EV Quick Hits, Dog Days of Summer Edition
Public Charger Cable Steal, The Terrible EV Cost Deal, and Automakers Begin to Get Real. Sort of.
EV Charger Cable Theft is On the Rise. Range Anxiety Hardest Hit.
If you worry at all about public charging availability when driving your EV on an extended road trip, you’re not worrying enough. There is a specific type of vandalism being targeted at public EV charging stations: The theft of charging cables.
What is so special about an EV charging station cable? The value of the copper within the cable itself.
The price of copper is near a record high on global markets. With all of the effort being made toward global electrification, including the “transition” to EVs, the build out of massive new data centers in support of AI, and the thousands of miles of transmission lines required for wind and solar farms plopped in the middle of nowhere, the demand for copper has skyrocketed and has taken the price of it along for the ride.
Vandals are cashing in on a relatively easy way to make a few bucks by cutting the charging cables at EV charging stations and selling the cables to outlets that would be expected to pay the current commodity price of around $4.50 per pound (approximately $22.50 for a five-pound cable). While vandals are not known for their keen knowledge of the sale of raw commodities, it isn’t stopping them from stealing the copper anyway and selling it for whatever they can get for it.
This is creating another reason for consumers to think twice about adopting an EV as part of their transportation family. Public charging stations, even in the best of circumstances, have downtime issues already, either through their inability to connect to a smartphone app, increased rolling blackouts, or as a result of a broken-down charger that has yet to be fixed. Now, drivers are rolling up to a public EV charging center only to find that, if they have been targeted for charging cable theft, ALL of the cables have been swiped, not just a few.
If rampant public charging cable vandalism isn’t enough to discourage people from driving an EV today, I don’t know what is. Oh wait, maybe I do.
The Cost of Owning an EV has Got to Matter at Some Point.
The total cost of ownership of an EV is something that is…rather complicated. And its complicated nature is intentional.
Financially, you’re not supposed to know exactly what you’re getting into when buying or leasing an EV. Imagine if this type of bait-and-switch were to be allowed in other areas of the free market, such as buying a home or some other high-value asset.
The auto industry trade publication Automotive News is calling for “EV cost clarity.” Why, all of a sudden, is this cheerleading outlet for the transition away from gas-powered vehicles and into battery-operated cars asking for “clarity” on the total cost of ownership?
What they’re really asking for is a better narrative. That’s because their EV “transition” story stinks and the public is wise to it.
Automotive News claims that consumers need to understand that calculating the cost of an EV purchase over a gas-powered vehicle “is a difficult but essential exercise.” They also claim that this cost calculus “should become simpler as automakers launch less expensive EVs over the next decade.”
Hoo boy. “The next decade.” Today’s labyrinth of government subsidies, mandates, and cash incentives are proving to be not enough to keep EVs afloat as sales figures are clearly showing. And now we’re expected to believe that cheaper EVs will materialize not in the next year or so, but the next decade? This might be proof that truly affordable EVs for the masses are impossible to achieve under the current central planning that the European Union, China and the U.S. are facilitating.
EV market share has stalled at around 7 percent in the U.S. This is after two decades of saturation-level media support and trillions of worldwide dollars being thrown into a technology that is at least ten years away from viability. This botched, hideously expensive and failing rollout of EVs is a direct consequence of a technology chosen by politicians and not by the free market.
Why should bureaucrats care if the massive push into EVs is affordable? They’re not accountable to anyone. Do you really believe the “Department of Transportation” cares about “transportation?” That is not what they’re incentivized to do; they are only incentivized to perpetuate their own existence, your economical and reliable access to transportation be damned. Look at who’s supposedly in charge of the DOT and tell me I’m wrong.
EVs have been around for 100 years and have continuously been rejected by the consumer market. The reasons are quite obvious – EVs don’t represent anything better than the product they are replacing, they have limited utility in most use cases, they are more costly to purchase and maintain, and they are a much worse investment having nearly zero value on the pre-owned market. When are automakers going to understand this reality?
Reality Just Arrived.
American and European automakers are now waking up to the fact that their customers simply don’t like EVs and that they prefer their gas-powered vehicles. Automakers are faced with significant overcapacity to make EVs and are now revising their plans to bring back internal combustion engine vehicles. Yea Gas!
The high prices and removal of subsidies by a number of governments has led to the revision of EV sales targets that are being pushed out for years, while EV suppliers are being whipsawed by constantly changing forecasts by automakers caught in their insane market miscalculations driven more by politics than by actual market demand.
Fiat announced the re-introduction of its gas-powered 500 city car due to lack of demand for the electric version. Volkswagen Group is reported to be shuttering a factory making the Audi Q8 E-tron. Ford is investing $3 billion to build its highly profitable Super Duty F-Series pickup by re-purposing a plant in Ontario, Canada, a plant that was previously slated for the production of an electric SUV. And GM is delaying its production of a new EV Silverado a second time, while “stout demand for gas-powered vehicles continue to fuel profits for GM and other automakers,” according to the Wall Street Journal.
Stated plainly, if it weren’t for the money GM and others make on their gas- and diesel-powered vehicles, they could not afford to be in the electric car and truck business at all. It would be impossible to survive in this Quixotic tilting at windmills, the attempt to force people into a vehicle they do not want even after the billions of dollars that were spent with the expectation that consumers could be bribed into a battery-operated car that is only operational at certain times in certain conditions and costs a whole lot more than what you drove before and is worth almost nothing in only a couple of years.
Once you’ve realized you’ve been scammed, it’s impossible to regain enough trust to do business with anyone trying to gain your business or re-calibrate your expectations. More than ever, the brave new world of EVs is being viewed by most consumers as nothing more than a con job.
One. More. Thing.
Tips to avoid being burned alive by your EV this summer (H/T Buck Throckmorton)
Chase Bank, ever the resourceful entity, has a few helpful recommendations for those owning EVs and planning to operate them in summertime heat:
• Pre-cool the vehicle while it's still plugged in, using an app or timer function if you have one.
• Use the vehicle's air conditioning system sparingly. Consider cooling yourself instead of the car — for example, dress for the heat and try lowering the windows for air flow. Some EVs even have seat coolers, which are much more efficient than cabin A/C.
• Avoid driving and/or charging during the hottest parts of the day, when possible.
• Charge your EV battery to 80% instead of 100%. A full charge creates more internal resistance and heat, further stressing the battery.
• If the vehicle has a “battery saver” and/or “hill-hold” mode, use them.
• Pay close attention to your EV range and plan for fewer battery-powered miles than usual when it’s very hot out. While every EV is different, all are affected by the heat to some extent.
I have a suggestion. Instead of dealing with all of the restrictions, limitations, and inconveniences that you must work around to drive an EV, why don’t you just drive a gas-powered vehicle?
You’re welcome.
Good compilation!