From billions to thousands, it's bullshit all the way down, and all was predictable nd in fact predicted

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EV CARnage in Auto Industry

One hundred and forty billion dollars in writedowns from automakers in just the past three years, and all connected to the manufacture of electric vehicles.

You know, that next 'big thing.'

..."Each charging port will deliver up to 11.2kW, offering drivers up to 30 miles of range per hour of charging."

...for the whole thirty miles you get after an hour of sitting there.

[INSERT: eyeball roll]

You're screwed in the current polar vortex if you have to take public transportation as the alternative in some of the woker areas that have also gone electric.

Not that I haven't been warning anyone for three years...

Electric buses are proving unreliable this winter for Vermont's Green Mountain Transit, as it needs to be over 41 degrees for the buses to charge, but due to a battery recall the buses are a fire hazard and can't be charged in a garage.

Spokesman for energy workers advocacy group Power the Future Larry Behrens told the Center Square: “Taxpayers were sold an $8 million ‘solution’ that can’t operate in cold weather when the home for these buses is in New England.”

“We’re beyond the point where this looks like incompetence and starts to smell like fraud,” Behrens said.

“When government rushes money out the door to satisfy green mandates, basic questions about performance, safety, and value for taxpayers are always pushed aside,” Behrens said. “Americans deserve to know who approved this purchase and why the red flags were ignored.”

General manager at Green Mountain Transit (GMT) Clayton Clark told The Center Square that “the federal government provides public transit agencies with new buses through a competitive grant application process, and success is not a given.”

And From Issues and Insights:

Are EVs The Biggest Boondoggle In Human History?

When Stellantis last week announced it was writing down $26 billion, the CEO of the car company that now owns Chrysler, Antonio Filosa, said it was “part of a decisive process we started in 2025 to once again make our customers and their preferences our guiding star.”

Which begs the question: What was Stellantis’ guiding star before if not its own customers?

For that matter, who or what has been guiding General Motors (which announced a $7.6 billion writedown last month), Ford ($19.5 billion), and other automakers that’ve written down a total of $140 billion in just the past three years?

Anyone who has followed the auto industry over the past decade knows the answer. All of these losses are the result of automakers chasing the phantom known as “zero emission” cars.

Remember that until just recently, we were treated to a constant barrage of stories about how EV sales were skyrocketing, and car companies were winning plaudits for going green.

Just five years ago, GM promised to go all-electric by 2035, and just two years ago, its chief executive, Mary Barra, said “we believe in an all-electric future.” Honda, Volvo, Ford, and others laid out plans to be 100% “zero emission” within two decades.

It was all supported by Big Environment, which brayed that EVs were the only way to save the planet from “climate change.”

But none of it worked out as planned.

And keep in mind that the $140 billion in combined auto industry losses is just the tip of the iceberg. Those are just the costs incurred by shareholders and employees of these companies.

Taxpayers have forked over hundreds of billions in federal and state tax dollars in subsidies that were designed to “kick start” the EV car market. They paid thousands toward the cost of each EV sold. They paid companies to build battery factories. They paid for charging stations.

Fuel economy standards imposed another hidden subsidy for EVs. The only way automakers could meet increasingly stringent federal fuel economy standards, commonly known as CAFE standards, was to sell more EVs. For each EV sold, they’d get an oversized credit toward the miles-per-gallon average of all cars sold in any given year.

If they still couldn’t hit those CAFE standards, they’d buy “credits” from companies such as Tesla, which banked more than $11 billion selling its fuel-economy credits.

When the Texas Public Policy Foundation ran the numbers in 2021, it found “nearly $22 billion in federal and state subsidies and regulatory credits” that year alone.

Those families trying to buy a decent car were the ones who ultimately paid all these costs.

Joe Biden’s criminally misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” included more than $1 trillion in additional subsidies. Biden dumped $7.5 billion into the production of charging stations, which resulted in fewer than 400 charging ports being built.

There is some welcome news here. What the experience with the EV debacle shows is that consumers are still in the driver’s seat – no pun intended.

No matter how much environmentalists shrieked, no matter how much regulators bullied, no matter how much money politicians threw at EVs, they couldn’t overcome the will of car buyers, who want the kind of affordable, reliable transportation that gas-powered cars provide.

And, thankfully, the Trump administration has been pulling the wiring out of the various federal EV subsidy schemes.

Even so, there must be a reckoning. There needs to be an effort to tally all the wasteful spending imposed by the EV mania. Because, when all is said and done, it could prove to be the most expensive boondoggle in human history.

And then all the politicians, industry “experts,” regulators, environmentalists, and everyone else who had a hand in selling EV snake oil should be held to account for these costs.

That’s especially true of automakers who, rather than standing up for their consumers, eagerly bent the knee to the Climate Industrial Complex.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board

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And:

Bloomberg News

August 17, 2023 at 7:00 PM EDT

China’s Abandoned, Obsolete Electric Cars Are Piling Up in Cities

A subsidy-fueled boom helped build China into an electric-car giant but left weed-infested lots across the nation brimming with unwanted battery-powered vehicles.