Posted on 02/28/2021 6:36:49 AM PST by Kaslin
Detroit - As the Texas power grid shudders in part under renewable power, the auto industry is also facing an uncertain transition to green energy. General Motors dropped a bombshell last month that it will build only electric vehicles by 2035. The commitment comes as the Biden administration stocks up on climate activists to?transform the economy to fight global warming.
The administration is in line with governments from Europe to China that have declared EVs the future and - for the first time - are mandating which powertrains automakers must use.
But as GM and other automakers spend billions to bring electrics to market, prominent auto and climate experts say they are a solution in search of a problem.
Physicist Frank Jamerson, one of the architects of GM’s EV program, wrote in a 2020 Society of Automotive Engineers paper there is no evidence that gas-fired transportation is changing the climate. An advocate of nuclear power and hydrogen fuel cell development, GM’s ex-chief of electrochemistry said in an interview that “fossil fuels can be used until they run out, in hundreds of years.”
Center for Automotive Research Chairman David Cole, a leading Michigan research firm, concurs: “The climate data has been pushed aside by the politicians. This (climate crisis) idea is being pushed to save the world, and it’s a mistake.” Cole, Jamerson, and Weather Channel founder and meteorologist Joe D’Aleo plan an SAE warming conference in April.
Cole says the enormous investment in EVs, which make up less than 2 percent of U.S. sales today, is creating a two-tiered industry of haves and have nots. Big players like GM, Toyota, and Volkswagen have the resources to invest in a battery-mandated future whereas other companies do not.
“The haves can play that game, and the have-nots cannot. The big boys are investing so that if government is pushing autos towards electrification, they will be the winners.”
Veteran climatologists like John Christy, who oversees satellites that monitor global temperature data, says the EV push is disconnected from scientific evidence.
“There is no climate crisis. If you apply the proposed government regulations to the auto industry, they will have no climate impact,” said Christy, professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, in an interview. “Indeed, if you eliminate the U.S. economy from the face of the earth, it will have no impact on global temperature.”
Decades of scientific data indicate that global warming alarms have been inaccurate - including the predicted retreat of the Great Lakes in the Detroit automakers’ back yard.
Still, Big Auto has done an about-face on climate regulations after backing the Trump administration’s challenge to California's controversial CO2 emissions rules.
GM's view now aligns with the Biden campaign which asserts “humans’ contribution to the greenhouse effect is indisputable” and poses an “existential threat to . . . human life.” America’s largest auto manufacturer, GM’s reading of the political tea leaves echoes past strategic moves to align itself with Washington trends.
With the U.S. mired in Iraq in 2008, for example, the General supported the Bush administration’s transition to ethanol-fueled cars by 2022 to reduce foreign oil dependence.
A nuclear physicist by training, Jamerson worked at GM for over 30 years, becoming assistant program manager of the U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium in 1990. The alliance of GM, Ford, Chrysler, and the Department of Energy aimed to pool resources for a new generation of battery-powered cars.
The consortium was driven in part by concerns over climate change– fears data no longer support, the ex-GM exec says. Jamerson said batteries have progressed since his team developed GM’s first EV prototype, the Impact - but electrics still suffer from range challenges.
“There is no reason to deny the use of fossil fuels,” he said. “Let the marketplace decide.”
Climatologist Christy said mandating EVs would have no impact on climate: “1) The US is only 14 percent of global emissions so what we do won’t affect much. And 2) climate is not as sensitive to CO2 as the models say it is.”
Warming orthodoxy has been challenged by real world evidence. With Great Lakes levels at cyclical lows in 1988, climate alarmists like then-NASA scientist James Hansen projected man-made warming would cause shrinking coastlines. But lake levels today are back to historic, 30 year-cycle highs. Climate models have also erroneously predicted disappearing polar ice caps and record hurricanes.
James Taylor, president of the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, said in an interview that Biden administration plans to power an electrified vehicle fleet with wind turbines in the next decade would require nearly half the land mass of the United States – “the most environmentally ruinous plan we can think of.”
The contrarian data has not slowed political pressure on automakers. The governors of California and Massachusetts have set a ban on gas-powered cars by 2035. Biden promises rules “ensuring 100 percent of new (vehicle) sales . . . will be electrified."
Auto analyst Cole said that, despite years of climate alarmism and government subsidies, consumers have not embraced EVs. Even in England, one of the most popular countries for electrics, EVs made up only 7.4 percent of sales in 2019.
F.....g autocorrect - consumers was changed to diners
Well, that’s interesting
There are gasoline and more common propane forklifts. Thse facts aside, there are now and have been for a long time lots of electric forklifts in warehouses all over the country.
Are the carts of which you speak golf carts or actually vehicles equipped for short excursions on public roads?
The following is a best case scenario but still useful information:
“ In the case of the Model 3 (Long Range), [Tesla] you can charge at up to 250 kW, but the power varies. Depending on energy consumption you can get more than 15 miles (24 km) per minute.”
My truck gets 9.2mpg highway so I can go almost 300 miles on a 30 gallon tank, stop and fill up and be on the road in 10 minutes.... consistently.
Electric cars may work in a city or urban environment but not for rural America and won’t for many years to come.
Thanks for the info though!!
They are actual golf carts and many folks drive them on the roads in the village here. It’s interesting how many people opt for the gasoline powered carts rather than electric versions.
Indeed.
What is ‘conveniently’ left out of the official narrative is how/where in the hell all of these new power plants are to be built to support an entire society driving EV’s?
Try one of those electric vehicles with the A/C on down here in Florida. Right.
Actually if you could afford your own solar panels, you could charge a golf cart in FL and be pretty independent. Maybe even a small car like a Nissan Leaf.
Seems to me that auto manufacturers should have someone bright enough to realize that with widespread use of electric vehicles we would need widespread ability to in crease our electrical generating capacity. With the present administration, we are heading in the opposite direction. By the way I have only a high school education. What’s going on here? Build the electrical capacity first, then we can think about more electric vehicles.
What’s going on here?
_________________________________________
The eventual “Motor Laws”, removal of the ability to travel freely and relatively inexpensively, and the herding of masses in “cities”. Some will call these prisons without fences in the future, many will dream of what the old ones call “freedom”.
RUSH song about the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uukZgfHZIoc
Judas Priest had one also back in the 1980’s called
“Electric Eye”. We call it “Big Tech” and “loss of privacy”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2xBKoKyD_s
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