Convert to electric they say, it’ll be easy they say….

As you contemplate the ugliness of buying an internal combustion car with its attendant woes of relatively cheap fuel, convenient refilling, easy repair availability, and light weight compared to its competitors – take heart. Those hard to charge cars? Cheap solar roofs? Blips on the radar screen, my son.

A recent report from UBS estimates that global car production will exceed sales by 6% this year, leaving an excess of 5 million vehicles that will require price cuts to get sold off of lots, Yahoo Finance reported.

EV makers might take a major hit due to the combination of soaring energy costs and high prices that put many consumers out of reach, Yahoo Finance noted.  GO Banking Rates

Markets are softening, largely due to large quantities of unsold vehicles, of which:

The nationwide supply of EVs in stock has swelled nearly 350% this year, to more than 92,000 units.  That’s a 92-day supply — roughly three months’ worth of EVs, and nearly twice the industry average. For comparison, dealers have a relatively low 54 days’ worth of gasoline-powered vehicles in inventory as they rebound from pandemic-related supply chain interruptions.  Axios.com

But there are always those cheap Chinese EVs coming:

China has emerged as the global powerhouse in electric vehicle manufacturing and sales. But there might be a dark side to its rise. A recent video showcases enormous fields filled with thousands of abandoned Chinese electric cars.  InsideEVs.com

(I’d take that latter with a grain of salt, but the allegation exists.)

But we want all the batteries and makin’s we can get, right? Heck yea… unless those supplies exist in an inconvenient spot.

The world’s richest known lithium deposit lies deep in the woods of western Maine, in a yawning, sparkling mouth of white and brown rocks that looks like a landslide carved into the side of Plumbago Mountain.

Mary Freeman and her husband Gary found the deposit five years ago while hunting for tourmaline, a striking, multi-colored gemstone found in the region.

This is one of the few lithium deposits in the U.S. currently found in hard rock, which means it is higher-quality and faster to process than lithium mined from brine.

What’s not to like?

Maine has some of the strictest mining and water quality standards in the country, and prohibits digging for metals in open pits larger than three acres. There have not been any active metal mines in the state for decades, and no company has applied for a permit since a particularly strict law passed in 2017. As more companies begin prospecting in Maine and searching for sizable nickel, copper, and silver deposits, towns are beginning to pass their own bans on industrial mining.

There is only one operational lithium mine in the U.S., in Nevada, and one operational rare earth element mine, in Mountain Pass, Calif., meaning that the U.S. is dependent on other countries for the materials essential for clean energy technologies like batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels. Even after they’re mined, those materials currently have to be shipped to China for processing since the U.S. does not have any processing facilities.Time.com

So we want it…but we’re not willing to dig for it or process it. Sorta like anti-hunters who love their someone-else-killed-it burgers, right?

“If we’re talking about critical metals and materials, we’re so far behind that it’s crazy,” says Corby Anderson, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines. “It’s the dichotomy of the current administration—they have incentives for electric vehicles and all these things, but they need materials like graphite, manganese, nickel, cobalt, lithium, and copper. The only one we mine and refine in this country is copper.”

Sure doesn’t sound like a win-win to me… Oh, and good luck with that car… it’s going to be a race to see whether artificial intelligence beats natural stupidity. I know where I’m betting on THAT.

 

Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Economy