It is becoming increasingly apparent that the car industry has misjudged the scale of demand quite badly, says Ben Marlow in the Telegraph – and that is just the latest example of where the top-down economics of Net Zero are inevitably failing. Here’s an excerpt.
Vertu, which is one of Britain’s biggest car dealerships, has become the latest big name to admit that the sector is already suffering from a dramatic oversupply of battery-powered vehicles.
Indeed supply is outstripping demand to such an extent, that prices are tumbling rapidly.
The warning follows the extraordinary decision of German car titan Volkswagen in July to halt electric vehicle production at its sprawling Emden factory in north-west Germany and lay off a fifth of its 1,500 employees after sales of electric models fell 30% short of forecasts.
Unwanted electric cars are piling up on American forecourts too leaving some dealers to refuse further deliveries until the backlog has eased.
One hopes politicians the world over are paying attention because what we are witnessing is another example of how the top-down economics of Net Zero increasingly don’t stack up: with the introduction of an entirely arbitrary 2030 ban on petrol and diesel cars, the Government is forcing manufacturers to churn out millions of vehicles, regardless of whether the market actually exists or not.
The deadline should be scrapped without further ado. This ‘cart before the horse’ approach of trying to stimulate demand by creating supply is the wrong way round and almost never works in business.
Start-up Britishvolt tried something similar, promising to build a giant battery factory in Blythe, on the Northumbrian coast that would churn out enough batteries every year to power 300,000 cars.
Yet there was an even bigger flaw at the heart of its plans: it had failed to secure a single order – a situation that hadn’t changed by the time it ran out of money at the start of the year.
It’s hard to fault the intentions of the great Net-Zero crusade – a greener planet is something everyone should want to see. But far too much of it is built on hope rather than reality.
The Government’s policy on wind energy has proved to be similarly divorced from fact. The Contracts for Difference scheme, which guarantees a fixed price for the electricity that is produced for 15 years, is an effective incentive during more benign times but when overheads are surging, as they are now, it quickly becomes an impediment to progress.
With ministers showing little willingness to bend on prices in the face of rampant cost increases, major projects are being ruthlessly abandoned.
The biggest setback has come off the Norfolk coast after Vattenfall announced it would shut down construction of its Boreas wind farm. The 1.4 gigawatt development was set to power around 1.5m homes but the Swedish energy outfit insists a 40% surge in costs, driven by inflation, supply issues and rising wages means it is no longer viable.
Without more generous state subsidies others will surely follow suit, shattering Britain’s stated ambitions to nearly quadruple offshore wind capacity from 14GW currently to 50GW by the end of the decade.
Yet perhaps nothing underlines the Alice in Wonderland disconnection of ministers more than the campaign to force the population to green their homes with heat pumps.
Even a ban on the sale of new oil boilers from 2026 has failed to convince people to make the shift largely because the cost of converting your home can be huge, so too the disruption and upheaval from having one installed, while much of the technology suffers from several major flaws.
It might explain why, in spite of a Government scheme that pays bungs of between £5,000 and £6,000 per household, less than 14,000 vouchers have been claimed since it was launched in May last year.
Worth reading in full.
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Perhaps they’ll get the Unicorns to contribute to anaerobic digestion – another useful source of renewable power!
“It’s hard to fault the intentions of the great Net-Zero crusade…”
I take issue with this limp-wristed statement. Is the author conceding that net zero, ie zero carbon is the major problem facing the planet because if he is he needs to seriously re-assess his research.
Net Zero is witchcraft masquerading as science designed to provide cover for what is intended to be the greatest crime against humanity ever conceived.
The author of this piece of journalistic tripe, Jeremy Warner, seems to take as read that net zero is good and viable but the flaw is in the delivery. The guy should be ashamed of himself.
Typical Torygraph pretending to be speaking up for people while deliberately supporting that which it pretends to criticise.
Ah, so Will Jones was not the author? What a relief.
Ben Marlow?
Ben Marlow wrote the telegraph article. Not Jeremy Warner.
Even if the entire planet went Net Zero today (stop the presses, it won’t) it would take up to 300 years before any discernible reduction in highly beneficial, plant nurturing and necessary for life CO2 to happen. Surely 300 years is far too long for the genocidal Net Zero cult to wait for what can only be their goal, namely mass extinction.
👍
Yes, I bridle at that too. “Great crusade” sounds remarkably like a belligerent campaign conducted to impose certain (slightly manic) pseudo-religious values, whether you agree with them or not, and to drive out the unbeliever – which is exactly what this agenda is all about of course. If there was a clear rational case, they’d be trying to present it and win hearts and minds. They’re not, which tells me all I need to know.
Indeed.
“a greener planet is something everyone should want to see’. No problem with that, but not at the expense of the economy and the livelihoods, prosperity, health and aspirations of the entire nation.
…not at the expense of the economy and the livelihoods, prosperity, health and aspirations of the entire
nationworld.How abut deliberately raising the carbon dioxide level in the air? That makes things “greener” in greenhouses, after all. Or maybe I’m being a bit too logical.
How do we do that? There is no evidence fossil fuel emissions alter CO2 concentration by any observable amount. Observing an increase coincident with the Industrial Revolution, is not evidence.
50% of all manmade emissions are absorbed into the oceans and biomass within 12 months anyway.
Almost certainly true in open air, but they do deliberately raise it in many greenhouses, mainly by making use of the exhaust from the heating kit burning methane. https://www.dutchgreenhouses.com/en/technology/co2-enrichment/
Excellent idea. That would put the woke wets into a complete wobble and be fantastic for my tomatoes.
As well as increasing global food supply. Might save us from having to eat grass hoppers.
https://off-guardian.org/2023/08/31/2023-a-strange-odyssey/
AI in Russian coffee shops apparently. That should help.
‘Britain’s stated ambition to nearly quadruple offshore wind capacity from 14GW currently to 50GW by the end of the decade.’ Pie in the sky guess, which if the wind doesn’t blow at the right speed, they will produce the square root of bu66er all.
Actually it’s easily achievable if you install the wind farms in the windiest places in the UK. Westminster, Holyrood and Cardiff Docks.
If I know politicians the world over my guess is that they are getting instructions from their corporate backers (because that’s what they do) to hold the line.
Everything is on track. Legislation is in place which will eliminate petrol cars. The supply is ready and waiting. When there are no petrol cars, the demand for electric cars will grow because there will be no other option.
Show me one member of any western government making any kind of suggestion that they’re going to back down from their net zero policies. Just one.
You won’t find one.
Hoping that politicians will come to the rescue on this, now that’s unicorn land.
“the demand for electric cars will grow because there will be no other option.”
Highly debatable. Once ICE vehicles are got rid of the prices of EV’s and electricity itself will rise deliberately with the sole intention of pricing people out of personal transport. Furthermore, there is clearly no intention to provide the necessary infrastructure and logistics to enable a swap from an ICE fleet to an EV fleet.
The vast majority of the population are to be denied personal transport and that is the real aim of ULEZ schemes.
Govt-commissioned FIRES report is completely clear: by year Absolute Zero (2050), road usage must be at 60% of 2020 levels, achieved by “reducing distance travelled” (‘citizen: you do not have permission to leave your residents zone’) or lighter vehicles (so not EVs then). Govt won’t care about low ev take up or high cost or lack of infrastructure because no-one is going anywhere – apart from the nomenklatura of course: armoured, bomb-proof 4x4s in dedicated zil lanes for them.
…and a 40% reduction of the potential travelling population can also be achieved of course by…ahem…other methods.
“other methods.”
Oh very much so and most on here know what that is.
So that’s why the bellend Khan has a bullet proof Range Rover. To protect him from the adulation of the masses.
Trudeau’s 26 vehicle motorcade (plus similar number of motorbike outriders) during recent visit to Mexico City is a template for how they will travel the future: a faceless projection of force, arrogance and contempt for (as well as terror of) ‘the masses’. Look on and marvel, Peasant, and now get back to your habitation pod.
We’re heading for a Mad Max world. Dog eat dog.
They and their grand programmes will soon come a cropper, if so: survivalist skills pretty low, I should guess, among those whose principal life skills are writing policy position papers and giving PowerPoint presentations, and who daren’t mingle with the masses without being double-masked, quadruple jabbed etc. Not to mention all those micro-aggressions everywhere!
‘….a greener planet is something everyone should want to see.’
Indeed, but a government, movement, that cannot even clean up our rivers inspires zero confidence in its environmental perspicacity, competence…..
There was a time when these “everyone should…” comments were limited to simple broadly accepted statements of virtue. Like, everyone should be kind, or, everyone should go out and get a job.
Everyone should want a greener planet is a political statement and I’m not sure I necessarily agree with it. Can I think about it? Can I have some reasonable doubt?
Can I for example ask what exactly is meant by greener? And can I ask what it will entail making it greener?
Perhaps when I know more.of the details I might not agree on wanting a greener planet.
Is it OK if I don’t write a blank cheque on the basis of a vague, highly politically loaded statement?
You may, of course, do as you please.
For myself, I would very much like cleaner rivers, a sea that I can swim in, more native broad leaf woodland, fewer non native conifer plantations, more ground nesting birds, more migratory fish, eels, returning to our rivers, more fish in the seas that surround us……
Yep all sounds nice. Does it involve forcing me to do something and if so what?
What is it about “You may, of course, do as you please” that you don’t understand?
Probably involves you in voluntarily cleaning up after yourself, directly or indirectly.
That’s it.
Can you manage that, do you think?
Non of that has anything to do with Net Zero Carbon reduction.
Correct.
CO2 reduction will make the planet less green.
Cleaner rivers, more native woodland, together with tiny increases in CO2 and temperature, will make this country more green.
“…– a greener planet is something everyone should want to see.”
Compared to what exactly? What exactly does ‘Green’ mean.
Prior to Mankind the ‘planet’ was a seething mass of toxic gases with no life. Other times it was almost covered with ice with CO2 levels so low there was no plant life, and all but basic animal life.
How about ‘the planet’ rocked by earthquakes, volcanoes?
’Green’ has come to mean misanthropy.
In the Western Countries we have the best living conditions, natural environment, air quality,and prosperity ever – and certainly much better than Countries not yet exploiting fully fossil fuels and the wealth they bring.
Let’s ban the word ‘Green’ and whilst we are at it, ‘sustainable’. They are abstractions, meaningless nonsense.
“It’s hard to fault the intentions of the great Net-Zero crusade…”
No it isn’t! The intention is to drive us back to a pre-industrial society.
As much as I detest them, aesthetically, strategiclly and economically, if a license holder starts on a project they should be required to finish it. To have half completed projects is the worst of all words.
Incidentally, will the cost of dismantling and site clearance and restitution be the next big scandal. One does not have confidence the civil servants or ministers will have thought of including obligations for such works in the license terms or the one-way price option.
Net zero does not mean a greener planet.
More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere plus a bit of light will ensure an increase in vegetation (as it has done already over recent years) because of the simple scientific fact that plants like it, and reward us with increased oxygen, nutritious fruit/vegetables and sources of natural construction materials.
In the longer term they also produce fossil fuels.
I don’t understand why hydrogen has to be used in a fuel cell to make electric.
Not burnt in an adapted internal combustion engine.
I think JCB been working on the tech
I am aware hydrogen has drawbacks eg leaky
But diesel ain’t gonna last forever
The problem of a shortage of rare earth metals is not going to help either. This link suggests the lithium supply will be threatened by 2025!
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/29/a-worldwide-lithium-shortage-could-come-as-soon-as-2025.html
“It’s hard to fault the intentions of the great Net-Zero crusade – a greener planet is something everyone should want to see.”
And what sir is wrong with the planet currently apart from all the stupid stupid projects being carried out by green activists who seem intent on burning precious forests just to make an incomprehensible point?
Just stop all this nonsense and leave us alone.
“It’s hard to fault the intentions of the great Net-Zero crusade – a greener planet is something everyone should want to see.”
Hmmm. One must mention that it is RISING levels of CO2 that have been greening the planet. Falling levels will diminish the biosphere.
“It’s hard to fault the intentions of the great Net-Zero crusade – a greener planet is something everyone should want to see. But far too much of it is built on hope rather than reality.”
The intentions of the Net Zero crusade are flawed from top to bottom dear Will.
The objective of Net Zero is to fleece as much money out of the population as possible, extract as much tax as possible. Control as many aspects of our lives as possible.It is not a virtuous crusade, it’s a nasty, pernicious road to hell.
When I & my children can walk on the streets in safety, go to a good school and receive a proper education, have timely and good healthcare, have decent paying employment, have a secure country not flooded with illegals, and not be impoverished with extreme levels of taxation, then maybe I will consider the government can control the weather. Until that happens just piss off.
Agreed.
Marlow is an arse. He scratches the surface of the bullshit net zero nonsense but clearly subscribed to its underlying justification. A scientifically illiterate numpty.