From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Terry Etam

Consumers have spoken, auto makers are responding, and the odd man out are governments still paralyzed in 2019 when euphoric and nonsensical “environmental” policy danced on the supposed grave of last century’s fuel.

Summer was pretty quiet, thankfully, but time for a jolt to get reengaged. There’s no better way than getting yelled at, so today let’s talk about a surefire recipe – Electric Vehicles. Those that love EVs really love ‘em, and to speak ill of them in front of the fans is akin to asking questions about the size of their children’s ears.

EVs have an outsized role in the current cultural and economic landscape, in an odd way. They are seen as the best hope to turn the tide of general consumer emissions. Governments threw their full weight behind them to an astonishing degree, legislating them into projected dominance at an unprecedented (and as it turns out, insane) pace.

What makes EVs such a flashpoint is that they intersect with a bunch of stuff that people hold dear. For some, EV ownership feels like a major personal contribution to the global emissions problem, if owning one entails a significant personal commitment. For many, EVs make total sense if only running around town, or if wealthy enough to keep one in the garage amongst the Astons and Ferraris so as to be well-positioned to make an environmental statement if required. Some love them for their simplicity, with few moving parts and lower maintenance requirements (lower, but not zero). Still others love them because they can fuel up at home, at night. And then there is the cohort that feels their rage against oil companies sated cathartically every time they drive past a gas station, those that believe hydrocarbons bring nothing but death, irrespective of the fact that to that point in their life they’ve brought them everything within their purview, including all the things that keep them alive. Have pity on those people, the neutron-level boxing matches going on between their ears are not to be wished on anyone.

On the flip side of the equation, and what brings it to the news, is the public’s general feeling of “meh” towards them, the 80 percent that constitutes the non-extreme middle. In sane times, that is not a problem; major change happens gradually for such big ticket items, and most get a sense that certain segments of the economy work extremely well as EVs – delivery fleet vehicles, forklifts, urban taxis, etc. Many would drift toward EVs as battery technology improves, as range increases, as price falls. But such a shift would be a multi-generational thing, particularly with the infrastructure changes required.

Most consumers can see that that Total And Rapid EV Domination is not a particularly wise vision, even if governments have declared that that must happen within their dog’s lifespan.

Consumers do know a good idea when they see one, and we can see that by the explosion in popularity of hybrid vehicles – those with internal combustion engines augmented by modest battery packs and electric motors that give a certain emissions-free range before switching to gasoline power.

There’s a reason for this growing popularity – it makes sense on many levels. A hybrid removes some of the major reasons people are reluctant to go full-battery EV (BEV) – range anxiety, cold weather performance, etc. – and, as Toyota has wisely pointed out, hybrids are actually better for the environment in general than mass consumer adoption of EVs.

How can that be, you might wonder. Here is Toyota’s calculation, in what they call the 1:6:90 rule. An excellent write up can be found here, and the gist of it is: Because of immense challenges in finding, developing, mining, and processing critical metals and minerals (hundreds of new mines required globally, with each new mine having weaker grades than before, and with many jurisdictions becoming more hostile towards new mines), it makes more sense to utilize a given BEV’s minerals requirements to construct 90 hybrids instead.

Because many trips are very short, a hybrid can run on electric power for most of them, which is how the spreading-out of these minerals to many vehicles makes emissions reduction sense. Toyota calculates that if the metals/minerals used to construct a single EV were instead used to  build 90 hybrids, the overall carbon reduction from those hybrids over their lifetimes would be 37 times that of a single EV (and with that sentence, I don my helmet for the incoming shouts of “Fossil Fuel Shill” – the aforementioned yelling).

Customers are clamouring to acquire hybrids. According to a Car Dealership Guy article (excellent auto news site, from a dealer perspective), in August, 48 percent of Toyota sales were hybrids, Hyundai had an 81 percent increase in hybrids (albeit from a relatively smaller number than Toyota), and Ford saw hybrid sales increase by 50 percent.

Volvo, a company that had pledged to be completely EV by 2030 and thereby banishing the smell of gasoline forevermore from customers’ nostrils, recently backed down from that pledge to announced hybrids would remain part of the equation indefinitely. “Everybody made a lot of assumptions two, three, four, five years ago, and that’s changed,” said Volvo’s CEO.

And then there is the Chinese onslaught of affordable, high-quality EVs that somehow policy planners didn’t see coming. Western countries announced bans on ICE in favour of full-EV by the next decade, and lo and behold, China controls most elements of an EV’s composition, and they took full advantage of that supply chain dominance (plus massive government support) to undercut virtually every western EV maker. Hey, you can’t do that, said US, Canadian, and EU governments, slapping huge tariffs on Chinese made EVs because well, we want to save the environment but not that badly (ultra cheap EVs are one of the few catalysts that would accelerate wide spread and rapid EV adoption among the masses).

Not sure where this goes next. Consumers have spoken, auto makers are responding, and the odd man out are governments still paralyzed in 2019 when euphoric and nonsensical “environmental” policy danced on the supposed grave of last century’s fuel. How they backpedal out of this is anyone’s guess, although there are signs, such as this headline: “Italy leads revolt against Europe’s electrical vehicle transition”. If memory serves from Italian traffic, they seem fine with virtually any sort of vehicular madness, so a automotive revolt in that land is a pretty big deal.

As with so, so many aspects of an energy transition, if the whole process had not been hijacked by zealots, we would be farther down the road, we would have consumers on side, we would have entire industries functioning properly instead of the fiascos we in for example the auto industry, and we most likely would have far less emissions.

Greenpeace USA on the ropes

In the big scheme of things, seeing something that has the words “green” and “peace” in the name fail would be disheartening; no sane person is against either the environment or peace. But put those two words together and you have something else entirely.

In the US, Greenpeace is for once holding the crappy end of the stick that they are used to jabbing at everything they disagree with. US energy pipeline giant Energy Transfer is seeking $300 million in damages for Greenpeace’s role in delaying the Dakota Access Pipeline. An ET victory would and should send shockwaves through the massively well financed protest industry that so far employs every tactic in the book to achieve victory (and by ‘victory’ we generally means ‘obstruction’ or ‘vengeance’ as opposed to any sort of constructive advancement). The big ENGOs spend hundreds of millions on staff and lawyers who literally have nothing to do other than bend society to their will without the bothersome hassle of going through the democratic process. Robert Bryce’s excellent Substack column keeps track of the staggering sums that US ENGOs churn through; Greenpeace US is a pipsqueak ($33 million annual engorgement) compared to locust-lawyer Natural Resources Defense Council’s staggering $548 million. With all that money, these groups construct nothing.)

It is a surprise there haven’t been more of these lawsuits filed by thwarted companies and hydrocarbon producers dragged into court for the sin of providing the fuel that keeps us all alive. It’s really not a hard argument to make; the world as we know it will collapse without hydrocarbon production, so shouldn’t thwarting that production on sometimes very flimsy grounds count for something? Shouldn’t blocking fuel from consumers that desperately need it (countless pipeline battles) count for something?

Greenpeace’s defence is pretty funny; suddenly they are insignificant, claiming to have had only a supporting role in the protests, and that the lawsuit is, the funniest part, an “attack on free speech.” Chaining one’s self (or worse, sending some naive acolyte to chain their selves) to a bulldozer on a construction site is, apparently, ‘free speech’, as is law fare and endless slanderous comments about the people and businesses that bring them the fuel that keeps their unhappy lives going.

Maybe the resurrected body, of which you can be certain will appear if this one is bankrupted, should start off with a bit of soul searching. Maybe peace means everyone working together for a common goal, not dramatizing a villain as the means of motivating the troops. Maybe ‘green’ should mean concern for habitat, concern for air pollution, concern for more intelligent use of resources, concern for the most logical global approach to progress, as opposed to a singular war against the bedrock of our society that it is glaringly obvious we cannot and will not live without.

First published here.

Terry Etam is a columnist with the BOE Report, a leading energy industry newsletter based in Calgary.  He is the author of The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity.  You can watch his Policy on the Frontier session from May 5, 2022 here.

From Canadians For Affordable Energy

More good money is being thrown after bad, but that seems to be the theme of Trudeau’s government.

On Monday Goodyear Tire announced a $575 million expansion of their Eastern Ontario manufacturing plant to produce electric vehicles, and to make their plant more energy efficient.

And Doug Ford and Justin Trudeau were there for the photo opportunity. Why? Because — shocker — this move comes with serious money from taxpayers in Ontario and throughout Canada. Goodyear is set to receive up to $44.3 million from the federal government through the Strategic Innovation Fund and $20 million from Ontario through the provincial Invest Ontario.

In case you’ve lost track of the money — your money — which has been thrown down this blackhole to date, here’s only some of the close to $46 billion that has been committed:

• Northvolt, electric vehicle battery manufacturing facility, up to $1.34 billion
• Stellantis—LGES (NextStar), EV battery manufacturing facility — $5 billion
• Volkswagen (PowerCo), Federal ($700 million) and Ontario governments ($500 million)
• Ford EcoPro, $322 million
• Stellantis, Federal ($529 million) and Ontario government ($513 million)
• Umicore, Federal ($551.3 million) and Ontario government ($424.6 million)
• Ford Motor Company of Canada, $295 million from both the Federal and Ontario governments
• GM Ingersoll, $259 million from both the Federal and Ontario governments

More taxpayer dollars for cars that no one wants to buy, and are only affordable with heavy government subsidies.

In fact, last month Ford Canada announced that they would be abandoning their plans to retool their plant in Oakville, ON to focus on EV production. Instead, the plant will begin to produce their popular F-Series gasoline-powered heavy duty pickup truck. Ford plants in Ohio and Kentucky are at full capacity and can’t keep up with the demand for the F-Series, so they are shifting some of the load to Oakville. (Trudeau might learn a lesson here about supply and demand, which is what makes a healthy economy work.)

Plant workers were no doubt relieved to hear this, as Ford had already delayed the date when the plant would begin producing EVs from 2025 to 2027, due no doubt to their multi-billion dollar annual losses on EVs. (They lost $4.7 billion on EVs in 2023 and they’re projected to lose nearly $5.5 billion this year.) Many workers had already been laid off, and many more layoffs were expected. But now they’ll be hard at work producing a reliable Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) pickup.

This should come as no surprise. We need only look around the world for examples of dwindling EV sales. In Germany, EV sales fell by 37%. This slump is directly related to the premature ending of the purchase subsidies program. Budget issues forced Germany to end the program a year sooner than anticipated.

In fact, whenever a country reports an increase in EV sales, be sure to look at the subsidies being offered. “In France, a social leasing scheme which helps to provide cheap EVs to low-income households helped see BEV sales increase by 14.9 per cent in the first half of 2024”. And in Italy EV incentives helped push EV sales “up by 7 per cent across the first six months of the year.”

The lavish subsidy programs for EVs have created a false economy whereby they are only attractive and affordable with taxpayer handouts. Canada should expect the same slump in sales when our own subsidy programs come to an end.

In fact, the only nation which shows no sign of slowing down on electric vehicles is China, where they’re pumping them out at breakneck speed. This is, of course, so that they can take advantage of the EV mandates which Canada and other nations have enacted. China’s EV manufacturers are able to undercut Western producers since they control the lion’s share of Lithium battery production.

Their government also heavily subsidizes the industry. But chances are, once they control most of the EV market share, bankrupting smaller producers, they’ll jack up the price. And because of the mandates, drivers will either have to pay what they’re asking, or else invest in a horse and buggy.

This has led to calls for the Trudeau government to impose punitive tariffs on Chinese EVs, to prevent them from inundating the Canadian market to the detriment of Canada’s economy and Canadian workers. Trudeau and co have dragged their feet, likely because they don’t want to offend Chairman Xi.

We certainly should impose those tariffs. But what would be even better for regular, everyday Canadian taxpayers — not that that ever seems to be top-of-mind for Trudeau or Doug Ford — would be to scrap the EV mandates altogether. Forcing Canadians to buy EVs by 2035 is a terrible policy that will make us poorer as individuals and poorer as a nation. And it will ultimately fail.

Better to admit that now, while we still have some money we haven’t paid out by the truckload to green corporate grifters.

Dan McTeague is President of Canadians for Affordable Energy.