Holman Jenkins Jnr, an opinion columnist in the Wall Street Journal, reflects on the mix of bad faith, moral cant and low protectionist nonsense that underpins so much Western policy on electric vehicles:
Subsidizing green-energy consumption is simply to subsidize energy consumption, including fossil energy. EVs are “strategic” only for China, to reduce its reliance on imported oil in anticipation of military conflict with the U.S. For the rest of the world, including the U.S., electric cars are a consumer technology, albeit a fast-emerging and promising one. Sensibly, they’re also a technology that should have been left to consumers and carmakers to adapt and develop without distorting handouts and mandates.
The result is finally in view: a colossal self-destruction of the Western auto industry, with Germany’s at the forefront. Volkswagen is in a panic about Chinese competition to the money-losing EVs that Berlin forces the company to sell. Germany’s export-led economy is in free fall. Its bellwether auto giant, VW, is pursuing its first-ever domestic factory closures and layoffs.
Likewise, Ford CEO Jim Farley sees his company’s survival in the U.S. threatened by Chinese EVs given the tens of thousands of dollars Ford already loses on each of its government-mandated electric vehicles. The author of Germany’s auto mess, Angela Merkel, is now reviled as an unprincipled bandwagon grabber. Don’t kid yourself. The same reputational fate is coming for Messrs. Obama and Biden. Mr. Biden’s EV protectionism is America’s admission of defeat. The U.S. went from “Americans must buy EVs to save the planet” to “Americans must be prevented from buying cheap, high-quality Chinese EVs to preserve a government-created domestic boondoggle.”
Jenkins also refers to the concept of “permission structures” and the malign legacy of the Obama administration. (He links to this article at The Tablet.) I like that term – it coheres with concerns about how an “administrative state” has evolved over the decades to impose policy outcomes at a remove from democratic oversight or the sharp and corrective blast of free market competition. Worth a read.
The UK’s Institute of Economic Affairs, the think thank, has recently opined about “mission-directed governance”, which is a sort of automated paternalism (I discussed this offline with Paul Marks of this parish). The IEA piece links to an interesting paper about East Asia and forms of authortarianism.
Update: From Guido Fawkes today:
The UK’s electricity grid came worryingly close to blackouts yesterday – just 580 MW shy of the lights going out – in what independent energy consultant Kathryn Porter described as the “tightest day since 2011 or before”. National Grid ESO had to issue its first Electricity Market Notice of the winter, along with a third Capacity Market Notice, though the latter was quickly binned. No surprise that cold weather means more heating and energy…
A sharp drop in wind output combined with limited electricity imports from Europe left the grid scrambling to keep the lights on. Yet Red Ed is still pushing to fast-track planning permission for a wave of new wind farms — despite the inconvenient truth that these turbines have to be switched off when there’s too much wind and the grid can’t handle it. Meanwhile Labour is ploughing ahead with their plan to make wind and solar the backbone of our energy system to hit 95% renewable energy by 2030.
“…electric cars are a consumer technology, albeit a fast-emerging and promising one.”
Nope. They are inferior to ICE cars in pretty much every way. Absurdly they are not even better for the environment, which is supposedly the reason they are being pushed so hard. Promising technology produces smart phones and flat screen TVs, things that displace the old tech completely due to simply being better. Had electric cars been left to the mercy of the markets they would have suffered the same fate as they did in the early twentieth century.
EVs are just so useless in so many ways starting with very high prices compared to internal combustion-engined cars (ICE cars). Depreciation is epic quite simply because people who buy second-hand don’t want them at any price. Would you buy a second-hand battery?
Next the range problem is unfixable given that battery chemistry doesn’t seem to be advancing, and probably can’t advance because the periodic table is set in concrete.
The biggest problem for EVs is charging. Over 50% of car owners in the UK do not have off-street parking so would need an extensive public charging network. Even those with off-street parking will find the local electricity distribution network cannot cope and will need completely rewiring.
Sooner rather than later, our government will have to back away from EVs and particularly the fines on vehicle manufacturers (VMs) for not meeting the escalating sales targets. Either that or the VMs will leave the UK market rather than go bust. Imagine Ford pulling out of the UK and ceasing sales of its cars here.
The one safe bet you can always make is that when governments try to pick winners, it’ll be a loser. I wonder if Paddy Power will take my bet?
Paddy Power is a private company. They want to make money. So, no, Chris they won’t 😉
I’d normally say leave it to the market but think given all the unearned and unjust support EVs have got from governments, they should probably be banned for a decade or two as punishment. The whole idea they are better for the environment is complete bollocks. Have you seen. Have you seen what cobalt mines in central Africa look like? Huge environmental damage and slave like conditions for the miners.
Stony: Had electric cars been left to the mercy of the markets they would have suffered the same fate as they did in the early twentieth century.
I think that is right; without the forcing moves of governments and the subsidies, I don’t see the EV model reaching anything like mass popularity. And there is also the issue of batteries: the resources needed to produce a battery, in terms of the total amount of C02 pumped out to produce an EV, is roughly the same, given the lifetime of a battery, to the amount involved in producing an ICE vehicle. Matt Ridley in 2023 noted the essentially crazy aspect of EVs in this regard.
EVs were never about “saving the planet”.
EVs are expensive and will force low income and even middle income people to give up driving and rely on public transport. Which is the whole point.
Perry and JohhK, I think you might be correct. But I reckon that plan will come unstuck. Drivers don’t want Evs and that will be that.
PdH: EVs were never about “saving the planet”.
I have a sister who would differ on that if asked the question directly. (She has had one for ages. When she arrives somewhere in it, she often then struggles to find a working charging point within its remaining range; every trip an adventure.) However, when she talks about it unprompted the phrase is often something like “so I can feel good about myself” which hints at fashion rather than rationality.
There’s a sect of a religion somewhere whose members periodically scourge themselves with whips and mortify their flesh with knives to prove their devotion to the cause.
It’s the same basic impulse.
@Barbarus
When she arrives somewhere in it, she often then struggles to find a working charging point within its remaining range
But I imagine that was true when ICE vehicles were within their first ten or twenty years of existence. It takes time for the infrastructure supporting a technology to be built. Cell phones used to have unreliable signals until, over time, the necessary infrastructure was built.
I know several people who have electric cars and they don’t experience that at all. One of my best friends is a realtor and he zips all over the place in his Tesla. He loves the auto drive feature, and just the simple convenience of it. He is a MAGA hat wearing Trump guy, so does it because it works for him, not because of any delusions about saving the earth. I don’t think they are about saving the earth either, but the idea that they are useless as some, (not you) have proposed is patently ridiculous. They are expensive, which is a problem (but new technology is always expensive) but were they not I’d probably buy one. It is ideal for the type of life I have where I jump in the car to travel within a range of thirty or fifty miles, then plug it in.
Plus it has the huge advantage that I don’t have to stop at gas stations and suffer the temptation of all those chips and candy they put in their stores to ruin my diet.
With all due respect to Elon Musk and others – electric cars are hardly a new or “emerging” technology, they are at least as old as petroleum powered cars, indeed the first London taxi fleet (as opposed to horse drawn cabs) was electric – back in the 1890s. Those of us of a certain age will also remember the electric vehicles that milkmen used to drive – back when there were milk deliveries.
The idea of running on batteries is not very efficient – so it is hard to see why the technology is described as “promising”, and the electrical power still has to be produced – and the most economical way of doing that is to burn coal, which produces C02. So what is any of this about apart from subsidy grubbing?
Still, I am told that battery technology is improving and a massive expansion of nuclear power (small scale modular reactors – not the vast, and absurdly complicated, nuclear reactors that the insane regulations have led to) could make electric cars an economical thing in the future. We will have to see.
As for trade with the People’s Republic of China – this is not really about economics, it is a MILITARY question.
The Wall Street Journal must know that “private companies” in the PRC are not really about commerce – they are about serving the military aims of the PRC Communist Party regime (which controls all these “private companies”), so “free trade with China” is utter madness. As Adam Smith, if he was still alive, would be the first to point out – “defense is more important than opulence” because “opulence” (the “free trade with China” policy to give Western Corporate mangers lots of bribes) would eventually be replaced by being placed on a operating table and cut up for spare parts – yes even the rich “friends of China”, they would be cut up by the Communist Party regime as well.
There is a way to, perhaps, please the “election fraud is not real” Wall Street Journal (some close friends of the WSJ were victims of election fraud in 2024 – pro “free trade” and “aid to Ukraine” Republican Congressman in California who were removed by fake votes weeks AFTER election day, the WSJ could not complain about 2024 because it had insisted in 2020 and 2022 that “election fraud is not real”) – they insist on no tariffs with the PRC – fair enough, no tariffs – just BAN trade with any PRC based or controlled enterprise and have done with it.
There you go – no tariffs. “But then we will not have vital supplies of…..” – if (if) that is really the case, then the people (government and corporate) who have made the United States, and other Western nations, dependent on the PRC for “vital supplies of….” would appear to be guilty of TREASON, or at least economic sabotage to benefit a hostile foreign power.
Anyone who still believes in the Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama policy of “engagement” with the PRC (which turned this fanatically hostile power into the leading manufacturing nation on Earth – without changing the basic fact that the PRC is committed to utterly exterminating Western powers) deserves a one-way-ticket to the PRC.
After all they can comfort themselves, as they are strapped down on the operating table to have their organs removed, by saying “organ removal is a myth – it does not happen” – just as the WSJ said that election fraud is a myth – I am sure that was very comforting for those friends-of-the-WSJ members of Congress who lost their seats in 2024. No matter how big their majority was, lots of Democrat votes just happened to turn up – to be counted weeks-and-weeks later, nothing to be upset about, it would be “paranoid and delusional” to complain about it. Any claims that illegal immigrants were voting, or rather that Democrats were voting on behalf of such people (and others) is obviously “election disinformation”.
And if you tell the truth (sorry I mean “engage in election disinformation which defames honest election workers”) you will have many millions of Dollars of damages awarded against you as the corrupt (sorry I mean “honest and honorable”) judges and juries of New York (and other cities) have done to Rudy Giuliani and others. Forget that the 1st Amendment of the Constitution of the United States was specifically written to protect political speech (it is not about porn – as K. Harris claims to believe) – most certainly including claims of election rigging, it “does not count in Civil cases” (which makes the 1st Amendment meaningless – as Mark Steyn found out when he told the truth about the Climate Fraudster Michael Mann – you have “freedom of speech” if you are prepared to pay a million Dollars awarded against you by a jury of scumbags – which any jury drawn from a city like Washington will be, the population of the area are scumbags, so juries drawn from them will be scumbags, which is why Michael Mann, or rather the forces that control this corrupt puppet, “venue shopped” to have the trial in D.C.).
“Help! help! – the Democrats are cheating me of my seat” said friends-of-the-WSJ members of the House of Representatives 2024 – but, my dear Sir, you said, both in 2020 and in 2022, that there was no such thing as election fraud, so how can anyone help you against something that does-not-exist?
I am sure that organ removal does-not-exist either – so the pain as they are cut up will just be a delusion that the WSJ types are having. It is just “Free Trade” (PRC style) and the WSJ is strongly in support of that.
“Venue shopping” can work two ways.
Perhaps trials for economic sabotage (“free trade” with the PRC regime) or “election disinformation” (for example claiming that Joseph Biden won the 2020 Presidential Election) could be held in Jackson County Kentucky – with a randomly selected local jury (totally fair), and a locally elected judge.
Michael Mann could be put on trial there as well – for “climate disinformation” and for defaming the good name of people who correctly point out that he is a lying fraudster, by denying their claims (the claims of people who correctly point out that he is a lying fraudster) Dr Mann is clearly questioning their honesty and, therefore, defaming them.
The trials would, of course, be totally fair and not predetermined in any way – as the accused watched the gallows being built outside the court room.
“But a civil case can not lead to the death penalty – it is not a crime” – I am sure some legal “interpretation” (New York style) could get round that problem.
You (Democrat juries and Democrat judges) sent innocent men (and women) to prison for “crimes” you know they were innocent of, and you knew they would be cut up with knives – indeed you laughed (yes LAUGHED) about what would happen to them prison.
What you did to others – can be done to you.
What actually happens to all these unwanted milk floats – there are tens of thousands in compounds at various ports around the world?
The bubble has well and truly burst and when reality reasserts itself, as it must, this will be a catatrophe – and above all a blame game – of truly biblical proportions.
The eventual figure globally could well be tens of millions.
Each and every one will have a legal owner, and of course, be physically located somewhere.
Somebody is going to have to take the hit, above all of safe disposal. This will – of course – be “socialised” as it always is.
But nobody will take the responsibility.