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‘The More Electric Vehicles We Build, the Worse CO2 Gets’
Even though Toyota Motor Company will soon start selling their own versions of electric cars, Akio Toyoda, president of the company, isn’t thrilled with the EV rage and had two important points to make about electric vehicles (EVs).
The first point is that EVs are too expensive for most people to afford. His company’s marketing model is based on affordable cars, so he knows what he’s talking about. He called EVs “a flower on a high summit” that would not penetrate the market much further than they already have. EVs sold now in the US depend heavily on government subsidies. Tesla and other EV stocks are grossly overpriced since their likely earnings will never catch up. He doesn’t see the price of EVs coming down much since cost-cutting technology has already reached its limit for the standard EV. It would seem he sees promises of an EV for $25,000 as being empty.
Tesla, for example, is profitable only because it are subsidized by the government. In addition to tax credits, people who buy the cars get, Tesla makes most of its money by selling emissions credits granted to Tesla by the government for making “emissions free” cars to other car companies. Something like $1.5 billion of their revenue in 2019 came from these credits (and ultimately from the sale of other car models) when they reported about $500 million in profits. Without the rent-seeking Tesla would not be making a profit, it would be losing money.
Taxpayers and the car-buying public, in general, are paying a very big bill to keep these EV makers going. (And it’s the same for all the major green industries like wind and solar power.)
The second point Akio Toyoda makes is more fundamental and even more serious. “The more electric vehicles we build the worse carbon dioxide gets,” he said.
EVs don’t do much of anything to actually reduce carbon dioxide emissions. EVs don’t emit carbon dioxide themselves, but ancillary emissions associated with the generation of electricity to power EVs, manufacture EVs, refining of metals for batteries for EVs, and so on, are considerable, leaving aside the issue of large scale destruction of the environment due to battery production. If electricity generation could be shifted more to non-carbon fuel systems then EVs could contribute to the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, but solar and wind are not scalable enough or reliable enough to take over that burden*, and nations are fleeing from the only reliable and safe alternative to carbon fuels, nuclear, out of irrational fear. There is no practical alternative to carbon fuel for most electrical power for the foreseeable future.
The more green technology the public is forced or incentivized to buy the lower our prosperity and standard of living will be because this tech is so expensive. If laws are passed, for example, to mandate the purchase of EVs then the base model basic compact car is going to cost the equivalent of $45,000 in today’s money. Many people who currently enjoy the use of a car won’t be able to afford that. Our overall standard of living will drop quite a lot.
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*This is where EV enthusiasts will chime in about future progress in green tech that will solve these problems. However, indications are that all of the green engineering solutions for cars, batteries, solar, and wind are running up against fundamental physical laws that will keep them from becoming much more efficient.
Published in Environment
Agree. So is the cost of buying a $30k+ car worth those limited circumstances? Not to me. Then to who?
Virtue-signaling rich Leftists. Tesla for me, public transportation for thee.
Yes!
My boss who is a liberal although not a leftist bought a volt for commuting to work. The office was just inside its all electric range so that might have made economic sense depending on how long we were in that office. Alas it was involved in a traffic accident and totaled before that theory could have been proven.