Electric Car Bubble
© joannenova.com.au
It's hard to keep up with the great EV unravelling

The best news for the EV industry this month is that Ford is only losing $50,000 a car now on its electric vehicles. That's so much better than the $132,000 it was losing last quarter. But the true economic carnage is deep and widespread. The one sure bet in the world of electric vehicles was Tesla where sales rose two percent in the last quarter but their profits plummeted 45%. The fire-sale shifted cars but it burned the bottom line. Similarly Mercedes Benz profits were down 21%, mostly thanks to EVs. And Ford's were down 35% (not surprisingly).

We knew things were bad when the new invention has a small market share but already half of the owners wanted to go back to the old style.

There is trouble even in China where shares in Evergrande New Energy Vehicle are down almost 40% so far this year. Apparently some creditors are coming after Evergrande seeking bankruptcy proceedings for two of its EV arms.

Nearly every major manufacturer is delaying new models or rewriting their targets. Ford is delaying several models, and is redesigning a plant in Canada that was going to make EVs to one that will build pick-up trucks with fossil fuel engines. Bentley and Aston Martin have pushed back the launch of their first EVs. Jaguar have said they will drop two of their planned EV models and keep making their gasoline SUV for longer. Volkswagen diverted $60 billion back into developing ICE cars. Suddenly, they've all discovered that Hybrid cars are quite interesting.

Porsche kept their target and dumped it at the same time. They are still (theoretically) aiming to get 80% of its vehicle sales to be electric by 2030. But they added the clause "if the customers support us". Anything less than 80% will be the customers fault. Porsche off the hook, eh...

Someone is going to write a book about how the top industrial heavyweights of the West virtually all fell for the fantasy that we could toss out a century of engineering and ding, invent new type of car on command. Discovery in aisle nine!

The EV bubble deflates in real time
Heads should roll over the electric car fiasco

By Matthew Lynn, The Telegraph

Over the last few days, it has become clear that the EV industry is on the brink of collapse. Hundreds of billions of euros, dollars and pounds have been pumped into this industry by political leaders and the subsidy junkies that surround them - and it is surely time they were held to account for the vast quantities of taxpayer cash that has been wasted.
And it's not just car makers. It's bad news for the supply line:
It is even worse for component manufacturers. Shares in Germany's Varta are down by 70pc over the last month amid reports that the company may have to be rescued from bankruptcy after making heavy losses on batteries for hybrid sports cars. This week, the Belgium chemicals group Umicore announced a €1.6bn (£1.4bn) hit, as manufacturers warned of waning EV demand, and it postponed plans for a battery recycling plant.
As Matthew Lynn says: consumers are increasingly nervous over what may become obsolete technology. That's got to be the marking kiss-of-death.

Western government threw billions of dollars to inflate this bubble

Politicians tried to pick play God in the car market: In France Macron tossed €700m at a plan to dominate battery production in partnership with Germany. The Germans burned €1bn too. But the EU bragged that it spent €80bn on things to do with EVs, and the US had launched cargo-ships of cash with the Inflation Reduction Act.

In the end, in the biggest transition of them all, from Horse to car, Ford didn't need a government subsidy to invent a Model T. And customers didn't need to be forced to buy it either.