Leisure Vehicles
People buy electric vehicles (EVs) to park them at home, mainly using them as something to drive for leisure activity. This has been the experience in Norway, at least, as we learn from an industry expert. Norway has been in the business of subsidizing electric vehicles the longest.
Beyond Norway, the people who buy EVs are wealthy, and the vehicles are marketed to wealthy customers. These are some of the fascinating facts about EVs from Ashley Nunes in his recent discussion with Robert Bryce on Bryce’s Power Hungry podcast.
The rare raw materials for EVs are driving up the prices faster than for gasoline engines (ICEs—infernal-combustion engines. Yes, I meant to do that!). And EVs are currently, as historically, pleasurecraft of the wealthy. Manufacturers are following market demand, as seen when GM recently announced the end of its entry-level Chevy Bolt EV. Bryce says Ford dropped its own product in that segment because the company lost thousands on each unit.
The political system, however, has determined that EVs must be made to work no matter what. And once the government gets behind a project like this, it has every chance of a long life as a white elephant that no one will be able to kill off. No elected politician wants to tell wealthy constituents they can’t keep buying EVs at subsidized prices. None want to tell automakers or battery producers to get off the government dole; elected officials who propose ending production subsidies face accusations of killing jobs. As they discuss in the podcast, today’s battery technology results in batteries that can be recharged for ten or fewer years before they fail, something that doesn’t occur routinely with ICEs.
There is of course one resource that is renewable. It may be as close to a perpetual motion machine as there ever was. It is selling extra doodads to the political system based on unlikely claims of saving the Earth. While it may not do much for the planet, it helps to assuage the consumer’s guilty soul.
I was just listening to "Tides of History," and Mr. Wyman mention the "Argaric Culture," which flourished in southeastern Spain for nearly 700 years in the early Bronze Age, roughly 2200 to 1500 BC. Then it collapsed, sometimes with severely burned ruins. They seemed to have logged off the local environment, with the usual results. Trees are so important.
https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-08-10/el-argar-the-great-society-that-mysteriously-vanished.html
It is considered (possibly) the earliest socially stratified society in western Europe, and a building has been excavated that has been interpreted as a "town meeting" room. (I'm skeptical.)
https://m.murciatoday.com/the-argaric-culture-in-lorca_124114-a.html
700 years, generation after generation of people who just assumed this is what life was like, and then the next thing happened: the Motillas culture, slightly to the north where presumably there were still trees.
We peaked at over 400. Oh, for the days of plain old 1960s smog.