“EV’s – Electric Vehicles”

The Canadian Automobile Dealers Association is raising concerns about electric vehicle affordability and charging infrastructure.

It says the regulated sales targets for zero-emission vehicles are not achievable without more government efforts to address vehicle affordability and the lack of charging infrastructure.

The federal government has set sales targets for the number of ZEVs among new light-duty vehicle purchases at 20 per cent by 2026, increasing to 100 per cent by 2035.

This is insane.

“Ford will cut planned production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning pickup roughly in half next year, marking a major reversal after the automaker significantly increased plant capacity for the electric vehicle in 2023.”

That’s huge.

Auto dealers across many parts of the country say electric vehicles are becoming too hard a sell for buyers worried about the range, reliability and price of these models.

When Paul LaRochelle heard Ford Motor was coming out with an electric pickup truck, the dealer was excited about the prospects for his business.

“We thought we could build a million of them and sell them,” said LaRochelle, a vice president at Sheehy Auto Stores, which sells vehicles from a dozen brands in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C.

The reality has been less positive. On Sheehy’s car lots, LaRochelle says there is a six- to 12-month supply of EVs, compared with a month of gasoline-powered vehicles.

This is what happens in a Soviet style “Command Economy.”

It’s not often that a government decides to sabotage one of its nation’s leading industries. But this is precisely what Rishi Sunak’s flailing administration has just done to the UK car sector.

Economist Steve Moore recently compared EVs to the ill-fated Edsel, “one of the textbook marketing flops of all time.”

“All the automotive experts and Ford executives said it was a can’t-miss. Henry Ford (the car was named after his son) guaranteed hundreds of thousands of sales. But one big thing went wrong: Nobody ever bothered to ask car buyers what they thought of the new car,” he wrote.

“Given the all-in approach to electric vehicles at Ford and General Motors, it’s clear that Detroit never got the message.”

h/t YP

Congress at the urging of the Biden administration agreed in 2021 to spend $7.5 billion to build tens of thousands of electric vehicle chargers across the country, aiming to appease anxious drivers while tackling climate change.

Two years later, the program has yet to install a single charger.

The Cybertruck is here. Finally. Maybe. Sort of.

Thursday was the “Cybertruck Delivery Event,” where they finally rolled off the production line and were handed over to waiting customers. Musk served as chaperone, host and speaker, and the event was a hype-fest for fanboys. As the presentation started, it was hard to tell whether some in the crowd were shouting “Elon” or “hallelujah” (I think the latter). He presented a polished marketing video, markedly sparse on specs, but promised that the Cybertruck was one of those rare products that change how we see the world; that it is “more truck than truck,” while also being “a better sports car than a sports car” and the best product Tesla had ever made.

It’s not.

How is that electric vehicle promotion going?  Well, the car dealers can’t sell them.  They sent President Biden a letter calling for a change in strategy, as my old marketing professor used to say. This is the story:

Nearly 4,000 U.S. car dealers are asking President Biden to tap the brakes on proposed emissions regulations designed to ensure that two-thirds of new passenger cars are all-electric by 2032.

So what’s going on?  The simple answer is that they can’t sell electric vehicles no matter how much the Biden administration wants you to buy one or how many commercials they run during the football games. They can’t move them, as they say in the car business. They sit on the lot.  

More … Electric Vehicles Are Less Reliable Than Conventional Cars