GOLDSTEIN: PM's electric vehicle mandates powered by fantasies, report says - "The Trudeau government’s mandate that all new passenger vehicle sales must be electric or plug-in hybrid by 2035 could cause chaos because Canada’s electricity grid isn’t close to having the capacity needed to charge them... An increase of that size in such a short time frame, study author G. Cornelis van Kooten warns in “Failure to Charge: A Critical Look at Canada’s EV Policy,” isn’t “realistic or feasible” because it would mean the equivalent of constructing 10 new mega hydro dams across the country, or 13 new large-scale natural gas plants. The alternative, would be installing almost 5,000 new large wind turbines, which would still have to be backed up by natural gas peaker plants, hydro or battery storage, because wind power can’t provide base load power to the electricity grid on demand. The idea any of these mega-projects, or new, large-scale nuclear plants as an alternative in some provinces, could be operating in 11 years, given the lengthy government-mandated processes they would have to undergo before construction could begin, is absurd. The irony is these mega-projects would be opposed by many of the same protesters demanding Canada achieve net zero industrial greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Complicating matters is that the provinces are responsible for electricity generation, not the federal government, that power needs across the country vary and that the electricity transmission system will also need to be dramatically upgraded. A national grid of charging stations will also have to be up and running by 2035, and millions of drivers will need to install home charging stations... The Trudeau government is also mandating 35% of new medium and heavy vehicle sales must convert to electric by 2030 and 100% by 2040, where feasible... Because a typical electric vehicle and its battery requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional internal combustion engine vehicle, Canada will need to drastically increase mining operations, which will also have to go through lengthy environmental hearings, before they can begin operating. Kenneth Green of the Fraser Institute estimated last year that to meet the increased demand for raw materials needed to manufacture electric vehicles and their batteries — the alternative is to import them, mainly from China — will require 388 new mines operating internationally by 2030. To put that in perspective, Green said, as of 2021 there were 270 metal mines operating in the U.S, 70 in Canada."
Heavier electric cars are blamed for the £16 billion cost of Britain's pothole plague as crumbling roads reach 'breaking point' - "EVs cause twice as much stress on tarmac because they greatly outweigh their petrol or diesel equivalents."
The 80% rule: Why you shouldn't charge your EV to 100% - "There are two reasons: charging performance and battery longevity"
So either your daily range is lower than you thought, or you will see continually diminishing range. Brilliant.
Letter: First-hand EV owner's experience - "I am not your run-of-the-mill naysayer. We’ve been driving an EV for the last three years, we are organic farmers, we lived in a fully off-grid, solar powered home for eight years, and we attended that big Greta Thunberg inspired climate change march in Halifax back in 2019. I feel slightly embarrassed about sharing this so publicly because I truly feel that we got duped by clever and persuasive EV/doomsday marketing. After reading Paul Strome’s letter, featuring all those key marketing points, I felt compelled to write in...
Not-so-nice realizations from year one:
– The undulating, electric hum while the car charges for seven hours permeates our entire home and yard. Is that healthy?
– Needing to exit the vehicle for 20 minutes at the Supercharger because it feels very unhealthy to be in such a high voltage environment while it’s charging. Rain, shine, snow or sleet – Everybody out!
– Learning that every time you recharge the battery, the battery life decreases. It actually can damage the battery to charge to 100 per cent and it is advised that you don’t charge more than 80 per cent for day-to-day use.
2022 – One-year-old car:
– Can still make it to Sydney and back, but we shouldn’t make many detours if we want to make it home again. Having to stop in Baddeck for two hours to “juice up” just to make the 40-minute journey home doesn’t make much sense...
– Can still make it to the Enfield Supercharger when going to Halifax, but no detours. Stick to the highway or else.
Christmas 2023 – 2.5-year-old car:
Heading to the Valley Christmas Eve (outside temperature is -5oC).
– “I don’t think we’re going to make it to the Supercharger...” “What the heck! We’re definitely not going to make it!” The whole family, plus two dogs, wandered around Truro for 1.5 hours, in the cold twilight while charging just enough to make it to the Enfield Supercharger.
– With everyone’s spirits low, we wander around the Enfield Big Stop parking lot in the cold while the car charges for 35 minutes. Can’t bring the dogs into Timmy’s and staying in the car while it’s charging feels like every hair on your body is getting charged up too.
– Charge up again at the New Minas Supercharger, just in case, because the wall plug at Grandma’s takes days to charge the car and we can’t believe how poorly the car is performing.
Coming home after Christmas:
– Leave Middleton. Stop at the Supercharger in New Minas for 10 minutes to add some charge. Everyone out into the cold!
– Leave New Minas. Stop in Enfield to fully recharge for 35 minutes. Everybody out into the cold: Kids, dogs; everyone. It’s windy and half raining/half snowing. How wonderfully modern and convenient it is to drive an EV!
– Make it back home with six per cent. Phew!
January 2024 – 2.5-year-old car:
– 10oC, but dropping, so range is dropping too.
– Husband arrives at Enfield Supercharger. Relief!
– Enfield supercharger is down. Neither the car nor Telsa phone app notified him; 9:00 p.m. on a Sunday. No indication of when/if the charger will turn on again. Car is at three per cent. Not enough power to keep the heat on, let alone drive to a motel. Other EV drivers there are all cursing their cars and their decisions...
– After an hour of being stranded, the chargers come online again.
– 60 minutes to recharge after going so low and it being so cold out. Two hours, stuck at the Enfield Big Stop!
February 2024 (last week) – 2.5-year-old car
– We are driving home from the airport. I’m driving my 2012 Toyota Matrix (680 km/tank). I have to go pick up the dogs from the boarder, just outside Antigonish. It’s too big of a detour for the “Long Range” Tesla to handle.
– Even with that detour, I make it home first. The Tesla took 60 minutes to charge in Enfield. It takes longer to charge a cold battery, but surely they should be home by now...
– My husband finally made it home. He crawled home, with the heat turned off, because he was trying to conserve power. Made it home with six per cent.
We’ve looked into it: There is nothing wrong with our car. This is just the natural diminishing of an EV battery over time, combined with fairly mild NS winter driving.
This is what range anxiety looks like! It is not, as Paul Strome so kindly put it, “for those drivers who have trouble paying attention to their fuel gauge.” Range anxiety means constantly paying attention to your fuel gauge and crossing your fingers and toes, hoping you’re going to make it! It’s leaving home with a “full tank” to go 290 km and worrying about not arriving! The February 14th letter features all of the dealership, government, and activist talking points. None of it is based on the real life experience of a rural EV owner. The “official range” of EVs is not based in reality. Only on the first day out of the factory (if it’s sunny, with no wind, temps between 15-20oC, on a straight stretch road with no hills) would our car ever live up to its range expectations. Speaking as a former climate change activist and current EV driver, I can only see EVs working if you live in a big city and never plan on leaving that big city. The last thing we should be pushing for is to phase out internal combustion engine vehicles by 2035 in Canada. Yes, we absolutely have to take better care of our planet, but EVs make zero sense in the real world."
EV charging void has drivers trying new routes to power up - "Electric vehicle drivers unable to install a charger at home are turning instead to stopgaps offered by U.S. and European firms as alternatives to often expensive or inconvenient public charging points. The solutions include online platforms allowing people to rent out their chargers, "pavement gullies" for properties with no driveways and even mobile charging... the lengths these startups are going to squeeze out more charging capacity underscores the continuing difficulty, despite public subsidies, of developing the ubiquitous charging network needed to support a full transition to EVs. The U.S. and Europe are subsidizing both public rapid-charging and slower on-street charging networks, but their development has been hobbled by a myriad of national and local rules and what the UK's House of Lords described in a recent report as "outdated and disproportionate planning regulations"... Home charging, while slow, is by far the best option because the power is cheaper. Public fast chargers can substantially charge an EV in less than a half hour but can cost 10 times as much, nullifying fuel-cost advantages over gasoline cars."
Religious rituals are meant to have a cost associated with them
EVs release more toxic emissions, are worse for the environment: study - "The study, published by emissions data firm Emission Analytics, was released in 2022... brakes and tires on EVs release 1,850 times more particle pollution compared to modern tailpipes, which have “efficient” exhaust filters, bringing gas-powered vehicles’ emissions to new lows. Today, most vehicle-related pollution comes from tire wear. As heavy cars drive on light-duty tires — most often made with synthetic rubber made from crude oil and other fillers and additives — they deteriorate and release harmful chemicals into the air, according to Emission Analytics. Because EVs are on average 30% heavier, brakes and tires on the battery-powered cars wear out faster than on standard cars. Emission Analytics found that tire wear emissions on half a metric tonne of battery weight in an EV are more than 400 times as great as direct exhaust particulate emissions... California lawmakers have similarly referred to EVs as producing “zero emissions” because they don’t have tailpipes, per the Journal, which added that the label is “deceptive.”... Increased exposure to these toxins “can increase the risk of health problems like heart disease, asthma, and low birth weight,” according to the New York Department of Health, which noted that pollution from sources including vehicle exhaust can travel long distances from its source and still cause health issues at unhealthy levels. “A lot of it [chemicals] goes into the soil and water, affecting animals and fish. And we then go and eat the animals and fish, so we are ingesting tire pollution,” Molden added... California’s air agency used a model that assumes electric and gas vehicles have the same amount of tire wear when analyzing the effects of the ban, according to the Journal. The public was quick to note the error, but the agency doubled down on its stance, saying it’s “speculative” to assume electric cars will always be heavier than their gasoline counterparts."
How Green Are Electric Vehicles? - The New York Times - "if the Bolt is charged up on a coal-heavy grid, such as those currently found in the Midwest, it can actually be a bit worse for the climate than a modern hybrid car like the Toyota Prius, which runs on gasoline but uses a battery to bolster its mileage... “Coal tends to be the critical factor,” said Jeremy Michalek, a professor of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. “If you’ve got electric cars in Pittsburgh that are being plugged in at night and leading nearby coal plants to burn more coal to charge them, then the climate benefits won’t be as great, and you can even get more air pollution.”"
Apple Reportedly Cancels Ambitious Electric Car Project After a Decade of Work
How ignorant. They don't know electric cars are the future
Adam Pankratz: Guilbeault's EV fantasy crashes into reality - "The signs were already there in late 2023, before our environment minister proudly announced he would jettison capitalist principles and create a dirigiste Canadian automobile economy. First, in September 2023, Volkswagen announced it was cutting EV output due to low demand. Then, in November, Ford announced that it too would be scaling back EV battery production due to lacklustre demand. The new year has not changed the story. If anything, the pace of automakers turning their backs on EVs has accelerated. General Motors is struggling with production woes , Mercedes Benz has delayed its EV goals and even Tesla has warned that EV sales could be significantly lower than predicted... Cue the Liberals opening the money spigot to help their ideology along. So far, Canada has committed to subsidize EV battery plants to the tune of more than $40 billion over the next decade. And this comes at almost the exact same time as automakers are pulling back from their EV production commitments, due to poor sales and low profitability. Well done, guys. Nice job. At the time they were announced, the break-even points for the subsidy deals were estimated to be between 11 and 23 years. With the drop in EV production commitments, it would be interesting to see revised timelines for these already long payback periods. While such deals and the transition to EVs is complex at the best of times, the government always finds ways to make the situation worse. This is mainly because, despite ample evidence to the contrary, it continues to think it knows better than the companies themselves and the market forces to which they are subjected. Consumers are currently sending a very loud and very clear message to both companies and governments: “We don’t want EVs.” The companies have heard it and adjusted their strategies, because they are responsible to shareholders and care about catering to consumer desires. They also are exceptionally well placed to respond to the real-time sales data they are receiving. Ford, GM, Mercedes, VW and Tesla all know consumers aren’t adopting EVs quickly and have reacted accordingly. Yet the government refuses to budge in the face of verifiable consumer data. The result is continuous policy decisions that place politics over productivity, to our collective detriment."
Hertz CEO Resigns After Buying 100,000 Teslas Doesn't Pay Off - "For the rental car giant, the biggest issues were low demand from renters and high repair costs from suppliers. That led the company to announce plans to sell 20,000 of its fleet of EVs. That announcement is doubly painful because the brand invested so heavily in Tesla inventory when Tesla's famously fickle prices were near their highest, then decided to sell at a time when Tesla has hurt resale value of its past cars by heavily reducing the prices on its newest offerings"
Weird. We're told electric cars are cheaper to maintain. But even new ones are expensive to repair