Holiday Season Quick Hits on EVs
It’s the most wonderful time of the year; so let’s do a quick lap around the world of EVs to see where we are!
Image: Audi
Deceptive EV Advertising
The Holiday season traditionally sees a blizzard of advertisements to push fiscal year-end sales. Everything from perfume to pajamas is peddled on TV and in print. I’ve come to expect this and am always looking for hints as to what messages these companies are sending to me – except, of course, spend as much as you can before December 31.
This year’s push has been electric vehicles (EVs), and the colder winter weather months are represented quite well with an abundance of snow and frigid mist. What strikes me as odd is the in-your-face demonstrations of EVs in the middle of nowhere, hauling ass in the snow, uphill, towing a camper. As if anyone who actually owns an EV would dream of such a stunt knowing that their battery reserves will take them less than half the distance in those conditions than if they were driving in warm weather, on a horizontal road, with nothing in tow.
These depictions of EVs operating in freezing conditions and performing towing functions uphill with no electrical charging resource in sight is extremely deceptive. It would never happen in the real-world operation of an EV – a driver would not make it back to town without visiting a charging station that does not exist in an unpopulated patch of snowy wilderness.
Automakers have routinely been investigated and found guilty of making mileage claims that miss actual performance by only a few miles. EV makers appear to have been given a waiver of such requirements, putting out laboratory generated mileage figures that have no bearing on that which is experienced in actual driving conditions.
Compounding this fraudulent behavior is the advertising imagery of EVs being driven in the middle of a desert or frozen tundra, clearly hundreds of miles from anything resembling a charging station. Does every desert and mountain driver carry a diesel generator while out on their nature trek? Are we to believe there are those who would drive 200 miles into the desert in a vehicle with a 300-mile range? Were their any EVs in attendance at Burning Man? (The answer is yes, and it’s extremely challenging particularly if the EV is towing things. The nearest charging stations from Black Rock City are in Fernley, Nevada, about 100 miles away, which gives the round trip to and from Burning Man a really disturbing level of range anxiety.)
Image: GM
GM Begins the Inevitable EV Pullback
With dwindling profits from gas-powered vehicles and higher labor expenses from its new contract with the United Auto Workers, General Motors needed to reassure its stockholders that the company will not bleed out financially. It is for this reason GM announced its plans for an accelerated $10 billion share buyback, paid for by freeing up capital that was earmarked for development of EVs.
But, how are supposed to “transition” to this brave, new world of EVs if we start cutting back on their development? If you consider that along with GM’s delay of an EV truck factory by one year as well as recently retreating from their stated goal of producing 400,000 EVs in total by mid-2024, you might detect that GM can no longer ignore reality.
Since GM does not separate its EV business sector from other sectors in its financial reporting, shareholders don’t know how bad its EV losses are (unlike Ford, which lost a reported $1,08 billion in the second fiscal quarter of 2023, or around $73,000 per vehicle). But fear not, investors! GM is counting on two factors that will strengthen their bottom line: Declining battery-cell costs, and continued government subsidies and tax breaks.
As demand for scarce battery materials increases through forcing the public into buying EVs over gas-powered vehicles, the price for these materials will go up (you know, basic economics and all that). How on earth can GM assume these prices will decline? And counting on federal subsidies and tax breaks for your future profit is not a workable strategy; suppose a new wave of politicians gets voted into office and eliminates these subsidies? GM is a for-profit company, so how much of that profit was earned through actual sales and how much is comprised of taxpayer dollars?
I think GM is in for worse times ahead, thanks to their reckless plunge into EVs without taking note of actual market demand, unrealistic cost savings from batteries, and relying too much on being financially subsidized by an unreliable government partner.
Image: Rivian
Wow…an Electric Road Trip!!
I’ve recently written about how the business and automotive media have dishonestly propped up the EV “transition” as “inevitable” and an “innovative alternative” to those poisonous gas-powered earth killers. Just when I thought the fanboy treatment of EVs couldn’t get any more blatant, I came across this doozy at Forbes.com written by an “Adjunct Professor, University of Southern California.” A professor! I knew it would be nothing short of transcendent. I was not disappointed.
It was the story of an L.A. to Las Vegas family road trip in a Rivian R1T battery-powered truck. “As a mom, I had the experience of a lifetime. The ride did many things for us as a family with grown children. It allowed us to have solid quality time…and it brought us together as we had to figure out how to charge, where to charge, and the thrill of the mapping of the Rivian vehicle.” I didn’t realize how much of the human experience I was missing out on by not having to worry about charging my car’s battery while driving across the desert.
Just imagine the freedom of “being on the open road traveling in an eco-friendly, zero-emission vehicle.” Now imagine charging the EV in Barstow “while also taking in the surrounding sights.” Never been to Barstow? Here’s what you’re missing:
Quite a sight to behold, right?
The author was not finished in expressing the breadth of her ethereal EV experience. “The electric vehicle road trip from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and back delivered on so many fronts. It was an occasion for family unity and excitement along with the enthusiasm of driving in an electric vehicle.” Anyone who has ever driven across the California-Nevada desert can describe the experience in many words, but “excitement” and “enthusiasm” are words not usually mentioned.
“The journey went beyond an ordinary road trip but incorporated a tale of innovation, natural beauty, and the undeniable allure of the destination.” By referring to the LA-Vegas desert as having “natural beauty,” I think the destination she’s referring to is the pot dispensary on Industrial Road.
I could go on, but I’ll wrap this up with the author’s final thought. “I hope you will consider embarking on your own memorable odyssey in an electric vehicle where passion for a sustainable, safe, adventurous ride is just a charge away.” Well, it’s always a “charge away” in an EV. Can you imagine someone writing “your journey is just a tankful of gas away” without feeling just a little embarrassed?
By the way, the author of this article claims to be “someone who flies perhaps up to three times a month.” That’s a pretty big carbon footprint for a little woman expressing her breathless joy in driving to Vegas and back without burning twenty gallons of gasoline.