The False Promises of Electric Vehicles Are Being Exposed

 Shipping giant Matson declared last week that it would no longer transport electric vehicles (EVs) or plug-in hybrids on its vessels, citing the fire risks posed by lithium-ion batteries. This decision, effective immediately, followed the catastrophic sinking of the carrier Morning Midas earlier in June. The blaze, which aerial imagery showed billowing from the ship’s stern, underscored the perilous nature of lithium-ion battery fires — intense, almost impossible to extinguish, and prone to reignition.

Lithium-ion battery fires, as seen in incidents like the Morning Midas, Felicity Ace (2022), and Fremantle Highway (2023), are a unique hazard. These fires, driven by thermal runaway — a rapid, self-heating reaction — burn hotter than conventional fires, produce toxic gases and can reignite days or weeks later. In response, some German cities have banned EVs from underground parking due to fire risks, and a Norwegian ferry operator has prohibited them outright.

Matson’s move is a stark symbol of a broader reckoning: the electric vehicle revolution, once heralded as the inevitable future of mobility, has come full circle. Like a Rorschach test, the EV experience has exposed its hollow promises, revealing a deeper pathology in Western society’s obsession with ‘green’ ideals....<<<Read More>>>....

Second-hand Teslas flood the market as Elon Musk faces British backlash

 British drivers are offloading Teslas in record numbers amid a political backlash against Elon Musk, the company’s chief executive.

Figures from Auto Trader showed that 4,822 second-hand Teslas were advertised on the car site in February and 4,639 in January, a significant increase on previous months.

The number put up for sale in February was up 36pc from December and up 70pc from the same month last year.

It comes as the company faces growing competition among electric car makers. Meanwhile, Mr Musk’s closeness to Donald Trump and support for far-Right European parties has divided opinion.

The number of second-hand Teslas advertised on Auto Trader has risen steadily over time, as increasing numbers of motorists who acquired new cars several years ago put them up for sale.

However, the rise in listings between December and January was the biggest month-on-month increase on record.

Second-hand Tesla prices have also fallen heavily as more owners put them on the market. A three-year-old Model 3 cost an average of £20,887 on Auto Trader in February, down 17pc year-on-year. This compares to an 8.2pc fall in like-for-like prices of all electric cars in the year to January.

Tesla shares have fallen by more than 30pc this year as it faces falling sales in multiple markets. This week, figures have shown orders falling by 76pc in Germany, 72pc in Australia and 49pc in China.

In the UK, sales of new Teslas rose by 21pc in February, although this was an unusually strong month for electric car demand as buyers pushed to avoid a tax rise on new electric vehicles (EVs). The rise was slower than wider EV sales which were up 41.7pc....<<<Read More>>>...

Motorway Driving in an Electric Vehicle Can Cost Twice as Much as in a Petrol Car

 The Telegraph’s motoring correspondent Andrew English has been writing about driving Ford’s Mustang Mach-E. The Telegraph isn’t noted for its general support of the present and last governments’ energy policies, but even so his experience was a memorably expensive and salutary one.

The first thing I learnt during 11,000 miles in the Mach-E was that it isn’t a ‘proper’ Mustang. Secondly, if you regularly cover high mileage in an EV, you need to travel when everyone else isn’t to avoid queuing at chargers.

English set out during autumn half-term to see his elderly mother, his petrol Civic being in for servicing.

It looked as though Gridserve hadn’t done much planning, either. Of its 24 high-current chargers at Exeter services, eight were out of service. It was chaos

“I’m glad my boss will be doing this next week so he can see what it’s like,” said Gridserve’s Matt Sidwell, who was doing sterling work trying to instill order to the rambunctious queuing system. With no space to stack cars, no signposting and people constantly trying to push in, he was fighting a losing battle.

“The thing that drives me crazy is the people who stay on the charger to get a 100% charge,” he said. “It’s virtually impossible to achieve and takes so long because the charger is only trickling current in at that point.”

I looked enviously at the rows of Tesla-only chargers, most of them unoccupied.

It took 45 minutes for a charger to become vacant. I plugged in the Ford, unwrapped a bacon sandwich and wondered why Colmans no longer sells mustard in tubes.

There was a sharp tap at the window. “The chargers are rated at 175kWh,” said an elderly motorist who’d emerged from a Nissan Leaf and was peering at the charger display. “You’re only getting 80.”

I didn’t tell him I’ve rarely seen more than 80 and even then not for long, although the Ford’s DC fast charging is rated at 150kWh.

I just wish Ed Miliband, the energy security minister, was there so I could stuff my bacon sandwich where the sun doesn’t shine, but he was packing his swimmers for the COP conference in Baku.

With the Mustang averaging 2.8 miles per kWh on motorways, it has an effective range of 250 to 270 miles (from the 91kWh lithium-ion battery) against a claim of 372 miles (although, to be fair, Ford advertises the Mach-E with a “motorway range” of 306 miles).

To eke out the range I travel everywhere with the heater off, which currently demands a substantial coat, hat and gloves. I’m writing to Santa for thick socks this Christmas.

Fighting off the drastic effect aerodynamic drag has on an EV’s range, English reached his mother, who quizzed him about the Ford.

My poorly mother proved to be in rather better health than the U.K. charging system on that day. She was interested in the Ford parked outside.

“So, how much does it cost to run?” she asked, ever the mathematician.

I grabbed some paper.

While I once had to pay a whopping £1.12 per kWh at a Shell Recharge station, in general fast charging averages at between 85 and 90p per kWh. On a long motorway journey, the Ford averages between 2.6 and 2.8 miles per kWh, which is by no means unexceptional in large battery SUVs I’ve tested. Using the more generous figures in both cases, the Ford is costing at least 30p per mile for the electricity alone....<<<Read More>>>....

Electric Car Drivers “Being Plunged into Negative Equity” as Prices Collapse

 Collapsing electric vehicle prices are leaving a growing number of drivers in negative equity, a top dealership chain has warned. The Telegraph has more.

Vertu Motors said on Wednesday that car retailers were coming under pressure as EVs coming off financing agreements were found to be worth less than the loan they are attached to.

In most car finance deals, this is not a problem for drivers as – provided they have kept up with their payments – they can hand back the keys and walk away.

The lender that funded the leasing deal then typically takes the financial hit.

However, the issue creates a headache for dealers that often allow customers to “roll over” positive or negative equity into new financing deals to win repeat business.

The steep drop in electric cars’ value is being partly fuelled by the discounts offered on new vehicles, as manufacturers attempt to boost sales to hit legally-binding government targets.

Rob Forrester, Vertu’s Chief Executive, said: “We all know that battery electric vehicles have depreciated at a significant rate, and that tends to feed into the creation of negative equity.

“If you think about when many cars were bought two to three years ago, new car prices were quite high because of supply constraints, but since then there’s been a reduction in used car value.”

It follows warnings last month that so-called fleet operators, such as car leasing firms and rental companies, were having to swallow large losses when reselling EVs because of “accelerated, exceptional depreciation”.

In the past two years, the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA) said the average amount of “residual value” left over at the end of a car’s lease period had plunged from 60% to 35%. (Read More)

EV boosters cannot do math

 According to Electrly, the electric vehicle charging manufacturer, it takes an average of 90 kilowatt-hours of electricity to fully charge a Tesla Model Y long range all-wheel-drive vehicle, 83 kWh for the Model Y performance version, and 67 kWh for the standard range Model Y. 

Each Tesla uses between 0.24 to 0.30 kWh per mile, or about 4,500 kWh over a year for 15,000 miles of driving. Other electric vehicles use more or less, but within a similar range. At 0.30 kWh per mile, that’s 90 kWh for 300 miles of driving for the typical week.

The average American household without an in-home EV charging station consumes about 30 kWh per day, or about 10,720 kWh over a year’s time. With just one electric vehicle being charged at home, that total increases to about 15,220 kWh. For two-EV households, that total runs up to nearly 20,000 kWh per year (assuming both drivers commute to work). That’s nearly double current electricity usage for such families.

Without an EV in the garage, air conditioning uses nearly a fifth of household electricity, followed by space heating and water heating (a combined 25%). But adding just one home-charged EV changes that calculus dramatically. The EV takes up about 30% ot the much higher total electricity use, dropping the share for all other uses significantly.

Two home-charged EVs would eat up nearly half the household’s total electricity usage – and require thousands of dollars to upgrade the house’s electric panel. Today’s 50-kva transformers, which cost about $8,000 each, can power about 60 homes; that number drops closer to 40 if each of those homes houses one electric vehicle, closer to 30 with two EVs using home chargers.

For a city with 120,000 homes, which today may require about 2,000 transformers, the addition of 120,000 home-charged electric vehicles means adding 1,000 transformers, about $8 million. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg, because distributing 50 to 100% more household electricity requires generating 50 to 100% more electricity.

All this costs money that most Americans today do not have, especially at the generation end. Especially with the push to eliminate electric generation from coal and natural gas and even nuclear energy. It also requires massive construction of electric infrastructure, from transmission lines to transformers to in-home charging stations accompanied by larger electric fuse boxes...<<<Read More>>>....

Failing EV industry is a lesson to businesses; never underestimate the power of consumers

In China, electric vehicles have been assigned to vast graveyards of unsold vehicles. While ride-share services bought the vehicles at subsidised prices, private buyers are not so keen. So last year China began dumping its electric vehicles in Europe, where they are filling up the ports at Rotterdam and Antwerp.

The US also has unsold stocks of electric cars. And in Britain, the momentum for electric vehicles has slowed.

The great electric revolution that was promised just three years ago is already failing – and it will bring the car manufacturers down with it....<<<Read More>>>....

Automakers slashing EV prices after government subsidies fail to prop up the industry

 Automakers are currently slashing the prices of their electric vehicles (EVs) – but it’s not because the vehicles are getting cheaper to produce and it’s definitely not because of growing consumer demand. In fact, global EV sales took a dramatic nosedive in January of 2023, from China to various countries in Europe to the US.

Falling demand has forced automakers to slash prices and recoup losses. The auto industry can afford to take losses for now because they have enjoyed copious government subsidies over the past year. How far will government go to ram expensive batteries down our throats?...<<<Read More>>>...

Is this the future to support long-distance journeys in electric cars? Motorway services to get 40ft SHIPPING CONTAINERS filled with giant battery packs to provide faster charging

 Electric car drivers are set to receive a major boost at busy motorway service stations with seven locations receiving huge shipping containers filled with battery packs to shorten charging times during longer journeys.

National Highways has confirmed it has splashed out £8million to upgrade a selection of major motorway service areas in England where the electricity grid supply is not enough to support high-powered charging devices.

The services to benefit from the investment includes: Beaconsfield on the M4; Corley on the M6 Northbound; Clacket Lane on the M25, both Eastbound and Westbound; Maidstone on the M20; Taunton on the M5 Northbound; and Tebay on the M6 Northbound.

News of these fresh installations comes just two months after electric vehicle owners faced a Christmas charging nightmare, with Tesla owners sharing on social media their tales of being stuck in three-hour queues waiting to plug in at motorway service stations, including drivers at Tebay...<<<Read More>>>...

Norwegian Shipping Company bans electric vehicles on its vessels

Norway’s Havila Krystruten is one of two shipping companies that sails between the coastal cities of Bergen and Kierkenes and in January said that it will no longer carry electric or electrified vehicles on its ships. Havila Krystruten cited fire safety as the main reason for its decision. The company says that its ships are not equipped to fight a lithium-ion battery fire at sea.

“This is a pure safety assessment, and the conclusion of the risk analysis shows that a possible fire in fossil vehicles will be able to be handled by the systems and the crew we have on board,” said Bent Martini, the company’s managing director, as translated by Google. “A possible fire in electric, hybrid or hydrogen cars will require external rescue efforts and could put people on board and the ships at risk.”

“We will never compromise the safety of passengers and crew. When we get such a clear conclusion on the risk assessment, the decision is very simple,” CEO Arild Myrvoll said.

The problem is particularly noteworthy in Norway, which is one of the world’s largest consumers of electric vehicles. More than 80 per cent of all vehicles sold in the country in 2022 were fully electric, making this decision a likely nuisance for passengers....<<<Read More>>>...

Electric vehicles are a SCAM – here’s why

There is a disturbing overlap between the marketing that was used to sell masks and “vaccines” during the covid scamdemic and the push to convert society to electric vehicles (EVs) only.

We are told that in order to save the planet from “global warming” and “climate change,” all gas-powered vehicles – and now gas stoves – must go. Is there any truth to this? The answer is of course not.

Take the claimed ranges, for instance. Whatever you hear about the distance an EV can travel in one charge, cut that in half during the winter season and you have a more accurate reading. Then there’s load and towing capacity, the figures for which are also overblown.

“…in the case of electric trucks – when used to do the things trucks are expected to do, such as pull a trailer… Instead they were only told – as in the case of Ford’s F-150 Lightning electric truck – that it could pull a 10,000 pound trailer. Which is true. Just not for long. Or rather, far,” reports Eric Peters Autos about this deception.

“Left out was the relevant fact that if they attempted to actually pull a trailer, they’d be stopping for a lengthy recharge every 80 miles or so. They were also told they could recharge at home – which is also true. As far as it goes.”

“But they were not told how very long that takes. Instead, they were led to believe they could get going again in only 30-45 minutes or so. But that is only possible by visiting so-called ‘fast’ chargers, which are not at home.”...<<<Read More>>>....

The shaming images that show where our iPhones, laptops and Tesla cars REALLY come from: The truth about the Congolese mines where kids are paid $2-a-day to dig for cobalt

 For years, big tech companies like Apple and Tesla have assured the customers of their glossy stores and showrooms that all their goods are ethically sourced and sold.

But a new series of images taken from inside mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where 90 percent of the world's cobalt is mined and used to make the batteries that power our tech-led lives, raise uncomfortable questions.

Cobalt is the chemical element found in almost every tech gadget that uses a lithium-powered battery on the market today - a smartphone, tablet or laptop requires a few grams of it, while an electric vehicle requires 10kg.

Apple, Microsoft, Google, Tesla and others all insist that they hold cobalt suppliers to the highest of standards, and that they only trade with smelters and refiners who adhere to their codes of conduct.

But the photos and videos that DailyMail.com can share today from some of the largest mines in Africa - where many of these suppliers get their cobalt - tell a different story.

Speaking to DailyMail.com ahead of its release, Kara, an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, said his research proves that the confident assurances of big tech can't be trusted.

'There are hundreds of thousands of the poorest people on the planet [mining for cobalt].

'The moral clock has been dialed back to colonial times.

'They’re doing it for $2-a-day and for them, it’s the difference between whether or not they eat that day so they don’t have the option of saying no.'

The sudden demand for the eco-friendly vehicles, ironically driven by environmentally-conscious, is having a catastrophic effect in Congo, according to Kara.

'It’s supposed to be a green choice, getting an EV. Well it’s not green for everybody.'

Coupled with the immediate problems of overpopulated, underregulated mines is the added danger of cobalt's toxicity...<<<Read More>>>...

Electric car charging prices rocket 58% in eight months: An average family-size EV charged at public devices now costs 3p MORE per mile to run than a petrol

 Electric car drivers who want to charge their vehicles en-route are forced to pay 58 per cent more than they were in May, a new market review has revealed.

The average cost to use a 'rapid' device across the different public charging operators in the UK at the start of January has risen to 70.32p per kilowatt hour, up from 44.55p eight months ago, according to new analysis by the RAC.

It says the owner of an electric family car with a 64kW battery will pay £36 to add around 188 miles of range, which works out at almost 20p per mile. In contrast, a driver of an equivalent petrol car will pay only around 17p-a-mile.

As a point of comparison, the RAC says the average cost to charge a family EV to 80 pent cent using a wallbox installed at home costs around £17.87 today - despite record high domestic energy prices....<<<Read More>>>...

LITHIUM mining for electric vehicles is incredibly destructive to the environment and about as far from “green” as you can imagine

 Electric vehicles are promoted as the solution for combating “climate change.” Governments are currently incentivizing the production of electric vehicles, while punishing the fossil fuel industry. However, lithium mining for electric vehicles is incredibly destructive to the environment, and is about as far from “green” as one could imagine. Not to mention, most of the lithium ion batteries produced today come from China and require water-intensive mining operations that ravage natural environments throughout Australia, Argentina and Chile. The process depletes ground water, and leaves behind toxic wastewater that contaminates fields and harms wildlife. The mining process is not carbon dioxide free, either. The mining process releases 15,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide emissions for every ton of lithium that is extracted....<<<Read More>>>...

More EV Charging Fire Woes: “batteries can reignite hours or even days after they were initially extinguished”

 Most people seem to be aware that electric vehicle (EV) batteries (including for E-Bikes) have been catching fire and exploding – sometimes while being charged – and that there have been numerous recalls to address this issue. In fact, last month the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced it had started investigating safety defects in EV batteries.  Of course other health and safety issues have been associated with EVs too.  As if the fires aren’t bad enough!

Electric vehicle (EV) charging has caused several house fires and resulted in massive losses, with three such fires being recorded in the states of Virginia and Maryland.

A March 31 house fire in Damascus, Maryland caused by a charging EV resulted in $350,000 worth of damages. It also displaced four people and a few pets the individuals owned. One person in the house had to be rescued, but no injuries were reported.

Pete Piringer, spokesman for the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service (MCFRS), said the fire started in the house’s garage near the front end of a Chevrolet Volt that was charging. The hybrid vehicle runs primarily on an electric battery that needs charging. When the battery uses up energy to a certain point, its gasoline-powered engine operates an electric generator to extend its range.

On April 5, another fire broke out at an apartment located in the city of Bethesda in Maryland. The blaze caused by a charging scooter displaced three people and resulted in about $150,000 worth of damages. One resident suffered minor burns.

According to Piringer, MCFRS firefighters responded to the scene after they saw smoke coming out of a unit on the third floor. They managed to extinguish the blaze almost half an hour later. Piringer added that a lithium battery inside an electric scooter that overheated caused the conflagration.

Almost two weeks later, a garage at a home in Ashburn, Virginia caught fire on April 18. Firefighters from the Loudoun County Fire and Rescue responded to a 911 call for smoke visible from the garage. The owner and other individuals in the house managed to escape the blaze that caused $15,400 in damages....<<<Read More>>>...

Political push to end gas-powered vehicles and replace them with electric cars a delusional pipe dream

[Natural News]: he powers that be would like us all to believe that America will be running exclusively on electric-powered vehicles in less than 15 years. The reality, however, is that this is not only impossible but also a foolish endeavor that will create more pollution and more problems.

Akio Toyoda, CEO of one of the most highly ranked car manufacturers in the world, Toyota Motors, explained to the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association at its recent end-of-year press conference that electric vehicles emit more carbon dioxide than combustion engine vehicles. Not only that, but electric cars are extremely expensive to produce and inflict massive damage on the environment....<<<Read The Full Article Here>>>...

 

The truth about “clean” electric vehicles: Here’s what tech giants like Tesla are not telling you

[Natural News]: Battery-powered cars, or electric vehicles, are touted as the future of automobiles with its purportedly clean and green energy usage. The cars emerged as the conversation on carbon dioxide or CO2 emissions worldwide snowballed in recent years, and many experts are encouraging the use of renewable energy as a substitute for fossil fuel.

Indeed, several governments and international agencies are calling for efforts to reduce CO2 emissions within the next three decades, encapsulated in the mantra “net zero by 2050.” One way the market heeded the call is in creating electric vehicles or EVs, with Elon Musk at the forefront of this technology; his automotive company, Tesla, was recently declared as the world’s most valuable automotive company.

But recent findings show that EVs are not so green at all. For one, they make more CO2 emissions than the amount required to build traditional, gasoline-powered cars, not to mention manufacturing EVs involved dangerous and illegal labor practices....<<<Read The Full Article Here>>>...

GREEN is MEAN: Electric cars and other “green” tech is built on the backs of child slave labour

[Natural News]: Driving an electric vehicle around town is a source of pride for many climate fanatics who’ve convinced themselves that this “green” choice in transportation makes them the second coming of some kind of climate “christ.”

But little do many of these virtue signalers realize that flaunting around in a Tesla or Prius actually signals that you’re completely oblivious to the human rights abuses that had to occur so you could pretend to “save the planet.”

Every electric vehicle out there contains a high-capacity battery inside it that more than likely contains cobalt, a somewhat rare-earth mineral that typically comes from one of two countries: Australia or the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). And in reality, most cobalt comes from the DRC, where it’s dirt cheap thanks to child slave labour...<<<Read The Full Article Here>>>...

California’s massive power outages remind us all why electric cars are useless when the grid goes down

[Natural News]: Earlier this week, officials from Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), California’s largest electricity provider, publicly announced that the company would be shutting off people’s electricity on purpose as a preventative measure to mitigate wildfire risk. But what’s to become of Californians’ electric cars during this time?

The “environmentally friendly” solution to the traditional combustion engine is suddenly looking a whole lot less “renewable” as the utility stations necessary to charge them lose power, leaving electric car owners stranded with no option for travel other than taking the bus, cycling, or walking.

While Californians with combustion engine vehicles have the option to store gasoline or diesel for times of emergency, Californians with Teslas, Priuses, and other electric vehicles can’t do anything during a crisis other than to hope that whatever charge remains in their vehicles is enough to get out of harm’s way.

This type of scenario is almost never discussed in conversations about “renewable energy” alternatives to fossil fuels, by the way. Somehow, simply owning an electric vehicle is enough in leftists’ minds to overcome every challenge associated with the weather or a possible grid-down event, even though electricity is typically the first thing to go.

Sure, some electric car owners might have a spare battery lying around or an electric generator handy to top their vehicles off at home. But what happens after they leave, possibly having to travel hundreds or thousands of miles away to find shelter elsewhere?...<<<Read The Full Article Here>>>...

A future dominated by electric vehicles is a slow, inefficient future that tortures the planet and the people

[Natural News]: According to the New Green Deal, electric cars are the future and they will soon replace gas-powered, combustion engines.

This “green” technology supposedly produces “zero greenhouse gas emissions” and will help save the world from the throes of climate change.

This sales pitch, adopted by Democrats in the 2020 election cycle, couldn’t be further from the truth. Diesel engines are more environmentally friendly than electric vehicles.

According to an ecological assessment from the IFO Institute in Germany, electric cars have a worse carbon footprint when considering how they are manufactured and how much energy is pulled from the grid in order to keep them charged up. Tremendous amounts of energy are needed to extract the lithium, cobalt and manganese that are needed to produce the batteries for electric cars.  

This process alone requires 11 to 15 tons of CO2 just to make one Tesla model 3 battery.

Notwithstanding, in order to keep electric vehicles charged, energy is pulled from the grid mix, requiring more coal, more gas, and consequentially more CO2 emissions. Even though electric cars do not cause emissions directly from the vehicle, they do require 180 grams of CO2 per kilometer when battery manufacturing and recharge requirements are considered...read more>>>>...