The old legend of Saxon king Cnut sitting in a chair on the beach attempting to stop the incoming tide by royal command is, of course, total bullshit. Yes, he did that; but he was attempting to show his idiot courtiers that his royal power had limits, and that there were forces over which no human authority had control. It was far from being an object lesson in overweening pride and hubris (as it so often is used today), it was the precise opposite.
And here’s its modern-day manifestation.
Anyone with half a brain would have known that battery-powered trucks were a non-starter, for the simple reason that trucks aren’t cars: they require power, lots of power, to move heavy loads, and sometimes over long distances or over power-demanding terrain withal. Ferrying humans to and from the supermarket or soccer practice, sure. Gadding about city streets, absolutely. But that’s not what trucks were designed for.
So despite boutique efforts like Tesla’s dumpster-looking pickup (surely ol’ Elon was just having us on), all EV pickups were doomed to fail, as has just been proved:
Ford Motor Company is halting production of its electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck at a Michigan factory, the auto giant announced Thursday. Just three years ago, President Joe Biden and Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D., Mich.) visited the plant to celebrate the truck’s rollout, calling it an “incredible facility” that shows there’s “no limit to what American ingenuity and manufacturing can accomplish.”
Ford—which, like other major automakers, has struggled to keep its EV business afloat—will shutter the Dearborn, Michigan, manufacturing plant beginning on Nov. 18 and until Jan. 6, 2025. “We continue to adjust production for an optimal mix of sales growth and profitability,” the company said in a statement Thursday.
Expect the plant to continue that suspension way past Jan 6, 2025 despite the weasel corporate-speak, because when it comes to pickup (or any other) trucks, EV production will never achieve an “optimal mix of sales growth and profitability”. (As an aside: anything hailed by FJB, including his choice for VP, has the automatic stench of failure about it.)
So here’s where the Cnut example becomes more relevant than ever:
Ford’s halt in F-150 Lightning production highlights the disastrous impact of federal EV mandates driven by the Biden-Harris administration,” Jason Isaac, the CEO of the American Energy Institute, told the Washington Free Beacon.
In other words, just because the .dotgov says it must happen, that doesn’t mean that it will.
We’ve seen it before with the laughable sustainable energy mandates, where wind- and solar power hasn’t even come close to expectations of consistent electrical delivery (nor will it ever, because — and I hate to repeat myself — anyone with a brain could have told these terminally-deluded dreamers of that outcome).
But control freaks of the ecological- and socialist persuasion [redundancy alert] persist in thinking that if they simply order Net Zero to happen by x date, it will happen.
The collapse of the EV market is simply a signal — a foreshadowing, if you will — that as these idiots remain sitting stubbornly in their chairs on the beach, the tide is most assuredly coming in and will drown them.
We should be so lucky.
The problem is that these assholes are trying to force us all to sit with them.
“American automakers and workers are paying the price for policies that ignore real consumer demand,” Isaac continued.
…and it’s not just automakers and workers. It’s everybody.
I’m getting close to needing a new truck myself and looking at the websites of the big 3 there’s nothing but failure and overpriced trash. Ram (my current ride) now has an EV with a “range-extender” to help those with range anxiety. What is a “range-extender”, you might ask? Why it’s a complete secondary drive train. Yup, they have a full EV truck that also has a full-sized V6 truck engine driving a generator to power to EV drive train. Holy Shit! They just doubled the weight and complexity of the drive train for a vehicle where you want simplicity and reliability to be the most important component (once adequate power is achieved).
There’s going be a Cuba point real soon, where the cost and effort to keeping older vehicles running (by whatever means necessary) is far preferable to anything new. I’m already looking into what would be required to keep my 12 year old truck running for another 30-40 years. There’s just no way an EV or Hybrid costing twice as much as my first house is going to be a contender for my driveway.
I believe Don is right about keeping older cars and trucks running.
The glorified golf carts might be fine for grabbing groceries around town but long drives are simply not possible with them.
One huge problem with electric cars and trucks that no one talks about is the problem with the electric grid and infrastructure. solar panels and windmills simply do not have the reliability that is needed for power production. Is the answer building more battery facilities where they can burst into flames? That’s a tremendous amount of material that needs to be mined in China and shipped over here. What a waste of energy.
These green weenies sure are an arrogant and stupid lot.
> One huge problem with electric cars and trucks that no one talks about
> is the problem with the electric grid and infrastructure. solar panels
> and windmills simply do not have the reliability that is needed
> for power production.
Lots of people are talking about it. Just no one in government or high up in industry.
I read a statistic, true or not, that 75% of pickup trucks never leave pavement, and never carry a significant load. I suspect that this is a lot higher for “small” trucks like the F-150, and less so for the larger vehicles.
Which is to say that it’s not (just) their performance with a real load that makes people shy away from them.
I suspect it’s much more a demographic issue. The intersection of the kind of people who want to be seen driving a pickup truck, and the kind of people who want a fully electric vehicle are too small to support the production. Many of them are “satisfied” by the Elon’s electric shed, which also has the value of *clearly* virtue signalling that they are driving an EV.
A friend in the banking business who keeps abreast of car and truck values says USA has a 400 day inventory of unsold EVs.
Sounds to me like Ford can shut that EV line down not just for the holidays, but rather for all of next year.