warned about the potential threat from China, with some suggesting the need for more government action to avert such competition in the United States as Chinese automakers have a big cost advantage in the electric vehicle market with China’s dominance of the battery supply chain and processing of essential minerals. Through engineering, government subsidies and lower labor costs, BYD and other China-based EV makers have been able to entice customers with stylish and technologically advanced electric vehicles at attractive prices. If China can lock buyers into electric vehicles dependent upon its dominant supply chains, it would strengthen its position as the world’s leading car manufacturer.
BYD’s low-price electric vehicles have gained traction with buyers in places such as Europe and Southeast Asia. Europe, where Chinese EV imports are strong due to their lower price and Europe’s net zero carbon goals, is conducting an investigation into whether China provided subsidies to the industry unfairly, making it more difficult for European EV carmakers to compete. The investigation could result in new tariffs if EU officials find the Chinese companies are receiving unfair subsidies. The Biden administration is monitoring Chinese investment in Mexico amid concerns Chinese businesses could take advantage of North American free-trade agreement rules.
Carlos Tavares, chief executive of Chrysler-parent Stellantis, likened China’s potential entry in the United States to the arrival of the Japanese automakers in the 1970s and South Korean firms in the 1990s, calling their expansion as “very Powerful.” Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk also expressed similar concerns, saying the Chinese companies have already had significant success outside of China and are now the “most competitive” in the world.
Currently, Chinese-built electric vehicles are subject to a 27.5 percent tariff when imported into the United States that is composed of a 2.5 percent tariff that generally applies to imported cars plus an additional 25 percent tariff on Chinese-made cars that was introduced by the Trump administration in 2018. The Biden administration is debating whether to raise tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles further, and the Inflation Reduction Act limits eligibility for a $7,500 consumer tax credit for cars built with batteries made by Chinese companies.
In comparison, cars made at a Chinese-owned factory in Mexico would only be faced with the 2.5 percent tariff upon entering the United States and could possibly pay no tariff if they met stringent standards for local content under the U.S.-Canada-Mexico Agreement adopted in 2020.
Executives at Toyota estimated that Chinese companies had a 25 percent to 30 percent cost advantage over global competitors when manufacturing electric vehicles—more than enough to overcome the small 2.5-percent U.S. tariff. Pushing EV adoption too quickly would serve, however, as an invitation for Chinese EV companies including BYD, Geely and NIO to enter rigorously into the U.S. EV market. President Biden has a goal of electric vehicles making up 50 percent of new car sales by 2030, and his EPA and Department of Transportation have proposed rules that would effectively force electric vehicles to make up two-thirds of new car sales in 2032. The Biden Administration is pushing electric vehicles upon manufacturers and consumers and enticing them with subsidies for vehicles and charging stations.
BYD sees other potential uses for the plant in Mexico, including using it as an export hub for shipping cars to South America or sending batteries and other car parts to the United States. In China, BYD makes many EV parts in-house, including its EV batteries, to reduce costs—advantages it may or may not be able to replicate in Mexico. In North America, the company currently sells electric buses and trucks made at its location in Lancaster, California.
Conclusion
Chinese companies are looking into building EV car factories in Mexico to take advantage of the Mexico-U.S.-Canada trade agreement and avoid hefty tariffs on imports of electric vehicles coming directly from China. In particular, BYD, China’s largest EV automaker that recently surpassed Tesla in sales, is looking at locations in Mexico near the U.S. border. Chinese companies have a 25 to 30 percent cost advantage over U.S. competitors because of dominance in the EV battery supply chain and processing of critical minerals as well as low-cost labor and attractive energy prices. CEOs of U.S. automakers are worried that China could make a serious dent in the EV market as Japan and South Korea have done in the conventional auto market previously. With onerous proposed EV rules by Biden administration agencies on U.S. carmakers, the competition could be disastrous for legacy car makers, who are currently losing vast sums on meeting Biden’s EV goals.
Made by China’s biggest car-maker BYD, the shipment has the potential to turn rising international tensions into an explosive all-out trade war between Beijing and the West.
An EV invasion threatens to run European carmakers off the road.
The port of Vlissingen in the south-west of the Netherlands has been at the heart of world commerce for centuries.
Roughly 17,000 cargo ships dock in its deep waters between the North Sea and the river Scheldt every year, laden with everything from vital commodities such as paper, timber, and steel; coal, liquefied gases, fertiliser and other key raw materials; to well as fruit and vegetables that will quickly find their way onto supermarket shelves.
On Wednesday, the harbour took delivery of one of its most significant consignments yet: 5,000 electric cars straight from a factory in Shenzhen, China, destined for forecourts across Europe and Britain.
Made by China’s biggest car-maker BYD, the shipment has the potential to turn rising international tensions into an explosive all-out trade war between Beijing and the West.
Electric cars, along with lithium batteries and solar panels, are what President Xi Jinping has proclaimed are “pillars of the economy”: sectors that the Chinese government has chosen to be the drivers of a massive manufacturing export boom. Commerce minister Wang Wentao has described them as China’s “new three” industries.
The country’s leaders are desperate to offset a property slump triggered by the spectacular collapse of debt-laden developer Evergrande, which has crushed consumer confidence. Attempts by China’s securities watchdog to prop up the nation’s $8.6 trillion (£6.8 trillion) stock market, by banning institutional investors from selling shares at the open and close of trading, shows how concerned officials are about consumer confidence.
“Since China’s reopening after the pandemic, industrial production has been quite strong but it has not got the domestic demand for that,” says Duncan Wrigley of Pantheon Macroeconomics.
“Households are reluctant to spend as much because they’re concerned about the future. People worry that if they lose a job now they won’t be able to get a replacement. That is contributing to the continued weakness in the property sector.”
Xi hopes that a state-backed manufacturing drive led by advanced goods and materials will power a fresh era of growth. But the prospect of China attempting to save its economy by flooding the West with cheap cars has policymakers in Europe and America on red alert.
The fear in Brussels and Washington is that with domestic demand in the doldrums, China will seek to ease over-capacity by dumping its goods – selling them abroad at lower prices than at home – on international markets and trashing Western industry. With officials already threatening serious recriminations, and Beijing warning of counter-reprisals, trade tensions are once again dangerously high.
As BYD’s Explorer No.1 ship was making its way through the English Channel after a five-week voyage to the Zeeland archipelago where Vlissingen juts out, the boss of Renault waded into the row with a plea to Britain and Europe to work together to resist what the industry fears will be an onslaught of super-cheap Chinese electric vehicles.
“With the internal combustion engine, our leadership was undisputed. For a century, we benefited from our expertise with this technology, and it was a barrier to entry for newcomers. Today, Europeans find themselves in a position of relative fragility,” Luca de Meo, chief executive of the French carmaker said.
De Meo and his counterparts are right to be concerned. By the second half of last year, the Chinese had captured about 10pc of the European electric vehicle market, according to Schmidt Automotive Research.
An invasion of Chinese cars promises to be great for Western consumers but terrible for carmakers in Europe. A typical Tesla can cost £40,000, whereas BYD’s models go for as little as £8,000. Chinese carmakers are offering generous discounts of up to €12,000 to boost sales on the Continent, Schmidt’s researchers found.
Even Elon Musk, the industry’s original trailblazer and someone who once laughed at the suggestion that BYD could ever compete with Tesla, is running scared. Without trade barriers, Chinese players “will pretty much demolish most other car companies in the world”, Musk said shortly after BYD toppled Tesla as the number one seller of electric models in mainland China at the end of 2023.
A report by Bloomberg’s New Energy Finance predicts that annual sales of electric vehicles will reach 56 million globally by 2040 – equivalent to 58pc of all cars sold around the world. It also believes China’s share of the electric car market will be 40pc by the end of this decade, a forecast supported by the International Energy Agency.
Britain and Europe must work together to resist an onslaught of cheap Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), the boss of Renault has warned.
Car makers on the Continent struggle with slowing demand and cheaper competition.
Britain and Europe must work together to resist an onslaught of cheap Chinese electric vehicles (EVs), the boss of Renault has warned.
Luca de Meo, chief executive of the French car maker, said the switch to greener vehicles posed the biggest challenge to the industry in 150 years, but warned companies were being over-regulated and lacked financial support. The Telegraph has the story.
He accused European governments of focusing on “deadlines and fines” while the US and China backed their homegrown automotive companies with generous subsidies and supportive industrial policies.
China surpassed Japan last year to become the world’s biggest exporter of cars, with more than 460,000 Chinese-made vehicles registered in Europe during the first nine months of 2023.
A shipment of 5,000 electric vehicles made by Shenzhen-based BYD is currently on its way to Europe, according to reports, aboard a cargo ship called Explorer.
Critics have long argued that while the UK and the European Union have focused heavily on banning future petrol car sales by 2035, they have offered comparatively little in the way of incentives for consumers to switch to EVs.
Writing in an op-ed for the magazine Autocar, Mr Meo said: “For us Europeans, these are challenging times. But are we fully aware of what is at stake?
“The UK may no longer be part of the EU, but on this issue I think we face the same challenges together.
“It is very simple: strip out the automotive industry and Europe will find itself with a structural trade deficit.
“With the internal combustion engine, our leadership was undisputed. For a century, we benefited from our expertise with this technology, and it was a barrier to entry for newcomers to the industry.
“Today, Europeans find themselves in a position of relative fragility.”
Last year, Rishi Sunak delayed the UK’s ban on sales of new petrol cars from 2030 to 2035, while the EU also watered down emissions rules due to come into force in 2035 to allow cars powered by synthetic fuels to continue being sold, following last-minute demands from Germany.
Mr Meo added: “In addition, while the Americans massively stimulate and incentivise the industry and the Chinese organise it through planning, we Europeans regulate, often with no coherence and without any holistic view of our challenges.”
Europe needs a “one stop shop” for regulation on zero-emission vehicles, rather than different rules in various countries, he said, as well as more government support for companies.
Tesla Inc has temporarily cut prices of some of its Model Y cars in the U.S. until Feb. 29, less than a month after the carmaker cut Model Y prices in Germany.
Tesla Inc has temporarily cut prices of some of its Model Y cars in the U.S. until Feb. 29, less than a month after the carmaker cut Model Y prices in Germany.
Tesla reduced prices for its Model Y rear-wheel drive and Model Y Long Range by $1,000 to $42,990 and $47,990 respectively, representing a discount of 2.3% and 2% from previous prices.
Prices of the Model Y Performance variant and other models remained unchanged, according to the website.
New Model Y rear-wheel drive and Long Range model prices will be reduced for deliveries now through Feb. 29, Tesla said in a notice on its website, adding that that price would increase by $1,000 or more on March 1.
Tesla slashed prices of its Model Y cars in Germany last month, after most of its car production at its Berlin factory was suspended due to a lack of components after attacks in the Red Sea caused shipping disruptions.
In January, Tesla also warned of “notably lower” sales growth this year as it focuses on the production of its next-generation electric vehicle, code-named “Redwood.” The latest price cuts are expected to further weigh on Tesla’ margins, already hurt by a price war that started more than a year ago.
The latest price cuts come as Tesla is bracing for cooling demand and rising competition with a growing number of inexpensive EVs, such as those made by China’s BYD, which overtook Tesla as the world’s top EV maker in the final quarter of 2023.
This week, it had the proof. BYD revealed that it had sold 526,409 electric vehicles in the last three months of 2023, overtaking Tesla and ending the Elon Musk-run company’s eight-year reign as the world’s best-selling electric vehicle manufacturer.
By James Titcomb
Mayfair’s Berkeley Street is a mecca for luxury car gazers, dotted with showrooms displaying Ferraris, Bentleys and McLarens behind giant windows. Halfway down, across the road from the Rolls Royce boutique, sits a lesser-known name.
Last year the Chinese car company BYD opened its own glitzy showroom on the site formerly occupied by Jaguar Land Rover. The Telegraph has the story.
BYD’s cars cost a fraction of the others on Berkeley Street, but its presence among the world’s most desirable vehicles sends a message: it believes it can compete.
This week, it had the proof. BYD revealed that it had sold 526,409 electric vehicles in the last three months of 2023, overtaking Tesla and ending the Elon Musk-run company’s eight-year reign as the world’s best-selling electric vehicle manufacturer.
It was a milestone moment. After BYD surpassed Tesla, clips circulated online of a 2011 interview in which Musk mocked the Chinese company, chuckling dismissively when asked if they could compete (Tesla’s chief has now acknowledged them as a serious rival).
But as far as BYD’s billionaire founder Wang Chuanfu is concerned, it is just the start. The company, China’s dominant carmaker, is now plotting to take on the rest of the world, seeking to become one of only a handful of Chinese consumer companies to become a recognised global leader.
In August, Wang said the company would help “demolish the old [Western] legends and achieve new, world-class brands”. Its aggressively priced electric vehicles are gradually appearing on British and European streets.
BYD’s ascent has been rapid, but it is far from a newcomer. In the early Nineties, Wang, a chemistry graduate working as a Chinese government researcher, spotted an opportunity to develop new types of batteries being pioneered by Japanese firms, but with much cheaper Chinese labour costs. BYD, which he founded in 1995, soon became one of the world’s biggest producers of batteries for mobile phones, a business that made Wang a fortune worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
In 2003, the company bought out a struggling domestic car manufacturer in a bid to explore nascent electric vehicle technology, a move that shareholders revolted against. At the time, Chinese cars were seen as cheap, ugly and unreliable, and BYD’s early efforts were no different: “Have you seen their car?” Musk joked in 2011.
The rush to electric vehicles risks killing our car industry, shackling us to China and bumping up our taxes to reduce global emissions by just 0.044%. That’s why I’ll be buying a brand new petrol car just before the 2030 ban
The rush to electric vehicles risks killing our car industry, shackling us to China and bumping up our taxes to reduce global emissions by just 0.044%. That’s why I’ll be buying a brand new petrol car just before the 2030 ban
Britain’s electric vehicle transition and the ban on petrol car sales from 2030 are a slow-motion car crash. The technology is not ready, the cost will be vast, the logistics are forbidding, the reliance on China is worrying and the backlash from the public is likely to be harsh.
Worst of all, the benefits are derisory at best and may not even exist.
Yes, you read that right. It is possible that we could replace all of Britain’s cars and vans with electric vehicles and still find that carbon dioxide emissions are higher, not lower. Cost-benefit, hello?
First, though, consider the politics. Most electric-car batteries are being made in China and its hold on the market is growing thanks to huge investment in lithium and other minerals, low labour costs and a cheap, coal-fired grid.
Chinese company BYD overtook Tesla as the biggest manufacturer of electric vehicles last year and, in a truly sinister development, has just agreed with Tesla to jointly promote ‘core socialist values’ while dominating the market and apparently fixing prices.
Switching transport to electric in a short timescale will inevitably mean buying Chinese. Are we really about to force ourselves to become even more reliant on a totalitarian regime that stamps out freedom in Hong Kong, commits genocide against the Uighurs, threatens war on Taiwan and refuses to be transparent about how a pandemic began near its leading virus laboratory?
To wean ourselves off China over the next seven years would require 100 times as much battery capacity as we have now, which is neither affordable nor feasible. To lure battery-makers to the UK, despite our sky-high energy prices (caused by the massive investment in wind power and the refusal to tap shale gas), the Government is having to throw armfuls of taxpayers’ money at battery and car manufacturers.
Britishvolt failed to build its ‘Gigafactory’ in Blyth for lack of taxpayer subsidies.
Lord (Zac) Goldsmith thinks we are falling behind in the race to subsidise ‘green’ energy. Yet handouts rarely make industries competitive. If America and the European Union want to spend a fortune trying — and probably failing — to catch up with the Chinese, why should we join in?
But don’t expect industry bosses to tell you the truth about the impossibility of this transition. Huge taxpayer subsidies to force consumers to switch products are just what they love, whether the plan makes sense or not.
To paraphrase Gulliver’s Travels, if you asked Rolls-Royce or Tata to devise a plan to make sunbeams from cucumbers, they would have a jolly good crack at it — and only tell you it was impossible after spending a couple of billion pounds of your money.
This raises the question: why are we doing this again? We’re deliberately killing a profitable British car industry for minimal benefit to please a few posh activists and crony capitalists.
There is no sign of ordinary people demanding this transition. Electric cars still cost almost double their petrol equivalent.
So, just as producers need taxpayer subsidies to supply electric cars, consumers need subsidies to buy them. An industry dependent on taxpayer support at both ends of the chain is not sustainable.
Nor can Britain’s electricity infrastructure be adapted easily or quickly to cope with the extra demand implied by the transition — without further subsidies.
Just to supply the extra electricity for a fully electric fleet would mean a near-doubling of the number of wind farms (plus necessary gas-fired back-up), or an equivalent new supply from nuclear, a technology that takes decades to build.
Just to supply the extra electricity for a fully electric fleet would mean a near-doubling of the number of wind farms (plus necessary gas-fired back-up), or an equivalent new supply from nuclear, a technology that takes decades to build.
So, unless the Government throws yet more money at upgrading the network, after 2030 we will be faced with five-hour recharge times, compared with five-minute petrol or diesel refuels today.
As Andrew Montford of Net Zero Watch argues, upgrading the distribution grid on these timescales is impossible, so meeting the target will mean many people will be forced to forgo a car entirely.
These are practical reasons why the transition cannot and won’t happen. But would it even help if it did? Let’s do a simple sum. Suppose the UK does manage to shift all cars and vans to electric in the 2030s, banning petrol and diesel cars as it does so. Cars and vans generate about 70 per cent of transport emissions and transport is 25 per cent of all emissions.
Meanwhile, an optimistic estimate of the emissions savings of electric cars over petrol or diesel is 25 per cent per vehicle and the UK generates 1 per cent of worldwide emissions, then that means we will have reduced global emissions of carbon dioxide by — wait for it — [0.7 x 0.25 x 0.25 x 0.01 = 0.0004375 or] 0.044 per cent.
Less than one half of one tenth of one per cent. You would probably have more effect on the climate if you dropped a couple of ice cubes in the Thames once a week.
And that’s the best we can hope for. In reality the effect will be even smaller. The notion that switching from petrol to electric saves 25 per cent of emissions is, as I say, optimistic, perhaps wildly so. In fact, the number may actually be negative.
Here’s why. First, it requires a lot more carbon dioxide emissions in a lot of extractive industries to make an electric car than a petrol car. This is especially true for the battery.
As Mark Mills, an energy expert with the Manhattan Institute, explained in a recent article: ‘To match the energy stored in one pound of crude oil [from which petrol and diesel are produced] requires 15 pounds of lithium battery, which entails digging up about 7,000 pounds of rock and dirt to get the minerals needed — lithium, graphite, copper, nickel, aluminium, zinc, neodymium, manganese and so on.
‘Thus, fabricating a typical single half-ton EV battery requires mining and processing about 250 tons of materials.’
That requires a lot of diesel and electricity.
So there’s a huge up-front emissions disadvantage before an electric car even takes to the road. As Professor of Engineering Science at Oxford University Gautam Kalghatgi calculates, an electric car with a 60 kWh battery will start with a deficit of 7.5 tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions, before it has driven a single mile.
Even when running, an electric vehicle is not ‘zero-emission’ because Britain’s electric grid is powered by gas (which emits some carbon dioxide) and wind turbines (whose manufacture requires a lot of coal and which get replaced every 20 or 30 years). Even nuclear has a carbon footprint (all that concrete and steel), though it’s much the smallest.
Take all that into account and you can calculate how many miles an electric car has to drive before it has ‘broken even’ with a petrol car on emissions.
Many estimates of this number are not worth the paper they are written on, because they make absurdly unrealistic assumptions about the size of battery needed, the scale of the up-front emissions and other factors.
But some are a bit better. Volkswagen compared a diesel Golf with an electric Golf and estimated that the electric car has to be driven 80,000 miles before its emissions are lower than the diesel car in a typical European country.
In Germany, where the grid still depends partly on coal, it’s more like 125,000 miles. In China, you would never reach break even and electric cars might as well be called coal cars. This emperor has no clothes.
The break-even mileage is even higher for larger batteries in bigger cars, but lower for a comparison with petrol. Volvo compared its electric car with a petrol equivalent and concluded that the break-even came at 50,000 miles in a typical European country, though the emissions savings are still just 15 per cent after 120,000 miles.
So the average driver would take 12 years to reach the point where he is saving 15 per cent of his emissions.
But the batteries are designed to last about 100,000 miles. So just when the emissions savings come into sight, you will be scrapping the car or paying an exorbitant sum to replace its battery — long before you get to 25 per cent emissions savings.
Either way, you will reset the clock on emissions and for the next five years your emissions will again be higher than if you had stuck to petrol. If you swap cars every five years, you would never see any savings.
Yet even these numbers are probably too optimistic. The energy cost of refining ores into metals for the manufacture of batteries is going up, not down.
As the ore quality declines over time, especially in the case of copper, so the up-front emissions of battery manufacture are getting worse and the break-even mileage longer.
Nor have we thought this through from the consumer’s point of view. A petrol or diesel car with 60,000 miles on the clock has some second-hand value. An electric car approaching the end of its battery life is going to be worth nothing. So people will probably trade them in a lot earlier. But second-hand buyers of electric cars will not get the up-front subsidy.
Indeed second-hand electric vehicles are already starting to flood on to the market at cheap prices, some of them from disillusioned buyers perhaps contemplating the ruins of their marriages after rows over flat batteries while trying to find a working charge point on the way to a family wedding.
Living 300 miles from London, I am already familiar with southern friends panicking about where to charge their cars en route.
If you think we need to go electric to improve urban air quality, think again.
The latest studies suggest that internal combustion engines are continuing to get cleaner at a rapid rate and that electric cars, with their extra weight, may soon be contributing more particulate pollution from the wear on their tyres than comes out of the engines of petrol cars, according to Professor Kalghatgi.
Last week Toyota claimed that solid-state batteries would start transforming the electric-car market from 2027.
Yet not only is this a delay of two years on previous promises, we have heard that before: the solid-state battery has been five years away for 15 years, with even Sir James Dyson losing patience with it. Even then, making it affordable and reliable will not be easy.
But if Toyota is right, it is all the more reason to delay the UK’s target lest we dash into a premature technology and find it’s obsolete.
Yet governments have form for prematurely championing technologies for ideological reasons. Back in 2007 Tony Blair’s government announced that Britain would choose a unilaterally fast path to banning incandescent light bulbs in favour of compact fluorescent ones, with the aim of helping ‘tackle climate change’.
This gave Philips and other manufacturers a rich reward on their lobbying, but made all our lives worse. The new bulbs were costly, slow to light up, made us look ill, had a much shorter lifetime than expected and were dangerous to dispose of.
Worst of all, the enforced switch to an inferior technology probably delayed the arrival of the LED, which soon proved far cheaper to buy and run as well as working much better and lasting for ages. Consumers needed no subsidy or compulsion to buy LEDs.
Yet the £3 billion switch to fluorescent light bulbs is peanuts compared with the cost of banning the sale of petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2030.
Just as I hoarded incandescent bulbs in 2009, so I will probably choose to buy a new petrol or diesel car just before the ban.
This time, I expect everybody else, especially up here in the North, will be doing the same, so don’t expect it to be cheap.
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