Image by GrumpyBeere
By Jo Nova
Last year the acceleration in EV sales stopped accelerating. The industry was still growing they said, just not quite as fast. Now, so soon, the sales are actually falling. In the UK, EV sales dropped off a cliff, falling 25% last month. Perhaps it was just a bad month? But in California, home of global green dreams, sales have also declined, and for the last two quarters. Ominously, this is happening despite government decrees insisting every new car sold in 2035 will be an EV. Sales are supposed to be launching into orbit. Something is very wrong.
Meanwhile Hertz has taken yet another step away from their EV quest — after announcing they were selling off a third of their EV fleet at bargain basement prices, now they are cancelling plans to buy 65,000 Polestars. This was a $3 billion deal, and to let them out of it, Polestar has, by golly, demanded Hertz give them the right to buy back the old Polestars that Hertz wants to sell — that way Polestar can keep the older models off the secondhard market and stop the value from falling the same dire way the secondhand Teslas have.
Polestar is a Volvo spin off company, and now we understand why last week Volvo announced it would stop funding Polestar and reduce its shareholding. They knew what was coming.
Not to put too fine a point on the state of the EV market, but Ford is losing $38,000 per EV. This means the more EVs they sell, the poorer the company gets. They made $10 billion dollars in profits last year, yet the balance sheet shows they lost about $5 billion just on EVs. This puts them in the bizarre position that they could theoretically give away the entire EV production line and boost company profits by 50%. It’s that bad…
Indeed it’s so truly awful, that the UK Lords are calling for the government to counter the misinformation campaign filled with “mistruths”. The industry must be at deaths door.
Private buyers slam brakes on electric vehicles
Robert Lea. The Times
Britons appear to be turning their backs on new electric cars, with the number of zero-emission vehicles sold to private buyers falling by 25 per cent last month.
The latest figures from the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) prompted the industry body to cut forecasts on the proportion of the total market that will go electric this year.
California EV Sales Go On The Decline – Has The State Run Out Of Buyers Willing To Believe The Dream?
Agent 009, Autospies
Despite a sustained and seemingly unstoppable growth, the registration of battery-electric vehicles in California experienced a downturn in the last quarter of the previous year. Notably, EV sales have consecutively declined for two quarters, even as California authorities set a 2035 deadline for all new vehicle registrations to be zero-emission.
California recorded 89,993 registrations for electric light passenger vehicles in the fourth quarter, marking a 10 percent decrease from the 101,151 recorded in the third quarter.
What’s a free market for anyway? Perhaps to save Ford shareholders $5,000 million dollars?
Ford Could Get 50% More Profit Without EVs
By Stephen Wilmot, The Wall Street Journal
Ford’s “Pro” business, which comprises its sales to companies, is the engine behind Ford’s results. It made $7.2 billion of operating profit last year, and the company expects that to rise to at least $8 billion in 2024. The supersize Super Duty, which is mainly a professional product, is a key reason. It is also easier to sell software to businesses than consumers, who can get a lot for free.
Meanwhile, electric vehicles lost $4.7 billion last year, and the company sees the losses deepening to between $5 billion and $5.5 billion this year. To put this another way, if Ford weren’t selling its Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning models and investing in a new generation of products to replace them, its adjusted operating profit would be 50% higher.
When all else fails, and there’s no way to answer the critics, silence them instead
Electric cars: Lords urge action on ‘misinformation’ in press
Esme Stallard, BBC
Baroness Parminter, chair of the committee, told the BBC that both government officials and other witnesses to the enquiry had reported reading disinformation on the subject in national newspapers.
“We have seen a concerted effort to scare people… we have seen articles saying that cars are catching fire – but had evidence that the fire risk is absolutely the same as [petrol and diesel] cars,” she said.
Richard Bruce, Director of Transport Decarbonisation at the Department for Transport, conceded there was a problem…”There is an anti-EV story in the papers almost every day. Sometimes there are many stories, almost all of which are based on misconceptions and mistruths, unfortunately.”
The bottom line: don’t let them speak, but make them give us more money:
As well as tackling misinformation the committee also called on the government to unlock funding more quickly for local authorities to install charging infrastructure.
And just at this moment Australia is about to bring in rules to force Australians to buy EVs so we can save the World, or make some international bankers rich, whichever comes first.
Telsa image by ben saida from Pixabay