Taken from Bank of England report
Terry Ettam
Thankfully, the summer has been pretty quiet, but now it's time to get rocky again. There’s no better way to do that than with a scolding, so today we’re talking about a foolproof secret – electric cars. Those who love electric cars really love them, and speaking ill of them in front of fans is like asking a child about the size of his ears.
In a strange way, electric vehicles play a huge role in the current cultural and economic landscape. They are seen as the best hope of reversing emissions trends among ordinary consumers. Governments threw their weight behind them to an astonishing degree, legislating at an unprecedented (and, as it turned out, frantic) pace to give them the upper hand.
The reason electric vehicles are such a hot topic is because they intersect with so many things people cherish. For some, owning an electric car feels like a significant personal contribution to the global emissions problem, if owning one requires a significant personal commitment. For many people, an electric car makes perfect sense if it's just for running around town, or if there's enough money to park one in the garage alongside an Aston and a Ferrari to be able to drive when needed. Great for making an environmental statement. Some people like their simplicity, with few moving parts and lower maintenance requirements (lower, but not zero). Others like them because they provide an energy boost at home in the evening. There was also a group of people whose anger at oil companies found an outlet every time they drove by a gas station, who believed that hydrocarbons brought only death, despite the fact that, at that point in their lives, hydrocarbons had Everything within their purview was brought to them, including everything that allowed them to survive. Have pity on those people, no one can even think about the neutron-level boxing match going on in their ears.
On the other hand, the public's general feeling towards them is “meh”, with 80% of the population constituting the non-extreme centrist. Under sane circumstances, this is not a problem; under normal circumstances, this is not a problem. For these big-ticket items, big changes are happening gradually, and most people feel there are parts of the economy that do very well with electric vehicles—delivery fleets, forklifts, city taxis, etc. As driving range improves, many people will switch to electric vehicles as prices fall. But this transition will take generations of effort, especially if infrastructure needs to change.
Most consumers can see that total and rapid domination of electric vehicles is not a particularly sensible vision, even if the government has declared that this must be achieved within the lifetime of their dog.
Consumers know a good idea as soon as they see a hybrid, and we can see that with the explosion of hybrids—cars that have an internal combustion engine paired with a modest battery pack and electric motor. It can provide a certain emission-free mileage before using gasoline.
There’s a reason for this growing popularity—it makes sense on so many levels. Hybrids eliminate some of the main reasons people are reluctant to use full-battery electric vehicles (BEVs)—range anxiety, cold-weather performance, etc.—and, as Toyota wisely points out, hybrids are actually more cost-effective overall than hybrids Environmental friendly.
You may be wondering how this could happen. This is Toyota's calculation method, they call it the 1:6:90 rule. An excellent article can be found here, the gist of which is: Due to the enormous challenges in finding, developing, mining and processing critical metals and minerals (hundreds of new mines are needed globally, each with a weaker grade than the previous one) , and with many jurisdictions becoming more hostile to new mines), it makes more sense to build 90 hybrids using the mineral needs of a given BEV.
Since many trips are short, most trips can be run using a hybrid, which is why spreading these minerals over many vehicles makes sense to achieve emissions reductions. Toyota calculated that if the metals/minerals used to build a single electric car were used to build 90 hybrids, the overall carbon emissions reduction of those hybrids over their life cycle would be 37 times that of a single electric car. (To use this phrase, I disagree) helmets in response to cries of “fossil fuel counterfeiting” – the aforementioned cries).
There is strong demand from customers to buy hybrid cars. According to an article from Car Dealership Guy (an excellent car news site with a dealer's perspective), 48% of Toyota sales were hybrids in August, and Hyundai's hybrid sales increased by 81% ( (albeit in smaller numbers than Toyota), and Ford's hybrid sales increased by 50%.
Volvo had promised to go fully electric by 2030, eliminating the smell of gasoline from customers' nostrils forever, but recently backed away from its promise that hybrids would remain indefinitely. “Two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, five years ago, everyone made a lot of assumptions, but now things have changed,” Volvo's chief executive said.
Then there's China's onslaught of affordable, high-quality electric vehicles that policy planners somehow didn't foresee. Western countries have announced bans on internal combustion engine cars in the next decade in favor of all-electric vehicles, and lo and behold, China controls most of the elements that make up an electric vehicle, and they're taking full advantage of their dominance of the supply chain (plus strong government support ), almost weakening the competitiveness of electric vehicles. Hey, you can't do this, the US, Canadian and EU governments say they're putting high tariffs on Chinese-made EVs because we want to save the environment, but not that seriously (super-cheap EVs are one of the few catalysts) to accelerate Widespread popularity and rapid adoption of electric vehicles among the general public).
Not sure what will happen next. Consumers have spoken, automakers are responding, and it’s strange that government remains paralyzed in 2019, when gleefully absurd “environmental” policies dance on the so-called grave of last century’s fuel. Although there are signs of how they will get out of this situation, it is anyone's guess, such as this headline: “Italy leads the fight against Europe's electric car transition”. If you remember Italian traffic, they seemed pretty good at almost any form of vehicular madness, so having a car rebellion in this land was a pretty big deal.
As with many aspects of the energy transition, if the entire process had not been hijacked by fanatics, we would be further down the road, we would have consumers on our side, and we would have the industry functioning normally rather than what we experienced The fiasco.
Greenpeace US is in trouble29dk2902lhttps://boereport.com/29dk2902l.html
In the long run, it will be frustrating to see something with the words “green” and “peaceful” in its name fail; no sane person would be against the environment or peace. But put those two words together and you get something completely different.
For the first time in the United States, Greenpeace has the end of the stick, and they have a habit of bashing everything they disagree with. US energy pipeline giant Energy Transfer is seeking $300 million in damages over Greenpeace's role in delaying construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. An alien victory will and should send shockwaves through the well-funded protest industry, which so far has used every tactic in the book to win (and by “win” we usually mean “hinder” or “revenge” rather than any form of constructive) progress). Large environmental NGOs spend hundreds of millions of dollars on staff and lawyers who have virtually nothing to do but bend society to their will without going through the hassle of democratic processes. Robert Bryce's excellent Substack column documents the astonishing sums spent by environmental NGOs (ENGOs) in the United States; Greenpeace USA is a pittance compared to the Locust Lawyer Natural Resources Defense Council's staggering $548 million (annual $33 million). These groups use all this money to build there is nothing.)
It’s surprising that there aren’t more of these lawsuits being dragged into court by stymied companies and hydrocarbon producers who supply the fuel that keeps us all alive. It's really not that difficult. The world as we know it would collapse without hydrocarbon production, so shouldn't it make sense to hinder hydrocarbon production sometimes on very flimsy grounds? Shouldn’t it make sense to deter consumers desperate for fuel (the countless pipeline battles)?
Greenpeace's defense is interesting; suddenly they are irrelevant, claiming they played a supporting role in the protests, and the most interesting part of this lawsuit is “an attack on free speech.” Throwing yourself (or worse, sending some naive assistant to chain yourself) to a bulldozer on a construction site is clearly a case of “free speech”, legal fees and endless vilification of the people and businesses that fuel them So are the sexual comments which keep their unhappy lives going.
If this goes bust, you can be sure a resurrection body will emerge, and maybe that should start with some soul searching. Maybe peace means everyone working together towards a common goal, rather than dramatizing a villain as a means to motivate armies. Maybe “green” should mean concern for habitats, concern for air pollution, concern for smarter use of resources, concern for the most logical approach to global progress rather than a singular war against the bedrock of our society. It is obvious that we cannot and will not live without it.
What the world desperately needs—energy transparency. There were also a few laughs. Learn about the end of fossil fuel madness,Can be found in Amazon Canada, Indigo.caor amazon.com.
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