Automotive
Canada should get out of EVs before bubble bursts
From the Fraser Institute
A recent article in the The Daily Mail asks, “Is the global EV bubble bursting?” The article then answers the question by looking at electric vehicle (EV) sales figures for six major manufacturers. Sales are down across the industry—Tesla, down 20 per cent in the first quarter this year compared to the same time last year; China’s EV manufacturer, BYD, down 43 per cent; GM down 20.5 per cent; and Volkswagen down 3.3 per cent. Honda saw an anemic uptick of 0.2 per cent. Only BMW experienced a substantial increase in EV sales, up 41 per cent. Not surprisingly, share prices have also dropped across the industry.
An Associated Press article shines more light on EV sales, which in the United States grew only 3.3 per cent in the first quarter of this year, a tiny fraction of the 47 per cent growth that fuelled record sales. The EV share of total U.S. sales fell to 7.15 per cent in the first quarter, down from 7.6 per cent last year. The slowdown, led by Tesla, “confirms automakers’ fears that they moved too quickly to pursue EV buyers.”
In other EV news, Ford has announced it will cut back on EV battery orders, signalling that the company anticipates less EV sales in the future. That would seem to be a good thing for Ford shareholders, as the company also admitted it’s lost $100,000 on every EV it sold in the first quarter of 2024. Ford expects to lose some $5.5 billion from EV sales this year.
So what does it all mean?
Countries that adopted EV sales mandates earlier than Canada are already finding their EV sales targets moving out of reach. In the United Kingdom, which has a 2024 EV sales target of 22 per cent, according to the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, the share of the new car market held by pure battery EVs will be only 19.8 per cent by the end of 2024. The U.K.’s EV sales targets, like Canada’s, require 100 per cent of new vehicle sales to be electric by 2035.
And the rest of Europe is also falling short of EV transition mandates. Forbes reports that current sales of EVs in Europe have flattened at just over 2 million a year, essentially because the continent has run out of early adopters and corporate purchases. Forbes also observes that “other leading market forecasters still expect sales to explode and reach close to 9 million in Europe by 2030,” but that this rate of growth won’t be enough to let the EU and Britain reach target goals of EVs achieving close to an 80 per cent market share.
Meanwhile, the Trudeau government clings to its mandated EV transition, gambling with taxpayer money hand over fist as it pours more than $44 billion into various EV and battery manufacturing operations. And as Andrew Coyne observes in the Globe and Mail, it’s worse than that, as “all of that money will be borrowed, interest costs should also be included. The PBO estimates these at $6.6-billion. All told, that’s $50-billion of other people’s money. For three factories.”
Ottawa’s EV transition policy is deeply misguided, and already shows signs of incipient failure. And likely more failed taxpayer “investments” lie ahead. A smart government would tap the brakes on its EV transition policy. The bubble is growing.
Author:
Automotive
Biden-Harris Admin’s EV Coercion Campaign Hasn’t Really Gone All That Well
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
The future direction of federal energy policy related to the transportation sector is a key question that will be determined in one way or another by the outcome of the presidential election. What remains unclear is the extent of change that a Trump presidency would bring.
Given that Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk is a major supporter of former President Donald Trump, it seems unlikely a Trump White House would move to try to end the EV subsidies and tax breaks included in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Those provisions, of course, constitute the “carrot” end of the Biden-Harris carrot-and-stick suite of policies designed to promote the expansion of EVs in the U.S. market.
The “stick” side of that approach comes in the form of stricter tailpipe emissions rules and higher fleet auto-mileage requirements imposed on domestic carmakers. While a Harris administration would likely seek to impose even more federal pressure through such command-and-control regulatory measures, a Trump administration would likely be more inclined to ease them.
But doing that is difficult and time-consuming and much would depend on the political will of those Trump appoints to lead the relevant agencies and departments.
Those and other coercive EV-related policies imposed during the Biden-Harris years have been designed to move the U.S. auto industry directionally to meet the administration’s stated goal of having EVs make up a third of the U.S. light duty fleet by 2030. The suite of policies does not constitute a hard mandate per se but is designed to produce a similar pre-conceived outcome.
It is the sort of heavy-handed federal effort to control markets that Trump has spoken out against throughout his first term in office and his pursuit of a second term.
A new report released this week by big energy data and analytics firm Enverus seems likely to influence prospective Trump officials to take a more favorable view of the potential for EVs to grow as a part of the domestic transportation fleet. Perhaps the most surprising bit of news in the study, conducted by Enverus subsidiary Enverus Intelligence Research (EIR), is a projection that EVs are poised to be lower-priced than their equivalent gas-powered models as soon as next year, due to falling battery costs.
“Battery costs have fallen rapidly, with 2024 cell costs dipping below $100/kWh. We predict from [2025] forward EVs will be more affordable than their traditional, internal combustible engine counterparts,” Carson Kearl, analyst at EIR, says in the release. Kearl further says that EIR expects the number of EVs on the road in the US to “exceed 40 million (20%) by 2035 and 80 million (40%) by 2040.”
The falling battery costs have been driven by a collapse in lithium prices. Somewhat ironically, that price collapse has in turn been driven by the failure of EV expansion to meet the unrealistic goal-setting mainly by western governments, including the United States. Those same cause-and-effect dynamics would most likely mean that prices for lithium, batteries and EVs would rise again if the rapid market penetration projected by EIR were to come to fruition.
In the U.S. market, the one and only certainty of all of this is that something is going to have to change, and soon. On Monday, Ford Motor Company reported it lost another $1.2 billion in its Ford Model e EV division in the 3rd quarter, bringing its accumulated loss for the first 9 months of 2024 to $3.7 billion.
Energy analyst and writer Robert Bryce points out in his Substack newsletter that that Model e loss is equivalent to the $3.7 billion profit Ford has reported this year in its Ford Blue division, which makes the company’s light duty internal combustion cars and trucks.
While Tesla is doing fine, with recovering profits and a rising stock price amid the successful launch of its CyberTruck and other new products, other pure-play EV makers in the United States are struggling to survive. Ford’s integrated peers GM and Stellantis have also struggled with the transition to more EV model-heavy fleets.
None of this is sustainable, and a recalibration of policy is in order. Next Tuesday’s election will determine which path the redirection of policy takes.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
Automotive
Trudeau’s new vehicle ban is a non starter
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Author: Kris Sims
The Trudeau government’s ban on new gas and diesel vehicles is a nonstarter for three powerful reasons.
First, Canadians want to drive gas-powered minivans and diesel pickups.
Second, Canada does not have the electrical power to fuel these battery-powered cars.
Third, Canadians do not have the money to build the power-generating stations that would be needed to power these government-mandated vehicles.
Let’s start on the showroom floor.
The Trudeau government is banning the sale of new gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles by 2035.
In about 10 years’ time, Canadians will not be allowed to buy a new vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine because the government will forbid it.
Canadians disagree with this.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation released Leger polling showing 59 per cent of Canadians oppose the federal government’s ban on new gas and diesel vehicles.
Among those who are decided on the issue, 67 per cent of Canadians, and majorities in every demographic, oppose the Trudeau government’s ban.
Now let’s look under the hood.
Canada does not have the electricity to charge these battery-powered cars. The government hasn’t presented any plan to pay for the power plants, transmission lines and charging stations for these government-mandated vehicles.
That leaves a big question: How much will this cost taxpayers?
Canada’s vehicle transition could cost up to $300 billion by 2040 to expand the electrical grid, according to a report for Natural Resources Canada.
Let’s look at why this will cost so much.
The average Canadian household uses about 10,861 kWh in electricity per year. The average electric car uses about 4,500 kWh of energy per year.
The average household’s electricity use would jump by about 40 per cent if they bought one EV and charged it at home.
Canada is home to 24 million cars and light trucks that run on gasoline and diesel, according to Statistics Canada.
If all those vehicles were powered by electricity and batteries, that fleet would use about 108 million mWh of power every year.
For context, one large CANDU nuclear reactor at the Darlington nuclear plant in Ontario generates about 7,750,000 mWh of power per year.
Canada would require about 14 of these reactors to power all of those electric cars.
Building a large nuclear reactor costs about $12.5 billion.
That’s a price tag of about $175 billion just for all the power plants. The Natural Resources report estimates the transition to electric vehicles could cost up to $300 billion in total, when new charging stations and power lines are included.
Who would be paying that tab? Normal Canadians through higher taxes and power bills.
Canadians cannot afford the cost of these mandatory electric vehicles because they’re broke.
Canadians are broke largely because of high taxes and high inflation, both driven by the Trudeau government’s wasteful spending.
About half of Canadians say they are within $200 of not being able to make the minimum payments on their bills each month. That’s also known as barely scraping by.
Food banks are facing record demand, with a sharp increase in working families needing help. That means parents who are holding down jobs are still depending on donated jars of peanut butter to feed their kids.
Rubbing salt into the wound, the federal government also put taxpayers on the hook for about $30 billion to multinational corporations like Honda, Volkswagen, Stellantis and Northvolt to build EV battery factories.
The roadside sobriety test is complete, and the Trudeau government is blowing a fail on this policy.
Canadians are opposed to the Trudeau government banning the sale of new gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles.
Canada does not have the electricity to charge these battery-powered cars.
Canadians don’t have the money to build the new power plants, transmission lines and charging stations these vehicles would demand.
It’s time to tow this ban on new gas and diesel vehicles to the scrapyard.
Franco Terrazzano is the Federal Director and Kris Sims is the Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
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