Rut-Roh, Electric Vehicles losing some of their charm...

Too bad it wasn’t colder.
 
Too bad it wasn’t colder.

Definitely a concerted effort among their media friends to keep this quiet - only news report I've seen and I suspected mass events would make this happen. Can you imagine a sudden storm surge or something and all the dead Teslas are blocking the lanes?
 
Definitely a concerted effort among their media friends to keep this quiet - only news report I've seen and I suspected mass events would make this happen. Can you imagine a sudden storm surge or something and all the dead Teslas are blocking the lanes?
And they are too heavy to float. At least you can stand on top until rescue services get there.

I mean the headline would suck - " Sunk EV saves flood victims."
 
We observed the Eclipse from a place 1.5 miles from our friends' Greenville camp. Took us an hour in our gas powered Silverado to get back there.

I bet all those Massholes' in Teslas were sweating bullets, as even with a gas powered vehicle they were looking at a good 7 hr drive down to the Bahston area...
 
Mandates are easily made without looking down the ‘road’ for the consequences. And not just re: E.V.s. Short term Thinkers. :(
 
Like I needed another reason not to even consider an EV...

Tesla Pullback Puts Onus on Others to Build Electric Vehicle Chargers

The automaker led by Elon Musk is no longer planning to take the lead in expanding the number of places to fuel electric vehicles. It’s not clear how quickly other companies will fill the gap.

Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, blindsided competitors, suppliers and his own employees this week by reversing course on his aggressive push to build electric vehicle chargers in the United States, a major priority of the Biden administration.

Mr. Musk’s decision to lay off the 500-member team responsible for installing charging stations, and to sharply slow investment in new stations, baffled the industry and raised doubts about whether the number of public chargers would grow fast enough to keep pace with sales of battery-powered cars. It put the onus on other charging companies, raising questions about whether they can build fast enough to address a shortage that appears to be discouraging some people from buying electric cars.

As the owner of the largest charging network in the United States, Tesla has a powerful effect on people’s views of electric cars.

“There is certainly a psychological component,” said Robert Zabors, a senior partner at Roland Berger, a consulting firm. “Availability and reliability are critical to overall E.V. adoption.”

Tesla’s change of direction, only days after it had told shareholders in a securities filing that it would “rapidly” expand its charging network, which it calls Supercharger, is likely to delay construction of fast chargers, which are concentrated along the two coasts and in parts of Texas.

Wildflower, a New York real estate developer, was on the verge of signing a lease with Tesla to build a charging center near the intersection of Interstates 278 and 495 in Queens. Then Adam Gordon, the firm’s managing partner, got a text message from the Tesla executive he had been working with.

“‘Hey, I was fired at 4 a.m. and my boss was fired too,’” the Tesla manager said, according to Mr. Gordon. “That was the only communication we got from Tesla,” he added.

Another charging company is likely to take over the site, which has a permit to obtain power, Mr. Gordon said. But Tesla’s withdrawal will inevitably delay the project.

No other company has as much experience and expertise as Tesla in installing charging stations, which range from a handful of plugs in the corner of parking lots to dozens of them at dedicated sites, often along highways.

The automaker accounts for 25,500 of the 42,000 fast chargers installed in the United States, according to federal government data. A fast charger can top up an electric-car battery in 10 minutes to an hour, depending on the car and the charger. There are about 132,000 slower public chargers that can fully recharge electric cars in roughly eight to 12 hours.

Tesla began building its Supercharger stations in 2012 to give owners of the Model S sedan a place to fuel on road trips. Buyers of its earlier model, the Roadster sports car, charged primarily at home.

Other companies may not be able to build chargers as quickly or as cheaply as Tesla, said Daniel Bowermaster, senior manager of electric transportation at the Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit group in Palo Alto, Calif., where Tesla once had its headquarters.

“There is significant opportunity, kind of regardless of what Tesla does,” Mr. Bowermaster said. “It will be addressed by the market. How do they do it in a timely, cost-effective manner?”

But some in the industry say Tesla won’t be missed as much as it would have been a few years ago. Government subsidies and private capital are fueling a surge in charger construction that does not depend on Tesla: The number of public fast chargers in the United States increased by nearly 11,000, or about 36 percent, from April 2023 to April 2024.

“The public charging experience is going to get easier,” said Peter Slowik, an auto expert at the International Council on Clean Transportation, a research organization. “I don’t think the charging market and the electric vehicle market is slowing down because of Tesla.”

Tesla manufactures charging hardware for Supercharger stations at a factory in Buffalo, which was necessary a few years ago when there weren’t many suppliers. Since then, many companies have begun selling charging equipment, and the technology has become standardized.

Last year, virtually all major automakers selling cars in North America agreed to use the charging plug developed by Tesla starting in 2025, reducing complexity. Electric cars in Europe and China rely on standards different from the one used by Tesla in North America.

Tesla’s pullback “is a normal step of a market professionalization,” said Jörg Heue, chief executive of EcoG, a firm in Munich that provides charging software.

Mr. Musk did not explain his rationale for cutting back on charger construction, but some analysts said he had probably concluded that it would become harder to make money from charging as more companies entered the market.

Tesla does not disclose the financial performance of its charging business, but analysts say it requires capital that Mr. Musk would rather invest in artificial intelligence and robotics, which he has said will power the company’s future growth.

“My guess is that the electricity and infrastructure costs of running the network far exceed the fees provided by Tesla and other drivers thus far,” Ben Rose, president of Battle Road Research, said in an email. “They can now focus on getting maximum use of what they’ve installed.”

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.

Another reason Mr. Musk may have soured on charging is that he may regret Tesla’s decision last year to open its U.S. stations to vehicles from other manufacturers. By opening the door to Fords, Cadillacs, BMWs and other automakers, Tesla has made it easier for others to sell electric vehicles, which may help those automakers chip away at Tesla’s dominance in the U.S. market.

Mr. Musk's rationale “may be that people will use Tesla’s infrastructure and buy another manufacturer’s car,” said Raj Rajkumar, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He added that he considered Mr. Musk’s decision to pull back on new chargers a mistake that would make it harder for more car buyers to switch to electric vehicles.

Tesla has been one of many companies applying for subsidies under a federal program that aims to have half a million fast and slow chargers operating by 2030, up from nearly 200,000 today. Combined with state and local incentives, government money can cover almost all the cost of a charging station.

“If Tesla is no longer bidding on these things, the agencies handing them out will go to other operators,” said Badar Khan, the chief executive of EVgo, a charging company in Los Angeles. “There are a lot of different participants.”

The 500 charging employees that Tesla dismissed will probably take their expertise elsewhere, Mr. Khan said. “There is a very talented pool of people entering the market,” he said. “We are having conversations with individuals right now.”

EVgo said in March that it had nearly 3,000 charging stalls as of the end of last year, up 37 percent from the end of 2022.

Electric utilities, which must upgrade their equipment to support growth of charging options, said the fast charging network was just one component of a broader strategy that Tesla’s decision would not alter.
“It’s no secret Tesla’s an important player” for electric vehicle charging, said Chanel Parson, director of clean energy and demand response at Southern California Edison, the state’s second largest investor-owned utility. But, she added, “they’re not the only player.”

The utility has 500 projects at various stages of development for 14,000 chargers that focus on light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. To reach California’s goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045, Ms. Parson said, 90 percent of light and medium vehicles must go electric, along with 80 percent of buses and 54 percent of heavy-duty vehicles.

“And there’s lots of partners in this space that we’re working with to make that a reality,” she said.
Government officials responsible for funding and promoting electric vehicles said they were not dismayed by Tesla’s decision to pull back on charging.

Thousands of chargers are coming online every month, the Biden administration’s Joint Office of Energy and Transportation said in a statement, adding, “We don’t expect individual business decisions to impact E.V. charging projects.”
 
Another LOL!! It's good that the rental companies are being vocal in pointing out all the obvious warts of how EVs, and their needed infrastructure ae far from being ready for prime time...

Electric Vehicles May Become Harder to Rent

Rental car firms are offering temporary deals on electric cars, which they are selling after they lost value more quickly than expected.

If you’ve been wanting to try an electric vehicle, renting can be an affordable option. But finding one may soon become much more difficult.

Electric vehicles have been financially disastrous for rental companies, especially Hertz, which in January scaled back plans to acquire 100,000 Teslas after the cars’ resale values plunged much faster than the company had expected.

Hertz’s experience had a chilling effect on its industry, and many rental car companies are now trying to sell off electric vehicles at deep discounts. And it may be a while before they start buying again.
Last year, more than 4 percent of the cars sold by manufacturers to rental companies were electric, according to S&P Global Mobility. So far this year, that number is just 1.4 percent.

In theory, renting an electric car is a great way for people to try and become comfortable with new types of vehicles like battery-powered cars that produce no tailpipe emissions. “The potential that rental companies can have in reshaping consumer behavior and helping to promote adoption is critical,” said Stephanie Valdez-Streaty, the director of industry insights at Cox Automotive. “But there’s a long way to go.”

Ms. Valdez-Streaty said rental firms had recently been offering good deals on electric vehicles, but those were unlikely to last as the companies thinned their fleets of such cars.

Hertz and other rental car companies found that offering customers electric vehicles at a profit was more difficult than they had expected. Most rental car complexes at airports lacked chargers. Many renters were not prepared for how quickly electric cars accelerated, leading to more accidents and higher insurance premiums. And some companies found they couldn’t get spare parts for such cars as quickly as they could for gasoline cars.

“They thought E.V.s would be more simple and straightforward and cheaper to maintain,” said Karl Brauer, an executive analyst at iSeeCars.com, an online car search site. “They’re finding that’s not true.”
In a statement, Hertz said it would “continue to offer our customers the widest possible choice of vehicle makes and models, including electric vehicles.”

The biggest problem for the rental companies was the rapid depreciation of cars made by Tesla, the leading manufacturer of electric cars. The company, led by Elon Musk, sharply cut prices on new models last year to prop up sales. That pushed down the prices for used Teslas. A study released last month from iSeeCars.com found that used electric vehicles have lost value faster than the average used gas car has this year and, in May, cost less on average than used gasoline cars for the first time.

Resale values are a critical part of the financial calculus for rental companies because they generally sell cars before they accumulate too many miles. Rental car companies record losses when they sell cars for less than they had expected to. In the first three months of the year, the diminished value of Hertz’s electric fleet lowered its profit by $195 million.

Rental companies “are 100 percent dependent on residual values,” said Shay Natarajan, a partner at Mobility Impact Partners, a private equity firm that invests in sustainable transportation. “It’s just a very difficult business model.”

James Iovino, who lives in Baldwin, N.Y., listed about nine electric vehicles on the car sharing website Turo. But he got out of the business a month or so ago after E.V. prices dropped.

“I got burned for the same reason Hertz got hurt — Elon Musk opens his mouth and the industry takes a dive,” he said.

But some rental car companies say they are not dumping battery-powered cars because of the recent drop in prices.

Enterprise Mobility has several thousand electric vehicles available in the United States, Canada and Europe, and will add more depending on market demand, said Mike Wilmering, a spokesman for the company. Enterprise is also working on making more chargers available to its customers.

“We’re looking beyond how many chargers are available and working to identify power needs and access — both in our locations and the communities we serve,” Mr. Wilmering said. “We want customers to have a great experience with E.V.s, and we’re keeping them at the center of our long-term strategy.”

Some people who have never driven an electric vehicle face a steep learning curve when they are given a battery-powered car. Rental companies typically do not have the staff to give customers a tutorial. Hertz, for example, offers information online for electric vehicle renters and sends them instructions by email.
Tom Moore and his wife rented a Tesla from a Hertz location in Portland, Ore., last year as a test run for buying an electric car.

His wife, who did the bulk of the driving, asked a Tesla-owning neighbor back home in Mountain View, Calif., for a lesson before their trip. It was a good idea — the Hertz employees did not offer any instructions before handing over the key fob.

“They just said, ‘This is your parking place,’” Mr. Moore said.

Hertz said it “learned a lot as a first mover in the E.V. rental market, and, as we align our fleet with consumer demand, we’re focused on continuously enhancing the rental experience, which includes making it easy and rewarding for all customers.”

Refueling has been another issue. Many rental companies expect customers to recharge electric vehicles to around 70 percent before returning them. That means customers must plan to stop at a charger near the end of their trips, which is not always easy to do when people are trying to catch flights and there aren’t enough fast chargers near the rental car center.

Rental companies don’t want to be responsible for charging because they like to get cars back on the road quickly. It can also be difficult for rental companies to install chargers at airports.

“Airports are notorious for being unfriendly for electric infrastructure development,” said Raghu Iyengar, an executive at Volkswagen of American whose duties include sales to rental companies. Demand from rental companies for Volkswagen’s ID.4 electric sport utility vehicle has been close to zero, he said.

People who rent Teslas have access to its Supercharger network, the largest fast-charging system in the United States. But most Superchargers work only with Tesla cars. People who rent cars made by automakers like Kia, General Motors or Polestar must use chargers offered by other operators, each with its own mobile phone app for payment. Renters also need to be aware that there are few or no fast chargers in many parts of the country, especially in rural areas.

But even in the heart of the technology industry, driving a rented electric car can be difficult.

Kerry Dietz, a retired architect who lives in Springfield, Mass., reserved the “manager’s special” last year at Thrifty Car Rental, which belongs to Hertz, during a trip to Berkeley, Calif. She owned a Tesla at the time and was no stranger to electric driving. But Thrifty gave her a Polestar, a car designed in Sweden and manufactured in China that was not able to use Tesla’s charging network.

“I spent the entire time we were there trying to find a place to charge — a place to charge where stuff worked,” Ms. Dietz said. “It was a really frustrating experience.”

As electric vehicles become more popular, rental companies will have to figure out how to offer them, Mr. Iyengar of Volkswagen said. “There’s going to be an electric tide that lifts all boats,” he said, “and rental is going to follow that.”
 
Another of the companies that had to issue profuse apologies when the CEO said maybe the future isn't 100% electric. The next day he had to fall on his sword and kneel before the EV gods to redeem his blasphemy. "Fully committed" and blah blah blah.....



When are ideologues going to learn that you can't dictate markets just because you wish it was so?
Another unstated "gem" of EVs. Since they're heavier than their gas-powered sisterships, they wear out tires more quickly. No mention of brakes, but I think because they don't coast as freely as a gas car when you take your foot off the accelerator and they capture the coasting as energy, they will be a wash or maybe even a tad better on brake wear.

I have my "demands" in place. When they're met I'll consider buying a 4WD/AWD EV.
  1. 400 mile cruising on a full charge in ALL weather conditions
  2. Full charge in 15 minutes or less
  3. Operational, high-speed charging stations at least as 1/2 in numbers and distribution as gas stations are now.
Until all these are met, EV evangelists can go and pound sand...
 
I've said it 100 times before, and I'll repeat it as often as I have to. There have been electric cars since there have been cars. If they were as good as the idealists imagine them to be we'd all have been driving them for a long time now.

Barring a major breakthrough in battery technology they will forever be a niche vehicle. But instead of acknowledging that and applying them accordingly we are wasting our resources on a fantasy when we should be utilizing the technology we have available to actually accomplish something real. :mad:
 
No mention of brakes, but I think because they don't coast as freely as a gas car when you take your foot off the accelerator and they capture the coasting as energy, they will be a wash or maybe even a tad better on brake wear.

Another issue that's been reported is that due to everyone using the one pedal method, the actual brakes have had their calipers freeze up due to lack of use. I think they may have done some software update to force the occasional brake use.
 
Too funny...

Ford revamps electric vehicle strategy with push into hybrids

Ford is revamping its money-losing electric vehicle business, retreating from some plans for all-electric vehicles and instead prioritizing the development of hybrid technology, the automaker announced.

Ford is revamping its money-losing electric vehicle business, retreating from some plans for all-electric vehicles and instead prioritizing the development of hybrid technology, the automaker announced Wednesday.

The announcement underscores the challenges facing U.S. automakers as they seek to boost sales of EVs, a crucial technology in the fight against climate change, despite flagging consumer demand, supply chain challenges and increased competition with Chinese carmakers.

Ford is scuttling plans for a three-row electric SUV and spending less of its total resources on all-electric vehicles, with annual capital expenditures dedicated to pure EVs declining from about 40% to 30%.

Still, executives said production will begin on an all-electric commercial van in 2026. The automaker also has plans for two more electric pickups and long-range SUVs.

Ford is responding to consumer preferences, company executives said, as many drivers remain concerned about a lack of EV charging infrastructure and affordable EV models.

“We learned a lot … about what customers want and value, and what it takes to match the best in the world with cost-efficient design, and we have built a plan that gives our customers maximum choice and plays to our strengths,” chief executive Jim Farley said in a statement.

Ford is shifting to hybrid technologies for its next three-row SUVs and will take a $400 million write-down for “certain product-specific manufacturing assets,” the automaker said in a news release. The company warned that it may also see “additional expenses and cash expenditures” of up to $1.5 billion.

“We could not put together a vehicle that met our requirement of being profitable in the first 12 months,” Chief Financial Officer John Lawler said on a Wednesday call with reporters and analysts. “If these vehicles are not profitable based on where the customer is, we will pivot and adjust and make those tough decisions, and that’s what we’ve done.”

The announcement deals another blow to President Biden’s ambitious goal of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids accounting for half of new car sales by 2030. It comes as EVs have emerged as a flash point in the 2024 election, with former president Donald Trump repeatedly bashing the technology.

“Unfortunately, the administration’s goals of getting to over 50% market share for EVs by the end of the decade were always bit overoptimistic as were the announced targets by most automakers including Ford, [General Motors] and Stellantis,” Sam Abuelsamid, an auto analyst at the market intelligence firm Guidehouse Insights, said in an email.

“The inability of Ford to develop a competitive, profitable lower-cost EV in the near term is likely to be a major challenge going forward as it faces increased competition from the likes of Hyundai and Kia as well as the future potential from Chinese [automakers],” Abuelsamid added.

Though electric vehicles have come down in price, industry data show they still command higher upfront costs. In the past two years, the average price of an EV fell $8,500, or 13.1%, to $56,520, according to Cox Automotive. However, that number does not account for tax credits. By comparison, a new gas-powered or hybrid will run about $47,800.

“I think we will see that [EV] price continue to go down,” said Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of strategic planning at Cox Automotive.

The outcome of the election has important implications for federal EV policies, including a tax credit of up to $7,500 for EV buyers. During a campaign stop in Pennsylvania on Monday, Trump said he had not made “any final decisions” on the subsidy.

“I’m a big fan of electric cars, but I’m a fan of gasoline-propelled cars, and also hybrids and whatever else happens to come along,” Trump said.

Ford also said Wednesday that it is delaying production of an electric pickup truck at a Tennessee plant to 2027. Production at the new $5.6 billion plant outside Memphis was initially expected to begin next year.

“In effect, this shifts back a new generation of Ford EVs from 2025 to 2027 – at the very least,” said Corey Cantor, a senior associate for EVs at BloombergNEF, an energy research organization.
 
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