Tag: Electric cars

The European Union pushes through quota for electric cars – Germany hits hardest

The EU has adopted fleet-wide carbon emission targets that effectively impose a quota on electric vehicle (EV) sales for automakers. In Germany, these quotas require that a growing proportion of newly registered vehicles be battery-electric (BEVs) or plug-in hybrid (PHEVs), progressively increasing toward 2030. This regulatory pressure significantly affects production planning, market incentives, and infrastructure development.

A sleek silver electric car is parked next to a blue heavy-duty truck at a charging station, with a city skyline in the background featuring tall buildings and solar panels on the station.

The EU has adopted fleet-wide carbon emission targets that effectively impose a quota on electric vehicle (EV) sales for automakers.

In Germany, these quotas require that a growing proportion of newly registered vehicles be battery-electric (BEVs) or plug-in hybrid (PHEVs), progressively increasing toward 2030.

This regulatory pressure significantly affects production planning, market incentives, and infrastructure development.

From The Blackout News

EU policy relies on binding targets for the market share of electric cars in company fleets. The core instrument is a quota that significantly increases the share of electric cars and other low-emission vehicles by 2030.

With a target value of around 77 percent, Germany is significantly higher than countries such as Romania with around 28 percent, Poland with 34 percent, Latvia with about 33 percent or Cyprus with around 52 percent.

This target is intended to reduce transport emissions, but drives costs, infrastructure requirements and competition issues. For many companies, this makes it clear that this rate is noticeably changing procurement, planning and mobility strategy.

Quota directly affects the economy and everyday life

Germany serves as a lead market for EU policy. The high target values have an impact on an area that affects around 70 percent of all new registrations.

This is exactly why the quota was set in this way. Companies have to restructure their vehicle fleet. Investment costs, charging availability and operational reliability are all important here. The company fleets are thus becoming the steering lever of European climate policy. At the same time, fleet managers are calling for resilient framework conditions. They need energy prices, infrastructure and reliable regulation.

EU policy is deliberately focusing on electromobility because it reduces emissions during driving. But this course requires practical solutions. Without sufficient charging points, stable grids and economically viable models, the pressure is growing. The strategy from Brussels must therefore ensure climate targets and the functioning of the economy at the same time.

Quota instead of open system strategy

The quota creates clear targets. However, it does not replace a system strategy. Electromobility only strengthens climate protection if energy supply and value creation follow suit. Germany is currently paying high electricity prices.

Fast charging often costs between 50 and 90 cents per kilowatt hour.

At the same time, company fleets need reliable operational readiness. This is exactly where it is decided whether climate policy works or triggers undesirable developments.

In addition, the price influences economic power relations. A large part of the battery value chain is outside Europe. Those who rely exclusively on the electric drive increase dependencies.

This increases the risk of creeping deindustrialization, because investments are moving to places where energy is cheaper and framework conditions are more stable.

Electromobility needs balance and a sense of reality

Electromobility can reduce emissions and advance new technologies. But it does not replace all other solutions in one fell swoop.

Many companies are therefore relying on transitional concepts, mixed fleets and efficient technologies. Company fleets need selection instead of coercion, pragmatism instead of symbolism. This is the only way to ensure that mobility remains reliable and economical.

If politicians only rely on standard figures and statistics, there is a risk of industrial loss instead of sustainable transformation. Then value creation migrates, while the burdens remain. A smart EU policy must enable progress and at the same time strengthen locations.

Europe needs clarity of purpose – without tunnel vision

Europe needs resilient climate strategies. This includes electromobility, but also economic stability. Current EU policy places high expectations on company fleets. It uses the quota as an instrument of pressure. This direction can work if infrastructure and economic power keep pace. If they don’t, there is a risk of side effects.

Europe is thus not only deciding on drives, but also on competitiveness. A sustainable transformation requires technology diversity, investment security and realistic schedules. Only then will progress be achieved without deindustrialisation – and Europe will remain an industrial location with a future. (KOB)

UK Wind Turbine Supplier To Close Due To High Energy Costs

A Wigan manufacturer of wind turbine blades has gone bust, in part because of high electricity prices, which are the direct result of expensive renewable energy.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Paul Kolk

A Wigan manufacturer of wind turbine blades has gone bust, in part because of high electricity prices, which are the direct result of expensive renewable energy.

The Telegraph has the story:

A major supplier to Britain’s green energy industry is set to close after its Japanese owner failed to clinch a rescue deal for the company and its 250 workers.

Wigan-based Electric Glass Fiber UK (EGFU), which is owned by Nippon Electric Glass (NEG), makes vital components used in wind turbines and electric cars. Its closure puts net zero supply chains under threat.

Both turbines and EVs are seen by the Government as critical to its industrial strategy amid moves to decarbonise the British economy and to build up domestic supplies of critical products at a time of tariffs, wars and mounting geopolitical rivalries.

The British operation was profitable as recently as 2022, but made losses of £3m in 2023, mounting to £12m in 2024, according to the Japanese owner, which first invested in the UK arm in 2016.

It blamed competition from Chinese imports as well as the rising cost of raw materials, in financial statements published in last year, which could only be partially passed on to customers in the form of higher prices.

The business also said rising energy prices were putting pressure on operations.

Full story here.

So much for all those green jobs promised by the Mad Milband!

On a bad day an EV can do $100 million dollars worth of damage

A week after fire broke out on the Morning Midas, the salvage crew have finally reached the boat. The bulk car carrier was abandoned last Tuesday and has been adrift 300 miles south of Alaska. The ship only had 68 full EVs on board, with 681 hybrid cars, among a total load of 3,000 cars. But apparently that was quite enough to turn it into a 47,000 ton slow burning barbecue.

From JoNova

By Jo Nova

Will anything be salvageable?

The latest update shows the fires still burning and (wow) extensive damage to the hull.

A week after fire broke out on the Morning Midas, the salvage crew have finally reached the boat. The bulk car carrier was abandoned last Tuesday and has been adrift 300 miles south of Alaska.   The ship only had 68 full EVs on board, with 681 hybrid cars, among a total load of 3,000 cars. But apparently that was quite enough to turn it into a 47,000 ton slow burning barbecue.

Salvage Tug Arrives as Car Carrier ‘Morning Midas’ Continues to Burn Off Alaska Coast

But alas, a week later, the photos show the slow burn has consumed much of the ship. Even though the hull appears intact and the ship is not listing, the damage is extensive. How much of the cargo on board would have survived a week of smoke and heat?

The Morning Midas is a bulk carrier which was headed from China to Mexico. The fire broke out last Tuesday Alaskan time, so it is said, from the deck where the electric cars were. After the crew sealed the doors and unleashed the carbon dioxide bottles, there wasn’t much else they could do. All 22 sailors abandoned ship and were rescued by a Costco carrier.

The 46,800-ton ship itself was built in 2006 and is worth about $14 million. With 3,000 new cars at $30,000 each that would be a loss of $90 million. If the ship and cargo is lost, as happened to the Felicity Ace in 2022, the total loss could be around $100 million.

Without any realistic way to put out these fires, perhaps EV’s will have to be parked on the top deck next to an ejector hatch, with a catapault? It would save so much money if they can be dumped at sea at the first sign of smoke?

World Cargo News

Sal Mercogliano, a specialist on shipping news points out that on these ships, the cars are packed bumper to bumper and tied down with straps over the wheels. As the fire burns through the straps, he says the cars can start to roll on the seas. (His youtube on this is here).

World Cargo News

He also points out the crew have to get off early in a situation like this. They are 10 to 12 decks high above the water, or 100 – 120 feet above water. The lifeboats must be lowered into the water, and if they wait too long, they might be unable to do that. At that point they are left jumping 30-40 meters into the cold Pacific Ocean.

What the ship looked like last week as the fires started.

GCaptain:

Imagine if this was a ferry with 300 passengers?

Climate Alarmist Messaging Decoded: Lies Work – The Climate Realism Show #116

Steve Milloy of junkscience.com will join us for commentary, as he’s been following and debunking these lies for years. We will look at some of that failed messaging too, as well as go over the Crazy Climate News of the Week. Tune in LIVE for the stream at 1 p.m. ET (noon CT) to watch the show and leave your own questions in the chat with host Anthony Watts, along with panelists H. Sterling Burnett and Linnea Lueken.

The Heartland Institute

A very telling exposé of a meeting between leading “climate communicators” appeared on Twitter last week. In it, pictures of a slideshow mentioned things like: “Worst messages tested: electric cars, Green New Deal, frontline communities, ‘Big Oil lied’, and climate pollution.” Essentially, the meeting described why climate alarmists have failed to capture the public’s attention with their messages. What they discovered is that lies work better than facts!

Steve Milloy of junkscience.com will join us for commentary, as he’s been following and debunking these lies for years. We will look at some of that failed messaging too, as well as go over the Crazy Climate News of the Week. Tune in LIVE for the stream at 1 p.m. ET (noon CT) to watch the show and leave your own questions in the chat with host Anthony Watts, along with panelists H. Sterling Burnett and Linnea Lueken.

https://rumble.com/v544u6w-climate-alarmist-messaging-decoded-lies-work-the-climate-realism-show-116.html

Climate “Communicators” Discover the Best Way to Persuade Voters is to Lie to Them

This is a hilarious X (formerly Twitter) thread on a presentation about “messaging over climate”.

From Watts Up With That?

By Charles Rotter

This is a hilarious X (formerly Twitter) thread on a presentation about “messaging over climate”.

Worst messages tested: electric cars, Green New Deal, frontline communities, ‘Big Oil lied’, climate pollution

Talking about electric cars especially deadly for Democrats. Women in particular frightened of battery running out. (Interesting gendered spin on range anxiety I hadn’t thought about before).

The thread quickly jumps to the best messages ever tested, all of which are outright lies, out of context projections, or fantasies.

Best messages ever tested: Save on energy bills/lowering energy costs; kitchen-sink costs; creating good stable jobs; investments in transit, infra, manufacturing; R&D for clean energy.

We can assume you’ve spit out your coffee or had some similar reaction at this point.

Let’s parse this a bit.

Save on energy bills/lowering energy costs; kitchen-sink costs,

Uh, ask consumers in California, the UK, Canada, or Germany about that one.

creating good stable jobs;

Employees of Solyndra, Proterra, Fisker, Arrival UK, or any large industry in Germany, the list goes on, may have a different take, not to mention pipeline and construction workers.

investments in transit, infra, manufacturing;

The California High Speed Rail project is the poster child for this, along with the types companies alluded to above. Many of these projects are no more beneficial to the overall economy than if you simply paid one group of workers to dig holes and another group to fill them back up again.

R&D for clean energy.

Money being spent to fight the laws of thermodynamics, detract from economic growth, raise energy prices, create environmental devastation, instead of stable, dispatchable, small environmental footprint, baseload power.

… The message “Green New Deal” now *isn’t* associated with government investment to spur on good jobs and economic development; instead it became associated with bans on burgers and flying, and in particular provoked a fear of making energy expensive.

I find this bemoaning beyond parody.

and in particular provoked a fear of making energy expensive.

BECAUSE IT’S %%@^^ TRUE, REALITY, AND DEMONSTRATED TIME AFTER TIME

The X thread goes on to discuss AOC’s politically disastrous rolling out of her Green New Deal in 2019 and the subsequent backpedaling. However, it also notes that this same enviro-marxist messaging continues unabated and continues to drive the public away from their utopian fantasy.

It’s a fun thread to read on X. Just make sure you swallowed your coffee first before reading.

 Germany May Sales Of Electric Cars Plummet 30.6% Compared To Year Earlier

Back to fossil fuels!

The figures for the registration of new electric cars in Germany are looking increasingly awful. In May 2024, the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) reported that it had registered only 29,708 vehicles with electric motors.

From NoTricksZone

By P Gosselin

Back to fossil fuels!

The figures for the registration of new electric cars in Germany are looking increasingly awful. In May 2024, the Federal Motor Transport Authority (KBA) reported that it had registered only 29,708 vehicles with electric motors.

May e-car sales in Germany plummet more than 30% compared to a year earlier. AI image Chat GPT. 

That is 30.6% down on the result for the same month last year.

CO2 emissions of new German cars also rose 3.3%…indicating the green transition has stalled and is reversing.

Hat-tip: Blackout News

The KBA also adds that 89,498 passenger cars were equipped with a gasoline engine – an increase of 2.1 percent compared to the same month last year.

44,893 new cars were diesel-powered, an increase of 3.2 percent compared to the same month last year.

71,451 new cars had a hybrid drive in May 2024, accounting for a share of 30.2% (-0.3%), including 14,038 plug-in hybrids (+1.7%/5.9%).

According to the KBA, the average CO2 emissions of new passenger car registrations rose by +3.3% and amounted to 124.0 g/km.

GOREHAM: World Leaders Ignore Growing Safety Issues With Green Energy

By STEVE GOREHAM

The nations of the world are pursuing an unprecedented energy transition. Efforts are underway to force a shift from coal, oil, and natural gas to renewable energy sources by 2050. But key elements of the proposed transition suffer from major safety issues, specifically batteries for electric vehicles and electricity storage and hydrogen fuels for industry. 

Most energy sources involve safety risks. Gasoline cars can explode or burn, especially after collisions. Natural gas pipelines and processing facilities have been known to explode or combust. Nuclear power plants have caused famous disasters like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima when cooling systems have failed. But green energy is bringing a new dimension of safety problems to society. 

A transition from gasoline and diesel vehicles to electric models is a major part of the green energy revolution. President Joe Biden, other political leaders, and the International Energy Agency call for electric vehicles (EVs) to completely replace internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles by 2050. EVs with high-capacity batteries are new technology that is rapidly gaining market acceptance. Automakers compete to increase EV range by introducing larger and more powerful batteries.

But battery fires may threaten the EV revolution. 

Lithium batteries in cell phones and other portable electronic devices are banned from commercial airline baggage compartments because of fire risk. Batteries in electric cars contain graphite, metals, and other materials bathed in flammable electrolytes with thousands of times more energy than your cell phone battery. 

Electric cars spontaneously combust. Earlier this year, a father from Elk Grove Illinois was about to pull onto Highway 99 when he felt his Tesla start shaking. He pulled to the side of the road and exited his car, just before it burst into flames. He was unable to save the child car seats from the back of the car and was glad that his children were at home. 

This summer, a Florida car owner had her vehicle in for servicing and was given a Mercedes EV as a loaner. The loaner was parked in her garage and not charging when it burst into flames. The flames and smoke caused heavy damage to her home.

BMW, Ford, GM, Hyundai, and Tesla electric cars have all experienced problems with battery fires. In the most visible case, GM recalled all 141,000 Chevrolet Bolts produced between 2016 and 2021. In August, electric truck maker Nikola announced a recall of all 209 of its heavy electric trucks because of battery fires. 

In total, the rate of EV fires does not exceed the fire rate for ICE vehicles. But EVs can ignite unexpectedly when charging overnight in the garage or even when just parked in the driveway, locations where gasoline-powered cars typically don’t catch fire. 

Battery fires are very hard to extinguish. They can burn for hours while fire departments douse them with water, and even re-ignite after the fire appears to be out. Some fire departments have resorted to lifting the flaming EV and dropping it into a huge tank of water to extinguish the flames. 

Grid-scale batteries are being deployed by utilities in Australia, the U.S., and other nations. These are huge batteries, which provide electricity storage to back up wind and solar facilities. When wind and solar systems generate excess electricity, it can be stored in batteries and released when the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining. But grid-scale batteries also have issues with self-ignition.

Today, grid-scale batteries store only about one millionth of the electricity that the world uses annually, but many of the few batteries that have been deployed already have suffered major fires. Batteries have burst into flames in Arizona, California, New York, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Grid-scale battery fires result from thermal runaway, caused by mechanical damage, poor air conditioning, or overcharging.

What is the current leading cause of accidental fires in New York City? The answer isn’t cooking or smoking. It’s fires caused by e-bike lithium batteries. Batteries on e-bikes spontaneously burst into flames when charging or just sitting idle. After ignition, the batteries burn with a high heat and set fire to storage areas or whole buildings, sometimes killing or injuring residents. 

According to the New York City Fire Department, e-bike fires jumped from 44 in 2020 to more than 200 this year. The fires caused 10 deaths and over 200 injuries in the city during the past two years. 

Green hydrogen, produced from electrolysis of water, is also proposed as a new fuel for the energy transition. Leaders call for a hydrogen economy to reduce emissions and fight global warming. Hydrogen is touted as a transportation fuel and a replacement for natural gas and coal in heavy industry. More than $280 billion in subsidies have been committed globally to develop green hydrogen.

But hydrogen exists in nature only in compounds. Pure hydrogen is very reactive and takes only a low level of energy in the presence of oxygen to burst into flames. The world’s rush to deploy hydrogen fuel may become a major safety hazard.

In 1937, the airship Hindenburg exploded in Lakehurst, New Jersey. The explosion ended 35 years of efforts to deploy hydrogen airships. More than two dozen airships exploded from 1908 to 1937 from accidental hydrogen fires, killing hundreds of passengers and crew. The world decided hydrogen airships were too hazardous to continue their use. 

But green energy advocates now call for a network of hydrogen pipelines, public hydrogen fueling stations for vehicles, and even the use of hydrogen to heat homes. These systems will need to compress hydrogen to 700 atmospheres of pressure, making leaks probable. And unlike natural gas, hydrogen leaks are prone to spontaneous combustion and resultant explosions and fires.

Vice President Kamala Harris recently announced $1 billion in grants for electric school buses. But the number of electric bus fires around the world is growing. God forbid we start seeing spontaneous fires in electric buses full of children.

It’s clear that world leaders are ignoring the growing safety problems of green energy. But these fears are being pushed aside in favor of Climatism, the fear of human-caused global warming.

Steve Goreham is a speaker on energy, the environment, and public policy and the author of the new bestselling book Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure.

Originally published in Daily Caller.

Electric cars risk becoming uninsurable

Electric cars risk becoming effectively uninsurable due to costs involved in repairing their batteries, industry experts have warned.

From Tallbloke’s Talkshop

 October 22, 2023 by oldbrew

Over-sensitive and unpredictable lithium-based batteries continue to be a headache, for various reasons. Is the EV industry really ready for prime time, as government ‘net zero’ mandates take hold?
– – –
Electric cars risk becoming effectively uninsurable as analysts struggle to put a price on battery repairs, the researcher for the car insurance industry has said. — The Telegraph reporting.

Jonathan Hewett, chief executive of Thatcham Research, the motor insurers’ automotive research centre, said a lack of “insight and understanding” about the cost of repairing damaged electric car batteries was pushing up premiums and resulting in some providers declining to provide cover altogether.

Electric cars can be particularly expensive to repair, costing around a quarter more to fix on average than a petrol or diesel vehicle.

Experts have previously warned electric vehicles are being written off after minor bumps because of the cost and complexity of fixing their batteries.

Mr Hewett said: “The challenge is that we have no way of understanding whether the battery has been compromised or damaged in any way.

“The threat of thermal runaway means that a catastrophic fire can take place if the cells of the battery have been damaged in a collision.

“What we’re struggling to understand at the moment is how we approach that diagnostic technique.

“It’s like a doctor trying to understand what’s wrong with you without any notes or an X-ray.”
. . .
Mr Hewett said premiums would eventually begin to level out and match those of petrol and diesel cars once actuaries had the tools needed to better understand the risks of insuring electric cars, saying the issue would likely be “short term”.

However, he added: “The battery is an extremely expensive component of an electric vehicle and until we find efficient ways of dealing with it we have the challenge of high premiums for electric vehicles, which nobody wants.”

Some customers are now being quoted over £100 a week to insure their electric vehicles, with others reporting premiums doubling or tripling compared to a year before.

Full report here.

Fingers pointed over failure of Net Zero

Amusingly, Mr Johnson seems to want to blame MPs for the failure of the Net Zero plan. There was, he says, ‘an easy consensus’ and a ‘lack of serious parliamentary scrutiny’. You have to admit that the chutzpah is impressive. Mr Johnson was, after all, a member of the Climate Change Committee when it produced the Net Zero plan.

From Net Zero Watch

By Andrew Montford

A prominent former member of the Climate Change Committee blames MPs for failure of Net Zero plans.

Back in 2020, the economist Paul Johnson, a member of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), said that the overall cost of getting to Net Zero should be ‘more than manageable’, and indeed, with a fair technological wind, might be ‘remarkably low’.[1] Tens of billions of pounds a year would be all that was required, he claimed, in line with the CCC’s 2019 Net Zero report, which suggested a figure of £50 billion per year, and thus perhaps £1.5 trillion in total.

This easy transformation was going to be enabled by technology, explained Mr Johnson:

It looks likely that electric cars will turn out to be cheaper overall to buy and run than petrol cars. The cost of wind and solar power has been plummeting at an extraordinary rate.

Wind forward just three years, and Mr Johnson’s optimism about the bill to be paid looks slightly ridiculous. His belief in plummeting renewables costs – credulous even at the time – has been refuted every year, before and since, by the information in windfarm financial accounts,[2] and now by the recent failure of the renewables auction too. EVs remains thousands of pounds more expensive than petrol and diesel equivalents,[3] and they are dearer to insure to boot.[4] Very few seem to want them, and even fewer seem interested in heat pumps either, perhaps unsurprisingly since they seem to deliver only higher energy bills.[5]

Perhaps sensing a change in the wind, Mr Johnson seems recently to have changed his tune. In an article in the Times on Monday,[6] he declared that we have ‘targets without strategies and without coherent policies’ for reaching Net Zero. And indeed, there is a ‘fog of uncertainty over how we are actually expecting to decarbonise household heating, further massively increase zero-carbon electricity production and distribution, revolutionise agriculture and all the rest’.

Net Zero not so ‘manageable’ after all, then?

And now it seems that, rather than being ‘rather low’, Net Zero is actually going to be ‘costly’. Indeed, we are warned, the investment required is ‘not in the billions, but in the trillions’ – ‘vast amounts of money’, he warns. This dramatic upgrading of the costs does rather suggest that his earlier estimate, just three years old, was wrong by several trillion pounds. Still, as Niels Bohr once observed, ‘prediction is hard, particularly of the future’.

Amusingly, Mr Johnson seems to want to blame MPs for the failure of the Net Zero plan. There was, he says, ‘an easy consensus’ and a ‘lack of serious parliamentary scrutiny’. You have to admit that the chutzpah is impressive. Mr Johnson was, after all, a member of the Climate Change Committee when it produced the Net Zero plan. He told us it was ‘manageable’, remember? So while few would argue that Parliamentary oversight of the Net Zero process has been non-existent – shamefully so – for members of the CCC to try to shift the blame in this way does seem a bit like pointing the finger at the teacher for your poor homework.

Despite all these problems, Mr Johnson’s enthusiasm for the Net Zero project seems undiminished. It is still vital that we go ahead, he says, because we face ‘an existential threat’, rather contradicting a prominent former CCC colleague, Professor Jim Skea, who is now the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and who seems much less apocalyptic about it all.[7]

So although ‘deliverable plans’ are ‘thin on the ground’, he seems to think that if we just gird our loins, and come up with a new one, all will be well. All it will take is…

…the kind of careful, long-term, honest planning, decision-making and delivery that has not exactly been the hallmark of British governments

It’s enough to make your blood run cold.

[1] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/the-law-of-averages-cannot-apply-to-our-pursuit-of-a-net-zero-future-kr0rjmj7v

[2] https://www.thegwpf.org/publications/cheap-offshore-wind-power-claims-are-false-data-reveals/

[3] https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/electriccars/article-11995825/The-electric-cars-expensive-insure.html

[4] https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/electric-cars/running/are-electric-cars-cheaper-to-insure/

[5] https://www.thegwpf.org/publications/new-paper-reveals-governments-heat-pump-plan-as-uneconomic/

[6] https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/bc060266-5b0c-11ee-a0fe-c89e2badddf3?shareToken=4532d9af6549a060ec02d03d161da917&s=08

[7] https://www.dw.com/en/climate-change-do-not-overstate-15-degrees-threat/a-66386523

Volkswagen cuts jobs as demand for EVs plunges

Subsidies, wealthy buyers and niche markets only get EV makers so far, it seems. The old problems are still there – initial cost, range anxiety, slow charging, battery life etc. Moaning about humans supposedly having adverse effects on the weather turns out to be a weak selling point for the mass market.

From Tallbloke’s Talkshop

September 14, 2023 by oldbrew

Subsidies, wealthy buyers and niche markets only get EV makers so far, it seems. The old problems are still there – initial cost, range anxiety, slow charging, battery life etc. Moaning about humans supposedly having adverse effects on the weather turns out to be a weak selling point for the mass market.
– – –
Volkswagen is cutting almost 300 roles at a factory in Germany as demand for electric cars dwindles, reports The Telegraph.

The redundancies are being carried out at the car giant’s plant in Zwickau, where a further 2,000 temporary workers are also at risk of losing their jobs.

Volkswagen’s Zwickau factory only produces electric vehicles, which have fallen in popularity due to high inflation and faltering government support. [Talkshop comment – is that crutch expected to go on forever?]

The job cuts, which were first reported by the German press agency DPA, come as the company prepares for an influx of cheaper electric cars from China.

While purchases of electric vehicles have been strong in the past few years, manufacturers fear customers are being increasingly put off because they are too expensive.

Figures show that battery-powered cars cost around £10,000 more than petrol-driven equivalents, while the price gap between electricity and petrol has also narrowed.

Drivers had previously been told that high upfront costs for electric cars could be recouped through cheaper charging.

However, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led to a surge in electricity prices.

To combat the issue, UK carmakers have been lobbying for cheaper public charges for drivers who don’t have access to outlets at home.

Volkswagen, which was contacted for comment, previously cut electric car production at another of its biggest factories after waning interest led to lower sales than expected.

Full report here.

Demand for electric cars is 30pc lower than Volkswagen had forecast CREDIT: Jens Schlueter/AFP