It is astonishing what you can get away with if you hawk the virtues of electric cars.
Tesla has become the world’s most valuable car company by losing money on every electric car it “sells.” The company makes money selling shares – based on anticipated forced-demand via EV mandates – and via extorting other companies that make cars that actually sell by using the mandates to force them to buy “credits” for the EVs Tesla makes.
Its cars are so poorly put together they make the cars GM was making in the ’80s seem quality. Its business practices are arguably predatory and its customer service abysmal.
Despite this, the fawning coverage continues  and almost everyone pretends the Emperor’s new clothes are the duck’s guts.
Then there’s Nikola – another EV dog-and-pony show that has grossly slandered the name of a genius who is no doubt spinning in his grave faster than a Mikita drill. Tesla EVs at least move under their own power, if not for very long.
Nikola sold investors – marks – on an electric semi truck it rolled (and filmed) going down a hill under the power of . . . gravity.
Ordinarily, this would have ended the company – and all involved. VW was hounded almost to Hell allegedly because its cars “emitted” an infinitesimally higher amount of oxides of nitrogen than allowed by law . . . but actually because these diesel-powered cars could travel as far as 700 miles on a single tankful, took less than 5 minutes of refueling to be ready to go another 700 miles and only cost about $23,000 to buy and made money at that price for VW.
This was garlic to the EV’s Dracula. VW had to have a stake driven through its heart . . . for Dracula’s sake.
Now gimps along this Nikola thing.
Reports of serial shysterism by a legal team hired for an internal investigation by the company itself have surfaced like a Baby Ruth at the swimming pool. These include ah-yes-my-little-chickadee claims made by Nikola’s founder, Trevor Milton about the company’s ability to produce inexpensive hydrogen (to power fuel cell EVs and thus de-couple them from the electric umbilical cords that limit their range and increase the hassle of having to plan trips around recharging sessions) as well as the egregious staging of the non-functional Nikola semi rig.
Milton was forced to step down as chairman of Nikola last fall after an expose of the rigged semi show by Hindenburg Research but he wasn’t charged with crimes, much less frog-marched like OJ before a judge – as VW executive Oliver Schmidt was.
Keep in mind the rigged semi show was meant to defraud investors by leading them to believe that Nikola had a working electric semi rather than a rolling static display of one. The fraud was large-scale and could have resulted in millions of dollars being ripped off to line the pockets of Milton and other insiders, who knew they didn’t have what they were claiming they could deliver.
But no biggie, because their politics were in the right place.
The SEC and the DOJ are investigating Nikola and there a bunch of lawsuits in process, filed by some of the marks who bought into the fraud. But there is nothing like the juggernaut of breathless, finger-wagging coverage of this fraud by the poodle press, which also rarely has anything even mildly critical – i.e., factual – to say about Tesla’s ongoing fraud.
A good example of this being the recent announcement by Tesla that it would not be selling the “affordable” version of the Model Y – its latest model – it had promised it would sell. That version – which stickered (briefly) for $39,990 – has been dropped and now the only version of the Model Y you can buy is the one that starts at almost $50,000.
This is a gyp on par with the ads that lure buyers into a dealership by touting the availability of a car at what appears to be a too-good-to-be true price . . . which it always is. You get suckered into going to the dealer, where you discover that the advertised model you were interested in “isn’t available” . . . but have a look at this one, which is.
For several thousand dollars more than advertised.
“Consumer advocates” used to expose and excoriate such gyps and those behind them, as is right and proper. If Toyota built shoddy cars with poor panel fitment and lousy paint, you’d hear about it.
Toyota would never hear the end of it. Just ask GM or Ford or Chrysler, which to this day suffer from the exposing of their shoddily-built cars of the ’80s and ’90s.
But if it says Tesla – or Nikola – it’s all good.
Even if it stinks to high heaven.
. . .
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In a strange kind of way, – an electric car rolling down the hill powered by gravity is probably the first proper “green” or “clean” electric car ever….
I still can not figure out why VW didn`t stand up and fight back at this bull shite.
You can build a truck that runs on electric power. It will have a 40’trailer with a 10′ X 40′ tank of compressed air. The compressed air will run a generator that recharges the battery. Problem solved! Wont haul anything but that is not the point, it provides the potemkin facade of working in front of your eyes. Except for the large diesel compressor back at the shop that recharges the air into the tank. (no range either)
As PJ O’Rourke use to say about the Soviet Union: The Soviets had huge machines that dug iron ore out of the ground, the iron ore was smelted into steel where it was shipped to factories were they built huge machines that dug iron ore out to the ground…
Or you can run a “truck” on tracks and have a catenary wire to supply power. Still have to figure out where to get the power from though. Oh wait, the power comes from the wall outlet…
http://industrial.southwire.com/en/cablespec/download_spec/?spec=48302&country=US
Toyota did have a problem, albeit a completely made up one. Don’t forget about the “unwanted acceleration problem” circa 2010-11. We got to hear supposed Lexus/Toyota car owners last words on 911 call recordings before they came to an explosive, fiery–made for TV/radio drama–type death.
Coincidentally they weren’t number one worldwide over GM for very long at that time. It came later, only after their “murderous” black eye wore off.
The media has eye witness/investigative proof of exploding Tesla’s that get very little media coverage. The unwanted acceleration only died off because it was a sham operation. That was a pre covid world.
I wouldn’t be surprised in the post covid world to see Toyota, Mazda and Fiat get booted from the American market on a sham now. That is, unless they play electrified ball of course. Then they will be permitted to stay.
The truly pathetic part is that the regulations and subsidies in place for EV’s actually decrease investment in technological advancement that would increase the usability of EV’s. Why improve usability if the Psychopaths In Charge are going to force customers to buy them regardless? Such is the case every time the economically moronic thing called government puts its finger on the scale. Back in the 1970’s Chrysler was going belly up, and the economic morons bailed them out, signaling to the other makers that if they got into hard straights they would get bailed out too. Which didn’t exactly encourage car makers to heavily invest in quality control, improved engineering, and manufacturing methods. In fact, it encouraged them to REDUCE investment in them, since the Psychopaths In Charge would bail them out if they lost their market. Hence 20+ years of sorry excuses for US made cars. We can expect a similar train of events regarding EV’s. Tesla has shoddy workmanship because they can, and still sell cars because the Psychopaths In Charge insist they be bought.
Work has me pining for the RV lifestyle, so it’s been RV week on YouTube. This school bus conversion runs on a Nissan Leaf battery pack. It’s worth a look just because it is pretty impressive to see what lengths people will go to to avoid sleeping on the ground (or owning land). The house systems are mostly electric, running on a Nissan Leaf battery. Every electric car is pretty much a two bedroom apartment’s worth of demand added to the power grid.
https://youtu.be/AoxVdvkfXEo
I’ve looked into the RV lifestyle as well. If I do go that route, I’d install solar and a battery pack, though not one from a Nissan Leaf. Having solar (or another off-the-grid alternative like a generator) allows you to boondock, living away from shore power. That means free, no RV park fees to pay. Camp on public lands, though if Bidet has his way, that may fall by the wayside as well. It’s a similar concept to off-grid homesteading, which is another area I’m exploring. Maybe I’ll end up doing both – having a homestead and traveling in an RV part of the year.
Or just drive your rv deep into your vacant property. Presto super cheap camping.
Tesla already has a semi, and it’s WORKING; at least it rolls under its OWN power!
Spaulding Noooooo!
That VW debacle still pisses me off. Or should I say how our gov played sinister games to hurt lots and lots of people.
I was always wishing that VW would have stood tall “we are closing all US plants and we are out of the US market, f-off”.
It thrills me to no end to see these shysters fail miserably at everything they do. Let the dupes who buy in fail right along with them. Isn’t it strange how market forces still seem to affect businesses that are so deeply entrenched with government favor?
It’s why I have such mixed feelings about EVs. On one hand, bring them out prematurely! Let them populate our streets while we watch them fail miserably under real world conditions. On the other hand, when the technology is actually ready for real world functionality, I’ll be more than happy to cheer it on! All that’s required is for the technology to be BETTER than what we have now.
“All that’s required is for the technology to be BETTER than what we have now.”
And there lies the problem. Currently this technology isn’t even close to being on par with what we currently have. And for that you get to spend upwards of $15,000 to $20,000 more than a gas powered car that can outperform the ev in every way except acceleration off the line(big deal try keeping it up for more than 250 miles) and virtue signaling. Now that is one that the ev wins hands down every time. Congratulations ev owers. Add to that govenments needs to subsidise the ev industry just to keep it going. There may be a time in the next 50 to 100 years that ev’s manage to live up to their claims and actually outperform gas powered cars, and be the first choice amoung the citizenry. But that time should come organically and not by government fiat with threats of govt fines and taxes issued by unellected bureaucrats and collected by the threats of agw’s.
Hi Antilles,
“…virtue signaling. Now that is one that the ev wins hands down every time”.
For your reading pleasure.
https://babylonbee.com/news/new-prius-includes-built-in-virtual-signals
Cheers,
Jeremy
Lol! That was a good one.
Vaporware, just as I’ve been saying. And as long as it’s vaporware, there will be diesel fuel and DEF available. Good!
This does bring up an interesting question. Remember Elio? They seemingly pulled off a similar trick, not living up to promises made. I wonder if any lawsuits came out of it.
Yeah, I remember Elio! What came of that? That seemed like a right proper idea. Maybe a cool little roadtrip car (like the above mentioned VW that we can’t have). Could they not deal with the regulations? I remember they said they were putting in 8 (!) air bags into that little vehicle in an attempt to meet saaaaaafety requirements.
As far as I can tell the Elio is dead in the water. The web site is still up but the reservation links have been reported to be dead. People who reserved an Elio with non-refundable deposits are left holding the bag.
What happened is Elio was not able to obtain the financial backing to go into production. (I think they needed somewhere north of $200,000,000.) They were counting on funding from the federal mafia’s Department of Energy which never happened and were unable to raise money anywhere else.
One thing that always struck me being in winter pothole territory is that with that 3-wheel setup you would not be able to straddle bad potholes.
Hi Jason,
In re Elio: The fundamental problem they faced is the same any start-up car company faces, which is not economic but political. Henry Ford did not have to “comply” with myriad regulatory fatwas. He just built a car and offered it up for sale. If people liked it and wished to buy it, they could. Now, they cannot – unless Uncle says “ok.” This “ok” costs enormous sum of money, which – almost by definition – a small start-up does not have. Thus, the field is restricted to the established players – and this is why there is no modern analog to the Model T. Instead, we get things like the Tesla Model Y.
I knew it. Because why would you need to start with $200,000,000 dollars? I can see a few million, and perhaps things are a little more manual at that point, but you can begin to build cars. Then you make some profit and begin to expand and automate the process.
As we crept further and further into the 21st Century, I did find myself wondering why vehicles weren’t TRULY improving over the years. And no, I don’t see more airbags and an onboard distraction system as improvements.
Again, it is cool and trendy to like “diversity”, but add cars to the list of things in which diversity is NOT appreciated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yCmeZDHFyE
Air bag song that gave the irreplaceable goomint drones the notion for mandates.
‘It is astonishing what you can get away with if you hawk the virtues of electric cars.’ — EP
EV fever has officially gone batsh*t crazy. Aptera Motors — based in Commiefornia, naturally — is offering a battery electric vehicle with built-in solar panels that produce 700 watts (at noon, on a cloudless summer day).
700 watts … is that a lot? Well, it’s a little less than 1 horsepower. If you store up 1 horsepower in the battery for (say) four midday hours, then (neglecting losses) you can get 1 horsepower back for 4 hours, or 4 horsepower for one hour. Seems almost like a gimmick, even in a lightweight, 3-wheeled vehicle.
Meanwhile, Aptera claims up to 1,000 (one thousand) mile range, and 0 to 60 in 3.5 seconds. Really:
https://tinyurl.com/9bj8h59e
I’m gonna call b.s. on these claims. They are flat-out unbelievable. It don’t compute.
Yet almost 7,500 people have put down deposits on a tiny 3-wheeled car that costs somewhere between $26,000 and $45,000.
What kind of mark … errr, CUSTOMER is Aptera targeting? Here’s a clue:
‘Concern about climate change already motivated [Aptera buyer Tyler] Perkins to become a vegan and drive a hybrid.’
https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Solar-cars-Driving-on-sunshine-15982099.php#taboola-3
Summertime, sun, soy, and the livin’ is easy …
‘This is a gyp’ — EP
There’s never just one cockroach. NKLA is getting whipped again this morning — shares down almost 9 percent — on mo’ bad news:
‘Nikola shares slipped after the company cut projected output of its first commercial zero-emission vehicles and said it may seek to raise more capital to invest in facilities such as a planned hydrogen-fueling network.
‘The startup now expects to deliver 100 battery-electric Tre semis to customers this year, down from a previous target of 600. It blamed the global pandemic and supply-chain issues for the drop in planned production volumes.
‘The truckmaker said it aims to deliver 1,200 BEV trucks next year and 3,500 in 2023.’
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nikola-shares-pop-narrower-expected-220726127.html
From 600 to 100 is a pretty bad miss, and ‘the cases’ are a pretty weak corporate alibi. So there’s no reason to believe Nikola’s 2022 and 2023 forecasts either.
‘May have to raise capital’ means ‘We are rapidly running out of cash.’
Maybe instead of sliming a brilliant scientist’s good name, Trevor Milton should’ve named the company ‘Charles,’ as in Ponzi.
Probably won’t ship any, not even the 100. Gravity only works downhill when you got nothing.