The Marxist green agenda is at the top of the list of topics ripe for corporate media propaganda and gaslighting which is why it was noteworthy that a mostly honest article about electric vehicles slipped by the censors.
According to ABC News:
It’s nearly impossible not to smile when you squeeze the throttle on the new Aston Martin Vantage.
Aston executives may wax on about the Vantage’s state-of-the-art infotainment system, but what’s under the hood is more exciting: a heavily reworked, hand-built 4.0 twin-turbo V8 that delivers 656 horsepower and a thunderous howl.
Take it for a spin on winding roads or test its limits on a race track — the car’s rowdy, brash exhaust note reacts to every input the driver decrees. The latest version of the British marque’s 60-year-old sports car clearly answers enthusiasts’ demands: give us a mighty engine that we can see, smell and experience.
The Vantage is not for environmentalists who are searching for performance and zero emissions. In fact, Aston executives have pushed back their timeline for building an all-electric sports car, citing the lack of interest from consumers. Instead, resources are going toward launching a powerful, “fearsome” V12 engine that could produce 824 hp.
Aston is far from alone. Bugatti’s new hypercar, coming June 20, still features a W16 engine. Lamborghini, the Italian supercar brand, said the successor to the Huracan packs a twin-turbo V8 engine.
“Enthusiasts absolutely want a V8 in the supercar segment,” Alex Long, director of product and strategy at Aston Martin, told ABC News. “They want the sound quality it brings, the feel through the cabin, everything. Our customers are not asking for an electric Aston.”
The anti-electric attitude extends beyond the enthusiast community. Forty-six percent of Americans say they are “not too likely or not at all likely to purchase” an EV, according to a recent poll by The Associated Press -NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.
Earlier this year, luxury German automaker Mercedes delayed its electrification plans by five years, with CEO Ola Kaellenius telling investors the company was still committed to producing combustion engine cars. Last month, Toyota executives announced its engineers were developing smaller, next-gen engines that can run on alternative fuels like liquid hydrogen.
Industry insiders are calling the trend “return to ICE,” or internal combustion engines.
The stampede by car companies to embrace electric vehicles was quick, but not nearly as fast as the lurch away from them once it was realized “sustainability” considerations were unsustainable.
Electric vehicles are likely the future, but attempts to force-feed them to the masses have mostly failed. When the technology truly makes them safe, reliable, and effective, it may make sense to embrace them. Fortunately for those of us who love good ol’ gas-powered American muscle, that future seems quite distant.
]]>CEO RJ Scaringe unveiled a crossover EV called the R3. The new model will be priced lower than the R2 to increase affordability and boost sales.
Scaringe also surprised investors by announcing its new factory at the Georgia site east of Atlanta would be shelved.
“Rivian’s Georgia plant remains an extremely important part of its strategy to scale production of R2 and R3. The timing for resuming construction is expected to be later to focus its teams on the capital-efficient launch of R2 in Normal, Illinois,” the filing said.
The filing noted that the decision reduced capital expenditures for the automaker by $2.25 billion and “improved cash visibility.”
“Our Georgia site remains really important to us,” Scaringe said, adding, “It’s core to the scaling across all these vehicles, between R2, R3 and R3X. And we’re so appreciative of all the partnerships we’ve had there.”
No timetable was provided to investors about restarting work on the Georgia plant. Local governments have offered Rivian $1.5 billion in incentives to create thousands of jobs at the new plant.
Rivian’s shares jumped more than 13% on Thursday. In premarket trading in New York on Friday, shares are flat. Year-to-date performance has been awful, down 47%.
Short interest has surged in Rivian over the past year. Current data from Bloomberg shows 112.4 million shares short, or about 14.5% of the float is short.
Tom Narayan, an RBC Capital Markets analyst, warned in a note this week that Rivian’s financial implications of a lower-priced EV remain uncertain.
“Currently, R1 is losing money,” Narayan said, adding, “The critical question is how will Rivian be able to produce R2 profitably at the $45,000 price point?”
Last month, analyst Adam Jonas at Morgan Stanley penned a note titled “Can EV Slowdown Trigger Auto M&A Wave?”
“EV sentiment is extremely negative… and will eventually deteriorate further, in our view. Legacy OEMs must find a way to balance EV relevancy with capital discipline. Full OEM mergers are complex, politically sensitive and tough to execute. Could ‘merging’ EV projects be more reasonable?” Jonas said.
Consolidation is certainly a theme in the EV space this year.
]]>A Ford spokesperson did not explain the reasons behind the quality check, but shipments of Lightnings have been halted since Feb. 9. Even with shipments paused, production of the Lightnings continues at the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, Michigan.
“We expect to ramp up shipments in the coming weeks as we complete thorough launch quality checks to ensure these new F-150s meet our high standards and delight customers,” company spokeswoman Emma Bergg wrote in a statement.
Last month, Ford announced plans to slash the Lightning production in April “to achieve the optimal balance of production, sales growth and profitability.”
The automaker (and many others, like Mercedes Benz) is recalibrating its electric vehicle strategy as the Biden administration plans to downshift the EV transition as demand plummets.
Thousands of auto dealers nationwide recently warned the ‘climate change warriors’ in the White House: the 2030 EV push is backfiring.
“Currently, there are many excellent battery electric vehicles available for consumers to purchase. These vehicles are ideal for many people, and we believe their appeal will grow over time. The reality, however, is that electric vehicle demand today is not keeping up with the large influx of BEVs arriving at our dealerships prompted by the current regulations. BEVs are stacking up on our lots,” the dealers said.
They warned: “Already, electric vehicles are stacking up on our lots which is our best indicator of customer demand in the marketplace.”
A recent note by RBC analyst Tom Narayan said the EV slowdown is far from over:
“Key takeaways thus far from earnings season are that the EV slowdown is not showing any evidence of an inflection, Level 4 autonomy headwinds continue to persist, and fears over supplier inventory overbuild are likely overblown.
Analyst Adam Jonas at Morgan Stanley suggested consolidation is coming to the industry:
Given that Biden’s 2030 EV mandate is in full collapse, the downturn in the EV space will likely continue through the second half of this year.
]]>According to the latest data, some EVs weigh upwards of 50 percent more than traditional internal combustion motor vehicles, which we are told “harm” the environment. What is all that excess weight doing to the nation’s roads, bridges and parking structures?
The answer is that EVs are causing a lot of damage to America’s crumbling infrastructure, which is currently in desperate need of repair if it is going to last and keep business and the economy running smoothly.
It is something that many people overlook when considering the “green” factors associated with EVs, but their sheer heaviness means that a whole lot more wear and tear is occurring with each passing car on the highway.
“The problems associated with EVs are poised to grow as more consumers purchase the cars under the Biden administration’s plan to eliminate gas-powered vehicles and the tailpipe emissions that come with them,” reads a Washington Times report about the environmental and infrastructure threat of EVs.
Engineers writing for Structure Magazine agree, having written a piece calling on construction companies and building codes to make necessary adjustments and accommodations for all that extra weight, which is increasing all the time as more people purchase EVs to virtue signal their love for the planet.
“Significantly increasing passenger vehicle weights combined with recently reduced structural design requirements will result in reduced factors of safety and increased maintenance and repair costs for parking structures,” the engineers warn.
“There are many cases of parking structure failures, and the growing demand for EVs will only increase the probability of failure.”
Traditional guardrails are also threatened by extra-heavy EVs, which tend to bulldoze right through them, defeating their purpose entirely. This creates dangers for other cars that risk getting slammed into by an “autopilot” Tesla gone rogue, for example.
(Related: Did you catch our report explaining why EVs are a scam?)
Another serious problem with EVs is the fact that they cannot, at least based on current mining and production rules, be produced here in North America. Sure, they can be assembled here, but the materials and parts, including rare-earth minerals, typically come from other countries.
The problem is made worse by the fact that most of the areas where EV parts and materials derive are rogue nations like communist China that are enemies of the United States.
Then there is the fact that it takes a lot of energy to power all the EVs that are flooding to roads, but not nearly enough energy infrastructure to handle charging them on a daily basis. This could eventually lead to a grid-down scenario with rolling brownouts and blackouts that interrupt regular electric service for homes and businesses.
Despite all this, the Biden regime is carrying on with pushing EVs on Americans as the solution to so-called “climate change” and “global warming,” even as some on the right, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) warn against them.
“EVs are typically much heavier compared to similarly sized, gas-powered vehicles, which will put additional strain on America’s transportation infrastructure,” Rubio is quoted as saying.
“The American Society of Civil Engineers warns that an increase in EVs could substantially reduce the lifespan of roads and bridges, necessitating further investment in infrastructure.”
EVs are really not all they are cracked up to be. Find out more about the dangers and threats at GreenTyranny.news.
Sources for this article include:
]]>Mines around the world are ceasing operations or halting construction projects in response to the falling demand, such as a $1.3 billion plant in North Carolina operated by Albemarle. which announced that it was deferring spending on the project amid the market turmoil, according to the WSJ The total market share of EVs rose from 3.1% in January 2023 to 3.6% in December 2023, while the share of U.S. vehicle inventory grew from 2.8% to 5.7% in that same time frame as demand fails to keep up with supply.
Over the last few years, global mineral producers have ramped up mining operations in an attempt to capitalize on the emerging EV market, but consumers have declined to adopt EVs at the rate producers were expecting, leading to rare minerals flooding the market and driving down prices, according to the WSJ. The market for metals is often subject to boom-and-bust cycles due to unpredictable demand and the slow speed at which mines can be brought into operation.
The price of lithium is down around 90% since the beginning of last year, and the price of nickel has been cut in half in that same time frame, according to the WSJ. A mine on the French Pacific island of New Caledonia recently suspended operations, despite providing more than 6% of the world’s nickel supply.
A scramble to secure strategic minerals such as copper, cobalt, lithium, and nickel could increase price pressures and raise the cost of the climate transition, IMF economists write in the latest issue of F&D. https://t.co/X72oppqbAe pic.twitter.com/hoqLoenEdb
— IMF (@IMFNews) February 17, 2024
The decline in mineral demand is particularly dire to the Australian mining industry and economy in general, with the country’s government recently designating nickel as a critical mineral to give corporations access to government grants in order to provide some stimulus to struggling companies, according to the WSJ. The collapse of mineral prices has led to a loss of more than one-fifth of Australia’s mine supply.
China controls around 87% of the world’s rare earth mineral refining capacity, leading the U.S. to attempt to subsidize projects outside of China to secure access to the resources. The Biden administration has included provisions in EV tax credits that require a certain percentage of minerals not to be from a foreign entity of concern like China to be eligible.
On average, electric vehicles (EV) fall short of their advertised range by 12.5%, according to a study by SAE International. The study included 21 different brands, and revealed that EV manufacturers as a whole inflate the range of their vehicles far beyond their actual capabilities.
Tesla seems to be inflating the numbers far more than other brands. SAE International revealed that the range displayed on Tesla vehicle’s dashboard is 26% lower than the car’s ability.
This led to a slew of service requests by Tesla customers. The employees denied these requests because, in reality, the batteries did not need to be fixed; they were just operating at a level far below advertised. Tesla employees were informed that they save the company 1000 dollars every time they turn down a service request.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – JANUARY 30: A tesla vehicle is displayed in a Manhattan dealership on January 30, 2020 in New York City. Following a fourth-quarter earnings report, Tesla, the electric car company, saw its stock surge to another record high Thursday that blew past estimates, giving the leading maker of electric vehicles a market valuation of $115 billion. Shares of Tesla (TSLA) rose 10.3%, closing at 640.81, a new closing high. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
The exaggerated range can be attributed to the testing procedures prescribed by the EPA. Although most manufacturers follow these guidelines, Tesla uses additional testing that may boost the car’s purported range.
“I’m not suggesting they’re cheating. What they’re doing, at least minimally, is leveraging the current procedures more than the other manufacturers,” said Gregory Pannone, an expert on EV’s.
This is not Tesla’s first time being accused of such transgressions. South Korean regulators fined Tesla $2.1 million for exaggerating the performance of their vehicles in 2019. The fine came after it was discovered that Tesla cars drove half of their advertised distance when used in cold weather, according to Reuters.
Tesla did not immediately respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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