Ford finally gets it
 

Ford is finally going big on EVs. Cool.

“The demand is so much higher than we expected.”

"We are now expecting to produce 600,000 EVs/yr globally by end of 2023. 2x our original plan."

"We aim to become the 2nd biggest EV producer within the next couple years."

"Our job now is to meet the demand."

https://insideevs.com/news/548955/fo...ev-projection/

I bought some Ford stock. I was early on Tesla, hopefully I'll be early on Ford. I don't own Tesla stock any longer.

VW gets it. GM gets it (I think...) Fiat Chrysler/Honda/Toyota do not get it yet.

I suspected Ford could do very well and had my eye on it the past year, but sadly never invested. I'm up 44% on the year for GM though, and 132% for the single Tesla share I own (so that people who want to say I'm a Tesla shill can point to my 1 share as evidence).

The market doesn't make any sense to me, and I'm still leery of a dead cat bounce. That said, I have most of my money in the market as of a year ago and am up quite a lot since then (30%).

I hear good things about the e-Mustang, and was always preferred their cars on the rental lot compared to the GM and Chrysler offerings.

That said, I think Toyota is going to crush it.

Let's wait to see if Ford won't lose its track once again, as it often does. It wouldn't surprise me to see Tesla becoming more relevant than Ford within some 10 or 20 years, even though I won't place any bet on it right now.

Hmm. I have not seen any Toyota news lately. Based on what they have said this year, I'm out of Toyota entirely (and it would take a lot of convincing to get me anywhere near them)

Last I heard, Toyota:
- still had their head in the sand, stating that they would be selling 20% EVs in 2050
- were still talking up ICE as a strong seller in 2050 (50% or more I think)
- were still doing hybrids with tiny batteries, not decent sized batteries with 'range extender' ICE. Most of their vehicles still don't have plugs, right?
- were still committed to their path on Hydrogen fuel cells for passenger vehicles (the other 30% in 2050 ... )

Did I miss a MASSIVE turnaround at Toyota? I hope I did!

Toyota could eventually make EVs resorting only to off-the-shelf parts right now, yet its more conservative approach makes some sense. I don't see the ICE as totally unsuitable within a foreseeable future, even though nowadays I consider plug-in hybrids more likely to become the usual within 10 to 20 years on most markets with a more substantial yearly sales volume.

Toyota doesn't talk a big game years in advance, like Tesla does. It simply announces their next big thing a few months before making it available for sale.

You're assuming EV is the most profitable platform. Currently EVs lose money for everyone but Tesla, with larger ICE vehicles being where big profit margins are found.

Electrifying a vehicle is extremely easy, especially for a company that has already figured out how to do the most difficult task; integrating ICE and electric into a hybrid. In other words, if/when EV becomes a profitable endeavor, they will easily be able to make those products.

Toyota has not only announced an EV (bZ4X) and had previously offered an EV (RAV4), but they announced solid state battery technology to be appearing in products in the not too distant future.

It was bad timing for all the manufacturers to jump into EVs this early because battery technology sucks, and not just a little. Only a great fool would get into an unprofitable game and rave about how awesome the sucky technology is. A better strategy is to point out the obviously terrible current state of technology while continuing development in secrecy.

I tend to agree hydrogen is a dumb idea, but that's only evident by hindsight. Had hydrogen gained political favor, Toyota would have been among the few to mightily benefit. They gambled on that and probably lost. It was high risk, high reward.

EVs accounted for 2% of vehicle sales with $7,500-$10,000 in subsidies in the US. They have a very long way to go to become compelling to the masses, let alone become profitable.

thingstodo -- Single source and unsubstantiated:
https://gulfnews.com/business/fully-....1636619589103

Toyota is screwed if that solid state battery they've been talking about for years and years doesn't work out.

@redpoint I don't think the problem for Toyota is designing the vehicle. The problem is setting up the supply chain to do EVs at a massive scale.

Meanwhile other automakers place higher bets on the EV game, Toyota is not placing all its eggs on just one basket. And even though Hydrogen doesn't make much sense for the average Joe as CNG could do, Toyota can easily fund its advanced R&D, selling both its hybrids and some "outdated" stuff which actually works good enough for its conservative customer base all around the world.

I think the EV future is a bit blurry.

"GM gets it" but they've been under public critisism for the few Bolt fires that have happened. It doesn't matter how many Bolts actually caught on fire, the public may lose trust in the brand for what might have been jumping into the EV mainstream a bit too early.

Hopefully it doesn't end up that way for GM and hopefully something similar doesn't happen to Ford.

GM limited their EV sales and didn't market them. Hardly anyone knows of the GM fires, which were actually LG fires that affected other brands. I suppose it's not foolish for other brands to jump into the game with limited numbers and minimal advertising.

The Bolt fiasco is unfortunate, but fortunately doesn't impact many vehicles relatively speaking. Had GM sold a million a year like Tesla, that would be a bigger problem.

Me too. Well, besides a more traditional fuel (or even biofuels and the upcoming synthetic fuels) holding a better energy-density than batteries, I'd still bet the nearing future will render hybrids a more reasonable option in a longer term. As they may also respond well to the usage of capacitors, which can handle faster cycles of charge and discharge, and capacitors may have a greater chemical stability, hybrids may become mainstream easier than full-EVs. I was talking about it with a Haitian guy today, and the increased market share of automatics even in Brazil and Europe is also favoring hybrids (even though in Brazil their presence is still increasing at a slow path, mostly owing to luxury models with a plug-in hybrid powertrain being cost-competitive due to lower taxes).

Part of the problem is that we're not designed for very long term thinking. Certainly better than every other creature, but still not optimally so. For that reason, the higher upfront cost of hybrids and plug-in hybrids is an impediment to our near-term planning capabilities.

We have the example, of Buckminster Fuller's Design Science Revolution and Scott Adams processes vs goals.

"Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people." - Socrates or Eleanor Roosevelt?

I think the EV future is blurry as well; not because modern batteries or motors wouldn't be suitable for much of the need, but because there is no consensus on where the fuel will come from to generate the electricity and the infrastructure to get it delivered where it is needed. And all this must be done on the scale that will allow electricity to supplant the gigantic gasoline and diesel consumption we need.

Anyone thinking it's coming from wind and sun "renewables" is not answering the question. That's only begging it.

Nuclear could do it, but there's the Jane Fonda Intellectual Society ready to pounce.

I see political volatility as a higher challenge to set a reasonable and achievable long-term goal.

OTOH I think the fungibility of sources for electricity is it's strength.

' Gigantic '
 

I would want to emphasize that whatever the BTU equivalent that is currently required for gasoline and diesel fuels, can be cut by a factor of around 350% with electric propulsion.
The BSFC-e of an EV is running at 1/3rd-to- 1/4 that of the ICE it replaces.
Every 100-gallons of fossil fuel can be replaced by 25-to-33-gallons-e of electrons.
If the 'source' of the electrons is the Sun, then this fusion- crude oil is free for capturing and storage. Additional up front costs are absorbed by year-3, and after that, there's no fuel source, even coal, which can compete.
$ 3,000,000,000,000 spent on renewables, over 10-years, costs 28.4-cents per capita/day ( 3- trillion, divided by 10 ( years ) , divided by 365 ( days/year ), divided by 328,000 citizens ).
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The global warming economic impact of Lake Mead / Hoover Dam, affects 40-million Americans, an $ 1.4-trillion / yr alone.
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In 2021 dollars, the cost of direct air capture and burial of the excess atmospheric carbon dioxide, is $395- trillion.

No evidence could ever substantiate that made up claim.

As faulty as it still is, the most accurate way to measure impact to people is the big metrics on a global scale (we are talking about global warming, and not Lake Mead warming after all) on things like life expectancy, GDP per capita, calories per capita, and other measures of health and well-being.

I don't trust this either. What is powering this carbon capture technology? Diesel powered machines? Having not researched anything, common sense tells me it would be cheaper to avoid emitting CO2 in the first place than sequestering already dilute gasses from the air.

substantiate
 

The numbers are from those who looked into it, in detail.
And they didn't spin it into the myopic, non-externality, voodoo-economics netherworld, as hallucinated by the likes of the Bjorn Lombergs and Chicago School of Economics sociopaths, addicted to privatizing profits while socializing costs.
We are talking about global warming.
And tell me about this magical capability of summarily, and accurately, discounting the efforts of investigators, without investing one iota of human capital into your own investigation. Absolutely amazing!

I don't need to look into anything to know it's all contrived. When dieselgate came out, the corrupt "stats" guys come up with nonsense like cheating caused a billion excess deaths or some absurd number. I don't have to be a mathmagician to instantly see that 1.4 trillion is a fictional number. I'm to believe that more than 5% of the total US gross domestic product depends on lake Mead? Lotta BS going on there. Had they not gotten so greedy with their made up number, it might not have instantly triggered my BS filter.

I'm not saying there are no negative externalities, only that they can't be monetized in any meaningful way. How much is someone wrongfully killed worth? Those sorts of things require the law to come up with some figure, but it doesn't really have anything to do with reality...

...which always brings me back to the point that a very broad measure of well-being is the most accurate way, not some myopic and corrupt statistician deciding what is relevant for consideration and how to value them. If I hired a numbers guy to make the argument that global warming has had a positive economic impact, we'd unsurprisingly see numbers making that claim.

Even if we could somehow be certain warming was a net economic negative due to less snow melt being captured by lake Mead, it's still meaningless because it wouldn't account for the all of the heating costs offset in the entire rest of the world.

As I said, this is global warming, not lake Mead warming. I can't care if there's some localized badness happening if globally everyone is thriving.

don't need to
 

Right. The students across the street at the university are forced to incur ten's of thousands in student debt in order to look into things, however, we're to believe that you possess the facility for spontaneous, magic knowledge acquisition capabilities, expending no energy at all.
You don't just 'believe'.
You don't just 'think.'
No, you miraculously 'know' about things you've self-admittedly, never spent a second researching!
Truly in a class of your own.
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I'm done with you. You've stepped on a grenade of your own manufacture. You've lost any credibility you might have had. I regret the effort spent attempting rational discourse with you.

I'm always talking about numbers, but only when it's useful. Figuring out efficiency improvements from a mod can reasonably be calculated, for instance. Figuring out the economic impact of temperature rise 50 years from now is nonsense, let alone accurately predicting what the temperature increase will be.

You made the claim of global warming causing a yearly 1.4 trillion economic loss due to the impact to Lake Mead, so the burden of proof is on you, not me... and I already explained why I don't need to "research" it, because it isn't reasonable that Lake Mead represents more than 5% of gross domestic product.

If someone says that Michael Jordan can dunk on a 150ft tall basketball hoop, I don't need to research that to dismiss it as false.

There is so much misinformation flooding the circuits of our devices and brain, that one needs to become extremely efficient at filtering the noise, which is 98% of everything. I'm not going to research every claim because there isn't time.

Similar circumstances may be considered for alcohol and biomethane. No wonder I'd rather place a bet on plug-in hybrids as a middle-to-long-term option closer to become some sort of one-size-fits-all.

The Lake Mead claim is probably based on Vegas shutting down if it has no water supply.

It is interesting to think about why Ford has high EV demand, GM does not (yet). Maybe it's because Ford went all in with their most popular model names (F150 and Mustang). GM went with the Hummer name, which is completely sold out already. The names they made up (Volt and Bolt) didn't do so great.

Regardless, I'm always tempted to buy a used Volt.

If you look at the financials recently, GM isn't doing so great. Revenue is dropping. Ford is still doing well. I don't know why.

There is no scenario in which less snow in the mountains that feed lake Mead equates to over 5% of GDP. It would be cheaper to bulldoze all of Las Vegas and rebuild than 1.4 trillion annually.

It's anti-human propaganda masquerading as fact to get devout believers to drink the kool aid, and nothing more.

To even hypothesize how the figure could be contrived plays into the trap the evildoers set. I denounce it and will not waste a single millisecond more being their useful pawn.

Google says the GDP of Vegas is $128B so I guess you are right.

Partially true: That is only a first-order effect. Second and third order effect might include gaming money diverted into macrame and home canning. Lounge lizard acts might reform and spread out and revive stand-up comedy clubs across the country.
If you lack the ability to generalise from a synthesis of all your experience, you are one brick shot of a six-pack.

Seems like GM was only making EVs for compliance, unlike Ford which might be holding some hope to benefit from a higher profit margin.

Sandy Munro went to some EV trade show, and GM had a large booth space with cutaway drivetrains on pedestals but no booth staff people showed up. Oops!

Vietnam had a strong vehicle entry.

So, all we need are solar panels and wind mills and other such "free lunch" sources, and then all the hydrocarbon fuels can be left in place, right?

Who wodda thought?

Wow. It's all so simple.

VinFast? Well, even though it's placing a higher hope on the highly-profitable EV market globally, could also have a good chance to sell outside Vietnam its ICE-powered cars too. I'm just not sure if the arrangements VinFast did with GM and BMW prevent any entry of its ICE-powered models in other countries, even though GM retreated of nearly all its Southeast Asian operations, including LHD countries.

So........
 

We need to stop carbon and methane emissions. Then remove some of what's already in the atmosphere.
Phasing out internal combustion-powered transportation is identified as one of the 'need-to' strategies. No one's happy about it.
I suspect that the Gulf Coast will continue to produce hydrocarbons for centuries to come. They just won't be used for combustion.
My oil royalties from Oklahoma are going into a savings account for a used EV.
Solar is currently the most economical power source. The 'invisible hand' of capitalism no longer recognizes petroleum investments as it once did. There's more fortunes to be made elsewhere.
Wind turns a profit after 3-years. New units can come online within weeks. It's modular. Scalable. Offshore is where the best wind is found.
In September, a new, federally-funded battery maker emerged from the shadows. If their product works out, piston cars will be un-competitive with EVs around 2026.

Bring back the Yankee Clippers.

Yankee Clippers
 

I think Greta Thunberg's in charge of that.

https://media.patriots.win/post/9oikl8YJ.jpeg
https://media.patriots.win/post/9oikl8YJ.jpeg

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https://i.postimg.cc/4N5M0Vyj/7-ECE6...-FAFE60-CC.gif

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PETER JAMES SPIELMANN June 29, 1989

UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ "A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000...."


If the UN had been correct in 1989, Greta's parents might have died in the floods long before she was born.

Before we stop hydrocarbon production and destroy the world as we know it, we'd better be really, really sure this time. It's hard to have confidence in the Green-party's predictions: so very many have self-destructed after subsequent events proved them absolutely wrong.

A paraphrase of Mark Twain's refrain about his death might have read this way in 1989: The reports of environmental catastrophe are greatly exaggerated.

And about Greta's alternatives: wind and sun. Sure, they are proven sources for electricity production, but their weak contributions vs the landscapes they require is woefully out-of-balance. It's becoming more and more apparent that even environmentalists don't want to look out the window and see windmills or shiny solar panels out there. Even Teddy Kennedy rejected the thought of looking at whirling blades in the waters off his beloved Nantucket playground, although he saw no problems with them in your backyard.

Let's let California lead the way: stop the hydrocarbons and replace them with blades and proton-producing silicon. I'm sure cryptocurrency mines would be well served with that. And as soon as the experiment proves the case for supporting modern civilization, we can all start doing the same.

Breathing, burping and farting, there is always some carbon or methane emission. It's unavoidable.