Nut Zero insanity, meet reality.
Workers at Volkswagen factories across Germany have begun strikes after the manufacturer threatened to close plants amid falling demand and a slower-than-expected transition to electric vehicles.
Workers on their morning shifts went on strike for two hours, while those on the evening shift plan to leave work early in protest at the carmaker’s demands, which include a 10% wage cut.
I’d like to say that I sympathise, but I don’t.
Sales of VW cars have plummeted in Europe as demand stalls and consumers return to petrol. Globally, sales in the first three months of the year dropped by three per cent as the sales of petrol motors rose by four per cent.
This was all foreseeable. Anyone with half a braincell could see it coming, Politicians cannot alter the state of reality and tyring to force the market to comply was always going to end in tears.
The boss of Ford’s UK arm warned late last month that Britain’s car industry is in crisis due to the overwhelming lack of demand for electric cars.
Lisa Brankin, the chairman and managing director of Ford UK, called for the Government to urgently introduce ‘incentives’ in a bid to stoke interest.
No. The solution is to produce what the consumer wants to buy and it ain’t EVs. Nissan is also in trouble over this and this will include partners such as Renault as is Ford and Vauxhall. They had an opportunity to tell the politicians with one voice to fuck off. As it is, the consumer is going to do it for them.
Oh dear, how sad, never mind. Still, popcorn sales should be good.
These car companies all made a faustian pact with the politicians, stuffing their coffers with taxpayer’s money and believing their promises that ICE cars would eventually be banned. Screw them, they deserve everything that is happening to them.
I’ve just seen a You Tuber talking about the closure of the Vauxhall plant and pointing out that he has been saying for ages that electric commercial vehicles could never work. Electric cars were always marginal when it came to practicality despite usually spending enough time not being used to allow charging. An electric van that needs to be driven around all day was never going to work and this was always obvious.
I forget where now but I commented on politicians thinking that they can change reality by passing laws. Someone responded by mentioning that politicians in Indiana tried to pass a law to redefine pi as 3.2.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_pi_bill
Peugeot says on their website that they will go all electric in 2025….
Volvo did as well some years ago but has since backtracked with hybrids.
EVs are the wrong solution to an inexistant problem but since politicians do not personally suffer any negative consequences for their actions, I do not expect things to change for a while.
Toyota haven’t followed the herd off the cliff, making as far as i know only 1 fully electric model so far.
Their hybrid drivetrain is the dogs bollocks, ask every taxi driver they can’t all be wrong, it will be interesting to see which car makers are still in business and what vehicles they are making (and which cars people are buying new privately without tax incentives) in another 10 or 15 years.
Why do these rich businesses jump when here to-day gone tomorrow (things like Blair excepted) polibloodyticians come up with their latest lunacy.
We’re not going down the rabbit hole we’re living there and the place is swarming with mad hatters.
Can’t wait till they stuff a battery and motors in my truck, under power in top gear 12th, the instant readout is 3.9mpg, pulling up a steep really long hill down to 9th gear its doing 1.9mpg @ 43 tons gross, after driving 3.45 hours to the delivery point the engine then runs for 1 hour @ 700 rpm (typically 9 litres of fuel used) discharging the load and return empty (no backload, own products only), overall fuel for the quite hard running journey is around 10mpg, any guesses or expert calcs how much longer the current (hoho) 10/12 hour round trip will take once its battery only? more to the point how many more vehicles and drivers we’ll need to deliver the same raw products 24/7 364 days a year over the entire country? we reckon around double the fleet and half as many drivers again.
“We reckon around double the fleet and half as many drivers again.”
Creating more green jobs then.
In these circumstances the company must be made up. They are paying these people for make do jobs until the factory closes and now they don’t have to.