Update on the miracle of the EV revolution. We evolved from horses as horse power to the internal combustion engine without government mandates and subsidies. Just an organic revolution through capitalism and the free market. Same with no phones, to analog phones to digital smart phones. But, the promise of efficient competitive electric vehicles has remained a promise for over a hundred years. If there is a niche for EVs then Tesla meets that niche for well-off purchasers and the don't need the current $7,500 federal subsidy. The rest?
PS It's amazing the number of posts from our Tug leftards that whine about following the science and yet there never is a post supporting the billions in subsidies for EVs, solar and wind while remaining silent about the hundreds of coal plants being built by the chicoms and Indians. Then toss in the claim that conservatives are stupid while the leftard elites are the ones to follow. Geezus.
https://ace.mu.nu/
EV Death Pool Update: Rivian
Rivian is performing in a manner that according to any historical business metrics would have it on the path to bankruptcy in the very near future. The EV manufacturer is producing staggering losses, it is rapidly burning through its cash, and its already weak revenue figures have peaked and are now in decline.
Rivian continues to lose over $30,000 on every vehicle it sells, and with a negative gross profit margin, there is no sales volume that would be profitable.
Expectations are being lowered to minimize how “unexpectedly” bad Rivian’s Q4 will be. Concurrently, Rivian continues to burn cash like it’s being consumed by a runaway thermal lithium fire. Over the past 9 months, Rivian has burned through more than $2.4 billion in cash, leaving it with just $5.4 billion.
In the quarter ended Sept. 30, Rivian said its cash and cash equivalents were $5.4 billion, compared with $7.86 billion in the fourth quarter of last year.
For some inexplicable reason, struggling automaker Volkswagen is trying to throw Rivian a $5.8 billion lifeline. VW desperately needs to liberate itself from its destructive commitment to EVs, but instead, it is aligning itself with Rivian, which makes as much sense as the fabled K-Mart/Sears merger, may it rest in peace.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration just announced that it is granting Rivian a $6 billion federal “loan” to re-start construction on its suspended new plant in Georgia.
A nearly $6 billion federal loan will help electric-vehicle manufacturer Rivian restart construction of a $5 billion vehicle and battery plant near Covington, U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga., announced Tuesday.
"There was real concern last spring that construction would never start," Ossoff told reporters Tuesday morning in an online briefing. "What we have now is a major step forward to make sure this plant is built in Georgia."
There is abundant excess capacity at Rivian’s existing Illinois plant, so there is no reason to build a plant in Georgia, and even if there were some product demand, subsidizing the plant with US tax dollars is offensive. And yes, this is a subsidy. If this were a viable project, banks would be lending the money. This “loan” will almost certainly never be repaid.
*****
Gangster Government Choosing EV Winners and Losers
Tesla founder Elon Musk has famously supported Donald Trump, and he also supports elimination of the government’s $7,500 EV tax credit. This is because Tesla doesn’t need the tax credit to be profitable selling its EVs, while Tesla’s competitors do not have any model for profit in the EV game without the government subsidizing its EV sales.
So, in the upside down world we live in, in which the government seeks to pick winners and losers, the Biden administration is seeking to choose Rivian as a winner by giving it $6 billion. Meanwhile, in California, which is the country’s biggest market for EVs, Governor Gavin Newsom is trying to make Tesla a loser in the EV marketplace, by explicitly targeting Tesla for retaliation.
Specifically, with the Trump administration seeking to eliminate the federal EV tax credit, California is not giving up yet on the all-electric dream, so Gov. Newsom is proposing to have California fund its own EV tax credit…with a catch. Tesla vehicles would be specifically excluded.
Tesla's electric vehicles likely would not qualify for California's new state tax credits under a proposal in the works if President-elect Donald Trump scraps the federal tax credit for EV purchases, Governor Gavin Newsom's office said on Monday.
This is effectively no different than Newsom announcing that he is imposing a stiff Tesla-only tax. This gangster-style of government that Gavin Newsom embodies is the reason that Tesla relocated from California to Texas, and it certainly influenced Musk abandoning the Democrats in disgust.
*****
The Climate Cult’s War on Auto Manufacturing Jobs
Meanwhile in Europe, there has been a burst of announcements regarding automobile manufacturing plants being closed and auto workers getting laid off. This is a direct result of the “EV transition” that Europe’s leaders have tried to impose.
Stellantis (Chrysler, Vauxhall, Fiat, Peugeot, etc] just dropped some awful news on the British auto industry…
Vauxhall's parent company Stellantis has announced plans to close its van plant in Luton, days after it warned the government that it could slash production in Britain over Labour's
tough electric vehicle sales targets.
Ford is eliminating 4,000 jobs in Europe, mostly in Germany and the UK, because of the failed EV transition.
Ford said on Wednesday it would cut around 14% of its European workforce, blaming significant losses in recent years compounded by weak demand for electric vehicles, a lack of government support for the shift to EVs, and rising competition.
This comes just a few weeks after VW announced massive layoffs of its own, and the unprecedented announcement of multiple plant closures, also due in large part to the failed EV transition.
The domestic factory closures would be the first in Volkswagen’s 87-year history, and they lay bare the challenges facing Germany’s largest manufacturer.
This is all part of the European ruling class’ eco-war against the working class. The Davos crowd would be wise to back off sooner rather than later, since pushing people out of work and into despair is a political form of lighting a fuse which might not be extinguishable.
Next, the miracle of battery economics in western societies that follows clean manufacturing requirements. Even Goldman Sachs trying to gin up its CSR (Corporate Responsibility Score) decided that throwing away a $1 billion of investor money was worth it for building unicorn batteries. Much better to virtue signaling by buying dirty chicom batteries because out of sight is out of mind. That's the smart intelligent way to manage your economy.
https://ace.mu.nu/
European EV Battery Dream Just Died
When the global eco-communists decided to “transition” the car industry, we were all assured that new jobs in the EV industry would replace the lost jobs. Battery manufacturing was one of the industries that was supposed to produce jobs. That dream has pretty much just died in Europe with the bankruptcy of Northvolt.
Northvolt, the Swedish maker of battery cells for electric vehicles, said on Thursday it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S., dealing a blow to Europe's hopes that its most developed battery player would reduce Western car makers' reliance on Chinese rivals.
"Northvolt's liquidity picture has become dire," the company said in its Chapter 11 petition, filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston.
This will mean that pretty much all EV battery production will come from China now. An alternative – and I know this is crazy talk – is not to mandate electric vehicles and not import EV batteries at all.
Goldman Sachs’ Investors Fleeced by EV Battery Investment
I’m not sure if I’m feeling schadenfreude or if I’m just glad that important financial lessons are being learned. Either way, this is a nice palate cleanser to end today’s roundup…
The losses mark a sharp contrast to a bullish prediction just seven months ago by one of the Goldman funds, which told investors that its investment in Northvolt was worth 4.29 times what it had paid for it, and that this would increase to six times by next year.
A fool and his money are soon parted, and there are a lot of credentialed fools who bought into the EV hype.
Passed one going down I-5 the other day and slowed and looked it over. So were other vehicles passing it. Looks a lot more "trucky" than the thing that Elon made. But, when your business model is to have a gross margin of a negative $30,000 on each truck sale, you can't make it up on volume even if you have a boat load of mythical leftard MBAs on staff to advise you.
The Rivian thing is that they're trying to float themselves long enough for than new plant to start production on their upcoming, smaller R2 and R3 models. The Illinois plant isn't tooled to build those models, in addition to the R1 models.
Not saying it's a winning strategy, but the new models are supposedly athe ones that will be profitable. As long as the gub'mint and investors keep giving them cash I guess they'll have a legitimate shot to succeed.
My understanding with VW is that they are hurting massively right now and are trying to tie in with Rivian for their EV tech as they don't have the ability to hit their targets/ requirements on their own.
Also, isn't Tesla building Gigafactories in Texas and Germany to produce their own batteries?
What's the functional difference between the Stanford president and the dazzler? Compare and contrast with a student editor of the conservative Stanford Review and a supposedly elite University president. Bonus question, what is the functional difference between the Stanford Faculty Senate and the dazzler?
The Stanford Review, the conservative student newspaper that Peter Thiel and others founded back in the 1980s, managed to persuade Stanford’s new president, economist Jonathan Levin, to sit down for an interview. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but in short the Stanford Review did a great job of putting Levin on the hot seat. Some excerpts, starting with the one that is getting the most attention on social media right now:
Stanford Review: What is the most important problem in the world right now?
President Levin: There’s no answer to that question. There are too many important problems to give you a single answer.
Stanford Review: That is an application question that we have to answer to apply here. . .
Stanford Review: The first two categories are the buckets of questions that I have. So I’ll move on to my first question about Stanford’s educational and political climate at the present moment. In one of my classes, I was randomly assigned a partner to work on a presentation together. He told me that he had not read a book, cover to cover since the third grade, let alone at Stanford. In June, he will graduate with a degree from Stanford. How is this possible?
President Levin: Have you read a book at Stanford?
Stanford Review: I actually have. I’ve read fifty. I’ve counted. Probably at sixty now.
President Levin: I can’t speak to the particular student you worked with and exactly the way he or she has approached things. I think it’s a missed opportunity if you go through Stanford without doing a lot of reading, because at least in many fields, that’s the way to learn. Now, some fields, it’s true at Stanford, you learn in different ways that aren’t necessarily from books [like Shop?], but you know, I certainly would hope [but certainly not a requirement] that any student who came to Stanford would spend a lot of time reading and thinking and reflecting. So I think it’s a missed opportunity if that’s not how you choose to spend a good fraction of your time here. . .
Last Thursday, the Stanford University Faculty Senate voted against repealing the 2020 censure of Dr. Scott Atlas, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and former Trump administration advisor on the White House Coronavirus Task Force. . .
It reveals a troubling reality within elite academic institutions: the hollow nature of their proclaimed commitment to free speech. Initially twice postponing the vote to avoid political interpretation, the Faculty Senate has now taken the dramatic step of refusing to rescind the censure, cementing its politically motivated decision.
The Senate’s outright rejection is particularly striking given the subsequent dismissal of several positions for which Atlas was initially censured. When Stanford faculty censured him in 2020 for questioning COVID-19 policies like lockdowns and mask mandates, they did so without even offering him an opportunity to defend his positions. Even as evidence has mounted supporting many of Atlas’s positions, the institution has doubled down on its censure.
Comments
All you need to know about the current state of affairs and administration.
Imputing a double standard of justice and selective prosecution is a sign of a white supremacist if there ever was one.
Update on the miracle of the EV revolution. We evolved from horses as horse power to the internal combustion engine without government mandates and subsidies. Just an organic revolution through capitalism and the free market. Same with no phones, to analog phones to digital smart phones. But, the promise of efficient competitive electric vehicles has remained a promise for over a hundred years. If there is a niche for EVs then Tesla meets that niche for well-off purchasers and the don't need the current $7,500 federal subsidy. The rest?
PS It's amazing the number of posts from our Tug leftards that whine about following the science and yet there never is a post supporting the billions in subsidies for EVs, solar and wind while remaining silent about the hundreds of coal plants being built by the chicoms and Indians. Then toss in the claim that conservatives are stupid while the leftard elites are the ones to follow. Geezus.
https://ace.mu.nu/
EV Death Pool Update: Rivian
Rivian is performing in a manner that according to any historical business metrics would have it on the path to bankruptcy in the very near future. The EV manufacturer is producing staggering losses, it is rapidly burning through its cash, and its already weak revenue figures have peaked and are now in decline.
“Rivian reports first drop in quarterly revenue since IPO, shows loss of $1.1 billion” [Detroit Free Press - 11/07/2024]
Rivian continues to lose over $30,000 on every vehicle it sells, and with a negative gross profit margin, there is no sales volume that would be profitable.
Expectations are being lowered to minimize how “unexpectedly” bad Rivian’s Q4 will be. Concurrently, Rivian continues to burn cash like it’s being consumed by a runaway thermal lithium fire. Over the past 9 months, Rivian has burned through more than $2.4 billion in cash, leaving it with just $5.4 billion.
“Rivian lowers earnings guidance after missing Wall Street’s third-quarter expectations” [CNBC – 11/07/2024]
For some inexplicable reason, struggling automaker Volkswagen is trying to throw Rivian a $5.8 billion lifeline. VW desperately needs to liberate itself from its destructive commitment to EVs, but instead, it is aligning itself with Rivian, which makes as much sense as the fabled K-Mart/Sears merger, may it rest in peace.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration just announced that it is granting Rivian a $6 billion federal “loan” to re-start construction on its suspended new plant in Georgia.
“Nearly $6 billion federal loan will help Rivian restart construction of electric-vehicle plant” [MSN – 11/26/2024]
There is abundant excess capacity at Rivian’s existing Illinois plant, so there is no reason to build a plant in Georgia, and even if there were some product demand, subsidizing the plant with US tax dollars is offensive. And yes, this is a subsidy. If this were a viable project, banks would be lending the money. This “loan” will almost certainly never be repaid.
*****
Gangster Government Choosing EV Winners and Losers
Tesla founder Elon Musk has famously supported Donald Trump, and he also supports elimination of the government’s $7,500 EV tax credit. This is because Tesla doesn’t need the tax credit to be profitable selling its EVs, while Tesla’s competitors do not have any model for profit in the EV game without the government subsidizing its EV sales.
So, in the upside down world we live in, in which the government seeks to pick winners and losers, the Biden administration is seeking to choose Rivian as a winner by giving it $6 billion. Meanwhile, in California, which is the country’s biggest market for EVs, Governor Gavin Newsom is trying to make Tesla a loser in the EV marketplace, by explicitly targeting Tesla for retaliation.
Specifically, with the Trump administration seeking to eliminate the federal EV tax credit, California is not giving up yet on the all-electric dream, so Gov. Newsom is proposing to have California fund its own EV tax credit…with a catch. Tesla vehicles would be specifically excluded.
“Tesla would likely be excluded from new California EV tax credits, governor's office says” [Reuters – 11/26/2024]
This is effectively no different than Newsom announcing that he is imposing a stiff Tesla-only tax. This gangster-style of government that Gavin Newsom embodies is the reason that Tesla relocated from California to Texas, and it certainly influenced Musk abandoning the Democrats in disgust.
*****
The Climate Cult’s War on Auto Manufacturing Jobs
Meanwhile in Europe, there has been a burst of announcements regarding automobile manufacturing plants being closed and auto workers getting laid off. This is a direct result of the “EV transition” that Europe’s leaders have tried to impose.
Stellantis (Chrysler, Vauxhall, Fiat, Peugeot, etc] just dropped some awful news on the British auto industry…
“Vauxhall will close its Luton factory in April with more than 1,100 jobs at risk after warning it may halt UK production amid row over government's electric vehicle targets” [Daily Mail – 11/26/2024]
Ford is eliminating 4,000 jobs in Europe, mostly in Germany and the UK, because of the failed EV transition.
“Ford to cut 14% of European jobs, blaming EV shift and rising competition” [CNBC – 11/20/2024]
This comes just a few weeks after VW announced massive layoffs of its own, and the unprecedented announcement of multiple plant closures, also due in large part to the failed EV transition.
“Historic moment for Volkswagen: Automaker plans to close ‘at least’ 3 German plants and cut thousands of jobs” [CNN – 10/28/2024]
This is all part of the European ruling class’ eco-war against the working class. The Davos crowd would be wise to back off sooner rather than later, since pushing people out of work and into despair is a political form of lighting a fuse which might not be extinguishable.
*****
Next, the miracle of battery economics in western societies that follows clean manufacturing requirements. Even Goldman Sachs trying to gin up its CSR (Corporate Responsibility Score) decided that throwing away a $1 billion of investor money was worth it for building unicorn batteries. Much better to virtue signaling by buying dirty chicom batteries because out of sight is out of mind. That's the smart intelligent way to manage your economy.
https://ace.mu.nu/
European EV Battery Dream Just Died
When the global eco-communists decided to “transition” the car industry, we were all assured that new jobs in the EV industry would replace the lost jobs. Battery manufacturing was one of the industries that was supposed to produce jobs. That dream has pretty much just died in Europe with the bankruptcy of Northvolt.
“Sweden's Northvolt files for bankruptcy, in blow to Europe's EV ambitions” [Reuters – 11/21/2024]
This will mean that pretty much all EV battery production will come from China now. An alternative – and I know this is crazy talk – is not to mandate electric vehicles and not import EV batteries at all.
Goldman Sachs’ Investors Fleeced by EV Battery Investment
I’m not sure if I’m feeling schadenfreude or if I’m just glad that important financial lessons are being learned. Either way, this is a nice palate cleanser to end today’s roundup…
“Goldman Sachs takes $900 million hit on Northvolt investment; US bank is second-largest shareholder in Swedish battery maker which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week” [Financial Times – 11/23/2024]
A fool and his money are soon parted, and there are a lot of credentialed fools who bought into the EV hype.
My daughter drives a Rivian - it's a cool vehicle and she likes driving it.
I've not had the heart to tell her that's its going to be worthless in a couple
yearsmonths after they go out of business.Passed one going down I-5 the other day and slowed and looked it over. So were other vehicles passing it. Looks a lot more "trucky" than the thing that Elon made. But, when your business model is to have a gross margin of a negative $30,000 on each truck sale, you can't make it up on volume even if you have a boat load of mythical leftard MBAs on staff to advise you.
What in the actual fuck?
Pray for @DerekJohnson and his Korean fetish.
@DerekJohnson suddenly comes out in defense of mass migration.
Looks like the CIA is pushing all the chips in everywhere.
Murder.
Why would he need a pardon
The Rivian thing is that they're trying to float themselves long enough for than new plant to start production on their upcoming, smaller R2 and R3 models. The Illinois plant isn't tooled to build those models, in addition to the R1 models.
Not saying it's a winning strategy, but the new models are supposedly athe ones that will be profitable. As long as the gub'mint and investors keep giving them cash I guess they'll have a legitimate shot to succeed.
My understanding with VW is that they are hurting massively right now and are trying to tie in with Rivian for their EV tech as they don't have the ability to hit their targets/ requirements on their own.
Also, isn't Tesla building Gigafactories in Texas and Germany to produce their own batteries?
Hardy har har
I don't know a lot of details but it only lasted three hours before parliament overruled the president's actions
There was never even a trial. They needed to cover that up toot sweet
There was never even an investigation. None. Nancy blocked it as she was in charge of capitol security as speaker of the house.
I laughed! Brings back memories of good times.
But it wasn't arson or timed…
What's the functional difference between the Stanford president and the dazzler? Compare and contrast with a student editor of the conservative Stanford Review and a supposedly elite University president. Bonus question, what is the functional difference between the Stanford Faculty Senate and the dazzler?
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/12/stanford-in-the-hot-seat.php
Stanford in the Hot SeatThe Stanford Review, the conservative student newspaper that Peter Thiel and others founded back in the 1980s, managed to persuade Stanford’s new president, economist Jonathan Levin, to sit down for an interview. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but in short the Stanford Review did a great job of putting Levin on the hot seat. Some excerpts, starting with the one that is getting the most attention on social media right now:
Stanford Review: The first two categories are the buckets of questions that I have. So I’ll move on to my first question about Stanford’s educational and political climate at the present moment. In one of my classes, I was randomly assigned a partner to work on a presentation together. He told me that he had not read a book, cover to cover since the third grade, let alone at Stanford. In June, he will graduate with a degree from Stanford. How is this possible?
Stanford’s Ivory Tower Tyranny: Atlas Censure Vote Reveals Academia’s True Colors
Last Thursday, the Stanford University Faculty Senate voted against repealing the 2020 censure of Dr. Scott Atlas, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and former Trump administration advisor on the White House Coronavirus Task Force. . .
It reveals a troubling reality within elite academic institutions: the hollow nature of their proclaimed commitment to free speech. Initially twice postponing the vote to avoid political interpretation, the Faculty Senate has now taken the dramatic step of refusing to rescind the censure, cementing its politically motivated decision.
The Senate’s outright rejection is particularly striking given the subsequent dismissal of several positions for which Atlas was initially censured. When Stanford faculty censured him in 2020 for questioning COVID-19 policies like lockdowns and mask mandates, they did so without even offering him an opportunity to defend his positions. Even as evidence has mounted supporting many of Atlas’s positions, the institution has doubled down on its censure.