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The Electric Car Debacle Shows the Top-Down Economics of Net Zero Don’t Add Up

by Will Jones
2 September 2023 1:00 PM

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.

Tags: Climate AlarmismEconomicsElectric CarElectric vehicleHeat PumpNet ZeroWind Power

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48 Comments
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Dinger64
Dinger64
1 year ago

Sounds like a load of commercial tosh and gibberish to me! Go to an interview, take your cv, most suitable person gets the job!
Simples

78
0
Marcus Aurelius knew
Marcus Aurelius knew
1 year ago
Reply to  Dinger64

Recruiting only on the basis of ability to do the job? The world needs to be PURGED of people like you!

😜

61
0
Jon Garvey
Jon Garvey
1 year ago
Reply to  Marcus Aurelius knew

And how are you going to appoint people able to do the job of purging?

21
0
Dinger64
Dinger64
1 year ago
Reply to  Jon Garvey

Only Black and Asian purgers need apply🤭

Last edited 1 year ago by Dinger64
38
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AethelredTheReadier
AethelredTheReadier
1 year ago
Reply to  Jon Garvey

Or indeed how will you appoint the appointers? It’s a vicious circle…

Last edited 1 year ago by AethelredTheReadier
22
0
AethelredTheReadier
AethelredTheReadier
1 year ago
Reply to  Dinger64

That system worked so well, didn’t it, Dings?

12
0
Dinger64
Dinger64
1 year ago
Reply to  AethelredTheReadier

Too right it did👍

5
0
Smudger
Smudger
1 year ago
Reply to  Dinger64

Uber globalist McKinsey could not be expected to come up with anything else. They know its findings don’t hold water but they are the key researchers, facilitators and propagandists of corporations and governments globalist agenda. Their fingerprints are everywhere!

3
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago

“Is diversity our strength? Our leaders certainly seem to think so. ”

I strongly doubt that they really think that. Hard to know what all of their reasons are, but I expect it’s partly political.

46
0
huxleypiggles
huxleypiggles
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

When it comes to politicians their beliefs are always amenable to the contents of a brown envelope or its equivalent.

31
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  huxleypiggles

Indeed. As Frank Herbert (author of Dune) put it:

“All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted.”

27
0
RW
RW
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

Does Herbert have experience with any other form of government than those based on periodic politalker popularity contests?

0
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  RW

Not sure what those are but he was from the US, think he lived there all his life, died a few years ago.

3
0
stewart
stewart
1 year ago

“Diversity” would help companies if the companies were actively discriminating against certain types of people, rather than trying to get the best people for each job.

But as it happens, they weren’t. They were recruiting by talent.

But now they are discriminating, against white men and so not getting the best person for the job.

That’s what DEI has achieved.

56
0
AethelredTheReadier
AethelredTheReadier
1 year ago

Diversity is just another name for racism.

52
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varmint
varmint
1 year ago

There is “no business case for diversity” because diversity is not “business” it is politics. Just as there is “no business case for Net Zero” because that is politics as well. —–So nonsense like “Diversity is our strength” is a political statement which implies that if you don’t have diversity you cannot have strength. Which is patently absurd. Companies in 1950 1960 and 1970 never had much “diversity” so did they not have any “strength? How about companies in Japan where there isn’t much in the way of “diversity”? Do they have no strength? ——But notice how diversity only works in one direction —–Less white people.

65
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Mogwai
Mogwai
1 year ago
Reply to  varmint

Yes, quite. And as I’ve said before, would you rather fly in a plane with a pilot* who was chosen because of their ability, or have a surgeon perform your operation because you trust them to be sufficiently skilled, than have your life put in the hands of people who were basically a tick box exercise, a sub-standard ‘DEI plant’, because TPTB had targets to meet? It’s insane really that such basic things even need pointed out.

*Even more so if planes are going to start flying with only one pilot. I don’t want some crappy, sub-par ‘woman of colour’ flying my plane just because she’s got a penis! 😮

45
0
varmint
varmint
1 year ago
Reply to  Mogwai

Yep——I always used the example of “Your 3 year old child is in a burning building. Who do you want to climb the ladder and rescue her? The 6′ 4 14 stone guy or the 5′ 1 8 stone woman?

9
0
RW
RW
1 year ago
Reply to  varmint

Diversity is our strength is obviously just an purposely constructed anti-version of Unity is our strength, ie, our ability to cooperate as team against our external opponents, as opposed to loads of infighting among different groups each seeking to outmanoeuver the others wrt access to positions of influence and income. The latter is only the strength of diversity-enablers like UNWEF which absolutely don’t want some kind of united front against their evil agenda.

15
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cchambers
cchambers
1 year ago

Good article.
Re: causality. Correlation is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for causality, is it not? So no correlation implies no causality. Or am I missing something?

9
0
Mogwai
Mogwai
1 year ago

Yes, another good, datacentric thread here which illustrates the con nicely;

”This plot presents a sad truth:

Media has failed it’s duty to inform the public
Instead, a business model of selling fear, stoking conflict, pandering, and pushing advertisers propaganda.
McKinsey-ification and it’s consequences has been a disaster for the human species.

It wasn’t always like this.
In the past newspapers made money by selling newspapers, and they competed on quality of research, clarity of insight, and reliability of sources.
Then newspapers started raking in massive sums in advertising revenue and things went sideways.
The issue is that the advertising revenue model fundamentally drives a race to the bottom in hacking dopamine, while favoring content that can be digestible to the largest number of people.
Clickbait for the lowest common denominator.

How’d we get here?

We unleashed an army of “Managerial Executives” on the economy who brought an industry-agnostic mindset of driving shareholder value by any means necessary.
Boeing used to be run by engineers. Newspapers by journalists. Hospitals by doctors.
Now’s its MBAs.

The net effect beyond destroying our institutions, democratic process, ability to innovate and govern effectively is this:
It drives a casino economy where returns concentrate to capital over labor.
It disincentivizes hard work.
And the media capitalizes on this collapse of civic society by selling more fear, more hysteria, inventing more wedge issues and clickbait outrage every day.

Gaslighting a generation into not having kids, opposing economic growths, and hating their own country..”

https://twitter.com/Andercot/status/1774175317294473539

26
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago

If there was a compelling business case for diversity, why would would businesses need to be bullied or coerced into adopting it?

35
0
stewart
stewart
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

I think the argument goes like this.

People from minority groups (and women, who arent a minority, but anyway) are just as capable as those from majority groups (I.e. white.men, who don’t constitute a majority anymore, but anyway) but are held back by a lack of opportunities, which don’t come their way because of the prejudice and bigotry of, essentially, white men.

In all occupations. No nuance. No exceptions. Everyone can do everything equally well. (Actually, minorities and women can do things even better in some instances, but that can be put aside for now.)

And because the people making this argument are really good people, they are willing to concede that this prejudice isn’t conscious but subconscious.

Luckily, the proponents of this idea are here to set white men straight (and white women when it comes to matters of race) and by forcing them to hire “minorities” they will discover that minorities are just as capable as anyone else. And for reasons that are not entirely evident, a workforce that perfectly represents society in all the right proportions creates some sort of goldilocks conditions that unleashes potential and companies will prosper even more for it.

And white men are too bigoted and blinded by their own self interest (subconsciously, let’s be kind) to see this so they need to be forced to hire “diversely”.. For their own good. And the good of society. Mostly the good of society. After all who wants to fight against what is good for society, right? Only white male monsters (acting sunconsciously).

12
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  stewart

It seems like a lot of people are uncomfortable with the fact that success in life* is not evenly distributed among whatever grouping lines are in vogue (race, sex etc). Significantly, this includes a lot of successful people. I am not sure why, but it seems quite common.

* measured by what seems to be important to people – money, power, status, skills – not saying these are the most important or that they are the only things that make up “success in life”

4
0
stewart
stewart
1 year ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

On the one hand impostor syndrome,.on the other envy?

I mean, life is very complex and random and so equal efforts and abilities don’t produce similar results.

I think most people are able to accept and live with that, but there are enough who don’t who use it as a pretext to try to re engineer society

7
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  stewart

I think most are able to accept that on an individual level, life is chancy and unfair. But more than a few are unable to accept that this unfairness (or its opposite) can apply unevenly along the lines of race, sex etc.

4
0
lymeswold
lymeswold
1 year ago

Over time I would expect companies recruiting for diversity rather than ability will perform worse. In some industries the result could be fatal…

15
0
stewart
stewart
1 year ago

Can anyone point me to a charity that works to achieve gender diversity among construction workers?

I’d.like to contribute.

13
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 year ago
Reply to  stewart

If you’re talking about well-paid white collar construction workers, there probably is one 🙂

I’d stump up a few quid for the group that is campaigning for gender diversity in the night-time office building security guard sector, and of course the one pushing for racial diversity in the NBA.

8
0
Jackthegripper
Jackthegripper
1 year ago

Since John Lewis went all woke and diverse their profits, takings and quality has taken a nose dive. They have a black woman chairman, an Asian CEO, more women and ethnics in senior positions than you can shake a stick at, and a smattering of gay and trans types to make up the DIE numbers.
They invest heavily in black history month, all the trans nonsense, ESG and DIE and the company is a dead man standing. All the woke DIE nonsense did them no good at all and the staff are suffering as a result.

9
0

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