By Jo Nova
At some point, Western governments decided to pick winners, and set deadlines for inventions and discoveries and most car manufacturers clapped quietly. They didn’t speak up, presumably because they didn’t want to look like a climate denier. But it’s been a disastrous choice for the auto makers that jumped onto the EV bandwagon with both feet.
A few days ago the corporate mothership for Fiat Peugeot and Chrysler, announced a $26 billion US dollar loss and shares fell 27%. This ignominiously follows the brutal $20 billion dollar Ford write down. The CEO of Stellantis has announced a reset of the company and in a radical plan, decided to “make our customers and their preferences our guiding star.” Crikey — they will try making cars that customers actually want, rather than ones that change the weather.
Robert Bryce estimates the known losses add up to $140 billion in the last 4 years. And that’s only the money burned by Ford, Stellantis, GM, Mercedes, Volkswagon, Rivian, and Lucid.
Other companies have signed and bragged about big deals that they later backed away from. But they haven’t necessarily announced their EV specific losses. So who knows how much Honda, Renault, Mitsubishi, Volvo, and BMW have lost?
All up, Bryce estimates that the average loss per EV has been around $25,000.
The auto industry’s gamble on electric cars has turned into a catastrophe
By Matthew Lynn, The Telegraph
In reality, it turns out that electric cars are only a small part of the overall market and that, insofar as it exists, Chinese manufacturers will capture most of the sales.
There have been two major problems. First, EVs may only be a niche product. Next, where there is a market, the new breed of Chinese brands led by BYD is walking away with it.
The traditional auto giants thought the transition was just a matter of replacing an internal combustion engine with a big battery, but it turned out that an EV was a piece of electronics with wheels attached. It has much more in common with the mobile phone market than anything the petrolheads running the industry were familiar with.
It is far easier to create a new EV company from scratch than to convert one of the traditional giants.
The blunt truth is this: the massive bet that the auto giants took on EVs has backfired spectacularly.
If China had paid off Western politicians to force their own citizens to subsidize Chinese cars they could hardly have destroyed the Western car industry any faster.
If your country is home to legacy fossil fuel carmakers then schemes like the Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) work like an anti-tariff – It’s a ruling that punishes local industry and forces them and their customers to subsidize foreign car makers. The government sets an arbitrary target, and insists that, say, 22% of all cars sold must be EV’s. The public don’t want that many EV’s but the ZEV ruling contains the financial equalizer. If the fossil fuel car manufacturer doesn’t meet their target and sell enough EV’s they’ll have buy credits from a company that did.
Or if companies sell both kinds of cars they can raise the prices of their fossil fuel cars and use those super profits to make their own EVs cheaper. Either way, fossil fuel cars get more expensive and EVs get cheaper until the 22% target is reached.
Ultimately, the tradies and renters who buy the fossil fuel cars are subsidizing the electric cars bought by the rich.
Australias NVES (New Vehicle Emissions Standards) is very similar to the UK scheme.
If the Australian PM won’t drive an EV aa his official vehicle, why should anyone else?
Obviously they have limitations.
In any case, let a free marketplace decide.
Those that want, will, those that don’t, won’t.
But no taxpayer subsidies or forced purchase arrangements.
https://www.drive.com.au/news/why-the-australian-prime-minister-wont-be-in-an-electric-or-hybrid-car-anytime-soon/
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Yes, they both sure do! 😆
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Interesting. I don’t understand why these armoured cars can’t be powered by batteries.
If there is one thing that battery powered cars can do it is rapid acceleration. They can go like the clappers.
Maybe it is ability to turn corners that is the problem? Or range before the batteries go flat? Or battery overheating?
That’s it. Where’s the kaboom? There’s supposed to be an earth shattering kaboom!
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I would assume the issue is weight. Most politicians are ferried around in armored cars which already weight 5-10 times what a regular SUV/Limo weighs. So you would have to put a battery on it large enough to power a city bus. Which increases the weight even more, and the charging time.
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Yes, so it’s back to Marvin’s Earth shattering kaboom.
We can all dream!
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That BMW is supplied by the special VIP vehicles division and heavily armoured, run flat tyres and wheel design, and even an internal air supply so that occupants do not need to open windows or allow air conditioning drawing external air.
And these vehicles available from several manufacturers are very expensive, and drivers must have defensive driving qualifications. For example, a state driver explained to me about attending police driving courses and having to change direction at speed on a single lane track.
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One of the biggest victims of this woke madness was Jaguar.
They abandoned ICE vehicles altogether then featured a bizarre ad with a bunch of woke freaks that featured no cars whatsoever and basically trashed the entire company and its traditions.
Jaguar ad: https://youtu.be/rLtFIrqhfng
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Yes, some would suggest that Jaguar was gutted intentionally!!
There is no coincidences in a plan!!
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My old memory tells that there was much twisting of arms by governments.
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The final page in the Jaguar story is still to come.
Jaguar sold its last ICE car in Australia last month. The new electric cars will released very soon.
The new cars a large, ugly and expensive.
The timing is terrible. The market for new electric cars has stalled.
The end can’t be far off.
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The swans are singing.
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Long ago in a place far, far away, Holden transitioned from the Kingswood to the Commodore.
They did it pretty smoothly from memory but that was before the age of the great pretending. Put another way, who in their right mind ceases production of old models before developing and introducing new ones to the market.
Thinking back I’m pretty sure my mate’s Monaro could change the weather back then. It was certainly incapable of moving in a gravel car park without spinning the wheels. It had a floral-patterned vinyl roof and there seemed to be a different pretty girl in there every time I saw him.
While I’m reminiscing, I can recall my brother convincing my mother to buy a V8 Chrysler right about when I learned to drive. Man could that thing go even on L plates. But my son’s Polestar would leave it for dead.
And with that I’m officially old.
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Put another way – “who in their right mind shuts down ageing power stations before developing and introducing much more efficient new ones to the market with the full knowledge that the alternatives aren’t yet fit-for-purpose.”
The Jaguar syndrome.
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Ah yes. The greatest of the great pretending.
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Not just shut down. They dynamited them.
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“The auto industry’s gamble on electric cars has turned into a catastrophe.”
And a catastrophe for the true believers and early adopters who bought into the fantasy.
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There was an article in the paper the other day about a fellow who very recently bought a new Tesla 3, specced it up and was horrified to discover it had depreciated by 33 percent in a couple of months, and he realised that using the Tesla resale calculator.
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Must of been a shock for him to receive news from outside his bubble.
Seriously, how out of touch is he to be surprised by EV depreciation rates? It’s not exactly new news.
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Couldn’t happen to nicer people.
Battery operated vehicles that
can be controlled from far away.
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Not many golf carts have a remote control. But the GPS system can be programmed not to go where they shouldn’t.
Computer says no.
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Take me to the 19th hole. ASAP.
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The 19th hole can only be appreciated after the first eighteen – either as somewhere to celebrate or, more usually, somewhere to drown one’s sorrows!
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…can be controlled from far away…
A case of “Slow boat to China” updated to “Fast car to gridlock” (courtesy of China).
Meanwhile from always sunny always wind turbine friendly wind Britain a new report:
Electric cars deliver ‘no proven carbon savings’ in the UK, scientists warn in ‘sanity check’ study
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The only surprise is that the story came from a UK university.
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The reason that the big traditional car manufactures are losing money is because Chinese EV car makers can build cheaper cars with more sophisticated technology. Their competitive advantage is technology plus supply chain control.
The only things keeping inexpensive Chinese EVs at bay are tariffs and high domestic demand.
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I suggest that ‘our PM’ should be driven around by a Chinese EV. You could be the chauffeur.
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He would be recorded talking to himself, he has stated clearly that when travelling in his car he cannot communicate.
sarc
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Technology mostly stolen from the West and minerals from their colonies in Africa (and Australia). And semi-slave labour*.
Plus Australian and other stupid politicians in Western countries (except TRUMP’s USA) that mandate or encourage purchase of EVs and other economy-destroying wind, solar and Big Battery products.
* https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrylgvr77jo
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I experienced that once long ago, it was lunch break time and factory personnel in their lunchroom or outside somewhere, the warehouse foreman rushed into my office and reported that a small group of men of Asian appearance had entered via the third and most distant from the office block gates and walked down alongside that factory and into the area where the company had custom-made machinery of our own design that offered production cost advantages over competitors. By the time I reached the area via the other factories, a short cut, they had left. Another report later was that their car was parked outside on the roadway with a driver waiting.
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Some Chinese car makers are not able to pay suppliers. Many are on the brink of collapse. BYD has falling sales in China:
BEIJING/HONG KONG, Feb 1 (Reuters) – BYD’s (002594.SZ), opens new tab vehicle sales fell by 30.1% in January from a year earlier, the fifth straight month of decline, as the Chinese electric vehicle maker navigates external uncertainties and tough competition at home.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/chinas-byd-vehicle-sales-fall-fifth-month-row-2026-02-01/
So their supply chains may not be all that robust if their suppliers are not being paid.
BYD may be shifting focus more to export and better returns but their support network in Australia is still poor.
All cars sold in Australia have the same taxes so the Chinese vehicles face the same costs as all other imports.
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Oops. The bot has slipped into reverse gear.
The reality oh botty one is that european manufacturers at least are subsidising chinese manufacturers.
Unless your programmer has already been replaced by AI, he needs a holiday.
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The only things keeping inexpensive Chinese EVs at bay are tariffs and high domestic demand.
Wot’ high domestic demand? Just look at the recent EV car sales here in OZ.
Going down, down, as Status Quo sang.
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A Sky News regular guest explained last year her experience after buying an EV for business and private purposes, it was of course drivable but frustratingly inconvenient real range and locating recharging stations nearby and where the phone app could connect to the system to obtain electricity supply. From memory she changed back to an ICV.
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I think he is imagining the domestic demand in China. You know, the high domestic demand that inhibits the dumping of cars into foreign markets to be parked in quarries and them park car parks.
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A quick check reveals falling domestic demand within China.
https://apnews.com/article/china-auto-sales-ev-tariffs-871137ad17b9e491e14da0e6de1e1cc6
Although he doesn’t break down sales by brand … you have a growing percentage of EV’s (but still a small percentage) within an overall shrinking vehicle market.
You will note that Simon didn’t bother checking.
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Another article with the focus on BYD, from about 6 months ago … https://www.lemonde.fr/en/economy/article/2025/08/21/in-china-the-electric-car-sector-is-facing-the-challenge-of-overcapacity_6744563_19.html
Very similar picture of major domestic slowdown and pushing hard into the export markets. Thing is, this attitude will force the manufacturers to eat a good fraction of tariffs … hence playing into Trump’s hands.
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and yet the UN still designates them as a “developing country” that’s given a free pass on emissions outputs, pollution controls etc… why is that Simon?
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Easy
.China agreed not to call out the nonsense provided that China could benefit from it.
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BYD is pumping out EVs it can’t sell, they just keep sending them and park them up wherever they can find space.
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So the wait times for delivery are faked to make them seem in high demand?
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This suggests that the traditional car manufacturers are losing money because of a much cheaper competitor.
But then this suggests that the cheaper competitor isn’t cheaper (due to tariffs) and that the cheaper competitors product is mostly taken by its own domestic market, limiting its ability to supply and penetrate other markets.
These statements appear to be contradictory.
The reason the “traditional car manufacturers” are losing money is because their EV start-up costs are high compared to their unit sales. They’re a bit late to the game. They’ve probably also diminished their ICE car production by allocating resources and conversions to EV set-up.
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Nothing like a bit of slave labour in the supply chain to lower costs, is there?
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That is not how it is set up in Australia. It is much more punitive than that.
The CO2 emission targets are legislated as shown in this document:
https://www.nvesregulator.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/2025-12/about-the-nves-and-the-nves-regulator-1.1.pdf
If you scroll to the table on page 18 you will find the average fleet target is 117g/km for 2026. That means the fleet average for passenger vehicles below 4.5GMV must be under 5L/100km.
If Toyota only sold the Yaris hybrid in Australia they will be OK in 2026 because it burns 2.8L/100km. However by 2029 the current Yaris hybrid will not meet the required fleet standard of 2.5L/100km.
I doubt you will see ICE vehicle manufacturers buying credits from BEV manufacturers. I expect you will see progressively smaller hybrid .vehicles being sold in Australia until the legislation is buried.
The Kia Picanto manual is the lowest cost car in Australia. It met the 2025 standard of 6.1L/100km but is just outside the 2026 standard. There are a handful of non-hybrid cars in Australia that met the 2025 standard but none meet the 2026 standard.
I have not seen LNP comment on this impost so it has passed quietly into regulating the vehicle you be able to buy. If you do not place high priority on vehicle fuel consumption when buying a vehicle it does not matter because Blackout has your back! He has decided for you.
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It’s terrible that in a country as large as Australia we are being forced into smaller and smaller cars. Larger 4WD vehicles like various utes (US = pickup trucks) and larger 4WDs like the Toyota Landcruiser are already taxed heavily and some will be or have been forced out of the market.
I don’t want some pasty-faced, dullard, anti-fun, ignoramus, anti-freedom, public serpent or politician deciding what car I should be driving. These are the same people who wouldn’t be able to tell you how food is produced or where it comes from (not the supermarket) and who never venture out of their inner city enclaves infested with purple-haired, latter-sipping beta males and other wokesters.
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Relax David. Canberra makes an excellent target for a nuclear weapons test. And the good news is that nobody would notice any difference.
C’mon thought police. I’m over here!
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I didn’t see Toyota in the list of companies having to take a hit on abandoning EVs. Hmmm. Is that because they concentrated on hybrids?
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One of the snippets that might go to the. keeper with the emission targets is that diesel produces 2640g/L of CO2 when combusted. Gasoline is 2310g/L. So diesels are sort of penalised because of the longer chain molecule. LPG only produces 1510g/L. .
The VW Caddy is still available in diesel and gasoline. The diesel produces 129g/km while the gasoline is 143g/km. So the efficiency of the diesel gives lower CO2.
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Does the fleet target take into account the coal and gas burnt to generate the power to drive an electric wheeled whitegood?
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Will, would that make it an EWW.
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Eiiiw!
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No – that is why BEVs are labelled zero emission. It only refers to the tailpipe. The CO2 produced during self-immolation are not counted either.
I doubt EVs will ever be lower on gross emissions than modern ICE vehicles.
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Someone forgot to tell the vehicle buying public that we must only buy small Chinese EVs since Bonehead Bowen introduced his draconian vehicle emissions standards taxes. Although it is an interesting mix of traditional vehicles and PHEVs / BEVs.
https://www.cars24.com.au/car-news/top-10-selling-cars-australia-january/
Model January 2026 sales Year-on-year change
Ford Ranger 3,403 Down 20.0%
Toyota HiLux 2,800 Down 15.2%
Mazda CX-5 2,289 Up 22.3%
Chery Tiggo 4 2,234 Up 119.4%
Mitsubishi Outlander 1,975 Down 5.5%
Ford Everest 1,913 Up 13.9%
Hyundai Kona 1,839 Up 41.4%
Isuzu D-Max 1,798 Down 13.8%
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As in the UK decades ago when the government decided on progressively higher taxes the more the cubic capacity of the internal combustion engine installed.
Remember British Motor Corporation (later British Leyland) and the A-seres engine 850 cc but in later years as the tax system was changed that engine increased to 1,200 cc
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From memory the UK taxed on piston area, that’s they specialised in engines with a small bore and long stroke.
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The taxable horse power rating was often reflected in the car model name. For example there were cars such as Austin 7; Triumph 7; Alvis 14 and many more. In the case of Austin 7, for example, there was no Austin 1, 2, 3, 4 etc. to denote successive models: the “7” was the rated HP, a function of the cylinder dimensions, not the actual BHP.
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The EV dream – the sound of one hand clapping…
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More like the sound of one hand partially closed furiously stroking.
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I think I’ll always stay with an ICE vehicle, stuff their expensive toxic EVs that will always pollute our environments just like toxic unreliable W & S + batteries.
And I don’t want a clueless, dangerous battery in my garage or anywhere on my property either.
An ICE car can tow a boat for hundreds of klms or a trailer or a caravan and their EVs are more dangerous and have a very poor trade in value when the battery change over is due.
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All Market Transitions have happened where Consumers have taken up the new Technology/Products. Horse, Steam, Motor vehicles with the last two being with Hydrocarbons. And Aircraft with Hydrocarbons.
Trying to Mandate EVs and Ruinables is just like Canute trying to turn back the tide.
Emissions Impossible.
CO2 is Plant Food.
Toyota got it right by sticking with their Hybrid Cars and not going down the EV slippery road.
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From G-AI..
It only takes one in thousands to make the other thousands-1 junk.
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Hmm. You would only have just over 100 cells in a single series string to generate the required voltage, so there are a lot of battery strings in parallel that would still work if a single cell failed. Not sure, but some cells are being manufactured to include a fuse link to isolate that cell.
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Agreed JR except for the Toyota bZ4X all electric car.
Even Toyota has officially lost the plot.
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I think the one Toyota EV is just there as a sop to the Karens. Toyoda continues to state that his company is committed to hybrids and ICE.
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Perhaps we should use the original Stevenson screen box and reduce temps by 0.54c?
A lot cheaper and more accurate than the stupid OECD countries wasting endless trillions of $ forever and having SFA change to our weather and climate?
Thanks again to Craig Kelly for his hard work and always trying to help the genuine Aussie battler.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/02/08/another-temperature-bias-the-shrinking-stevenson-screen-warming/
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BTW I’m sure most Aussies would favour a more accurate Stevenson screen box in every airport or town and save billions overnight and we could then build ….
More hospitals.
more and better schools.
better roads.
more nursing homes,
etc, etc and leave fossil fuels alone and we would enjoy energy security again and that ensures we would have more national security.
A win, win for everyone and the cost of a more accurate box everywhere would be SFA.
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And use the original spec paint, lime white wash.
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Again, BYD means burn your driveway. EV translates to SFA for weather. Climate change is a con.
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Didn’t Brian Burke and labour try backing winners years ago. Red ink era? Hardly new and same outcome
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I wonder how many trillions of dollars have been squandered on the exercise in futility climate change politics internationally?
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Money is not wasted or squandered.
It is reallocated.
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The Left have always hated the freedom the private motor vehicle affords to non-Elites.
Forcing people to use EV’s is a good way to remove that freedom due to their inherent limitations.
It’s analogous to how they use “renewables” to deindustrialise a country (like Australia) and lower its standard of living.
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And today the news that the primary organiser of the street demonstrations (Socialist Marxist) has announced formation of a socialist party to contest the next election
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Surprise surprise, he supports any and all left wing causes to get a profile, anyway, I already thought we had two socialist parties, why do we need a third.
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that must be the WGDSR Party (We’re Going to Do Socialism Right” Party?
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$140 Billion is a very small proportion of the $10 Trillion that’s been wasted in the totally unsuccessful pursuit of the Net Zero fantasy.
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Without a commitment to supporting infrastructure, the EV car is never going to get off the ground. The Australian government did not invest in the infrastructure, in fact they did the opposite, they sabotaged the grid with renewables and touted EVs as a solution to climate change.
EVs are a very good idea, they do not completely replace ICE cars, but they are excellent in towns and cities where pollution means that ICE cars are being forced to reduce their emmissions and hence become hideously expensive. Long journeys into the wilderness are well less than 1% of car journeys, and they will never be possible by EV, but the vast majority of comfort enjoying middle class will benefit from EVs and enjoy the reduced polution. The question is how to do it well.
My appreciation of EVs is not based on a belief in anthropogenic climate change, it is a desire for reduced polution. Climate change has actually sabotaged the EV industry because the grid is being destroyed just as the EV need a next generation infrastructure spend. With many Chinese EVs being able to quick charge in 30 minutes, and with their prices being a fraction of ICE cars, we should be cheering on this new cheap form of transport, not demonising it because the politicians has associated it with the anthropogenic climate change argument.
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There are use cases for EV’s and I agree that most trips are short trips, therefore in theory EV’s could handle a large percentage of those trips.
However, most obvious problem is that the type of EV’s you can buy tend to be made heavy, and larger than needed and expensive. They are not building to the “it’s just an electric shopping cart” objective, instead they want to pretend it’s a drop in replacement for your main vehicle.
A less obvious problem, is of course you aren’t really reducing pollution, it’s only moving it to a different place. There’s particulates created when burning coal (although with modern filtering the levels around the power station are barely detectable) but there’s also pollution created making big batteries and then trying to recycle those again back into new batteries.
The bigger they make these shopping cart machines, the worse the pollution, especially once you include all the aluminium, steel, rubber, plastic, etc.
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