EV charging station [image credit: InsideEVs]
The numbers just don’t add up. Net zero-style mandates from climate obsessives don’t take reality seriously. Firstly, the ageing electricity grid can’t take the strain. Secondly, new transmission lines take many years to approve, let alone build. Thirdly, a shortage of transformers – which take a long time to make and can’t be mass-produced – also precludes rapid progress. That’s without even discussing the unpredictable intermittency of renewables.
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Policies enacted by the Biden administration and the previous, Democrat-controlled Congress are set to plunge the USA into a serious energy crisis in the coming years, says The Telegraph.
It all has to do with the Biden government’s decision to try to force mass adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) before either the market or the power grid can adjust to meet the whopping new demand for power generation or to supply the critical minerals needed to make the batteries that power the cars.
Democrat members of Congress and Biden’s appointed officials are coordinating an effort to force EV adoption on reluctant consumers via a classic carrot and stick approach.
The Orwellian 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) provides the carrot in the form of billions of dollars in new subsidies for EV makers and buyers alike, while the Biden EPA applies the proverbial stick by invoking stricter tailpipe emissions controls and higher mileage requirements designed to force most current internal combustion engine (ICE) models out of the market.
The desired result, according to the White House, will be that two thirds of cars on the road by 2032 will be EVs.
Given that Hedges & Co reports there were 290 million cars on US roads in 2022, and accounting for likely growth over the next decade, this would mean well over 200 million EVs on US roads in just 9 years.
That compares to roughly 3 million EVs currently, so we’re talking about a 70-fold rise in EV adoption in that short period of time.
No problem, right?
Wrong. There are plenty of problems with this concept – very large and imposing problems, in fact.
Full article here.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Biden and his climate advisors are just parroting the the UN/WEF climate mantra, which is to be expected since Al Gore started it in the states and just look at how he milked it – big all electric house and free flights to nice places round the world.
US new car sales are a bit less than 3 million annually. So at that rate, getting 200 million EVs on the road would take 70 years – assuming all are replacements for ICE cars, not EVs. That’s not going to be the case so it will take 100 years or more.
To do it in 9 years requires sales of around 22 million a year, an 8-fold increase in car sales. Again that assumes each new EV replaces an ICE cars, so we can say it’s more like a 10 fold increase in car sales. At say $65,000/EV, that’s $1.4 trillion/year spent on new cars instead of the current $140 billion. That’s taking $1.2 trillion out of the rest of the economy.
Simple maths shows the utter insanity of this plan.
Oops, sorry, my numbers are wrong – the nearly 3 million is sales of US made cars, not total sales. Total sales are nearly 14m, so 15 years to reach 200m, or say 20 years allowing for EVs substitute for EVs in some cases. You’d have to increase sales by 50% to do it 9 years.
Simple analysis any middle schooled kid knows reveals the absurdity of all these government policies. The objective here is not what it appears, but rather one more angle to crash the infrastructure supporting humanity. These knotheads have been talking about it for more than a century. But nothing they’ve tried has achieved their intended result, whether with world wars, incessant wars, economic meddling, and etc. Their last resort is to do everything and anything all at once to make it impossible for people to survive.
Elias Canetti wrote about such people in 1960:
“It is the deception of all leaders. They pretend that they will be the first to die, but, in reality, they send their people to death, so that they themselves may stay alive longer. The trick is always the same. The leader wants to survive, for with each survival he grows stronger. If he has enemies, so much the better; he survives them. If not, he has his own people. In any event he uses both, whether successively or together. Enemies he can use openly; that is why he has enemies. His own people must be used secretly.” p241 Crowds and Power
Unless EVs cost less than $35k, there can be no significant shift in car sales among the general public. Wealthy people can afford their high end toys, that is a limited segment of the population. What you might see is a significant shift to hybrids.
The battery technology isn’t ripe yet, lithium ion batteries are not going to get there and until a new mass produced battery actually gets installed otherwise it won’t happen. There’s lots of hype about new batteries in the works, until it actually happens it’s all mythical Hopium.
Then comes the electric grid transmission system requiring at minimum a total upgrade to 500,000 volts, all the 13k, 100k and 200k systems would have to be upgraded. Simultaneously, a complete switch to nuclear power to substitute for oil/gasoline/diesel used by vehicles. The proposed transition is being ineptly handled by the usual idiots who make overly simplistic assumptions egged on by cravenly greedy special interest groups. The general public being the ones forced to pay for this visionary plan.
‘200 million EVs on US roads in just 9 years’
Two problems there – finding 200 million EV customers and finding 200 million EVs worth of electricity on a regular basis, in that timescale. Not that those are the only problems, as the article explains.
“Hedges & Co reports there were 290 million cars on US roads in 2022”
OK——-That is just Wrong—-Almost 290 million total vehicles, including trucks, buses and motorcycles, with only about 105 million automobiles. Or about 1/3 of the claim by Hedges and company———with their cavalier approach to numbers—-maybe, just maybe, they should be politicians?
Not just FJBs. Niknaks are worse.
Rod – how many Americans drive trucks as their main or only vehicle?
Trucks are the most popular vehicle type, with 166,079,082 private and commercial vehicle registrations in 2021, compared to 101,601,344 vehicle registrations for cars.
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/car-insurance/car-ownership-statistics/#many_cars_section
USA is noted for its vast beautifully decorated and polished driving ends, I mean REALLY big lorries! Thousands of them. Is Biden going to electrify them as well in the interests of clean air? If not. Wotthehell?
Electricity rationing by any other name more likely than grid collapse, e.g. time-of-use charging, separate rates and system for EVs (as per the UK), remote control of smart meters etc.