Welcome to The Morning Dump, bite-sized stories corralled into a single article for your morning perusal. If your morning coffee’s working a little too well, pull up a throne and have a gander at the best of the rest of yesterday.
The Treasury Department’s Delay Is Good For Consumers
I love news that continues over three consecutive days and I love news that’s good for consumers. On Monday, we discussed how Senator Joe Manchin (a key vote to passing the Inflation Reduction Act) was pretty steamed that automakers were looking for workarounds to continue to give consumers the full $7,500 EV tax credit. Then, yesterday, we learned that the Treasury Department was delaying an interpretation of certain parts of the law until March 31st, 2023. I surmised that there was an upside for consumers here and now we’ve got details. You should go read this Associated Press report because they’ve done the hard work of talking to a bunch of people who figured all this out. It seems like some of the requirements for the tax credit will go into effect on January 1st (price limits, income limits), but the vehicles only need to be built in North America with batteries built in North America, the rest of the stuff about sourcing battery materials is delayed. Basically, this is great news if you were after a Tesla Model 3, a Chevrolet Bolt/Bolt EUV, and a few others. Here’s the key part, from the AP: This is going to cause some chaos as your dealer might not know what is going on and, frankly, there’s still some of this that feels up in the air. My best advice is to print out the AP article (or this article from The Verge) and take it with you. With a base price of $26,595 including shipping, General Motors’ Chevrolet Bolt hatchback is among the lowest-cost EVs on sale in the U.S. today. A $7,500 tax credit would knock the price down to just over $19,000 – less than the average price of a used vehicle in the U.S. That could bring buyers off the sidelines. GM says it’s watching developments with the tax credit rules. “We feel well-positioned, but we’re still waiting on guidance for vehicle eligibility,” spokeswoman Jeannine Ginivan said Tuesday. If the car you want still qualifies under the old rules you need to buy it in the next 10 days. Super excited about the Kia EV6 or Hyundai Ioniq 5? Go get it right now; those aren’t built in North America, so they’re screwed starting in January. If you wanted a car that no longer qualified (this mostly applies to GM and Tesla, according to everything we have read), it seems like buying between January 1st and March 31st is the ideal time to snag an extra $3k or $4k off the price if the car is below the price cap and your income is below the new income cap ($150,000 for a single taxpayer, $300,000 filing jointly.) Because most automakers have not sourced battery materials or built battery factories here, it’ll probably be a couple of years before the full $7,500 tax credit is back in place for most electric cars. That, or the feds will back off on some of these sourcing rules. We could definitely see that happening.
Audi Is Going Full EV By 2033, Globally
Audi has pledged to stop introducing new gas-powered models after 2026 and phase out all non-EVs by 2033, according to a new press release that outlines the company’s plans. Here’s what Audi is saying: Electromobility is such a German way to put it! Unlike many of its competitors, Audi is building on its existing global production network to achieve this vision. “Step by step, we are bringing all our sites into the future,” says Audi Board Member for Production and Logistics Gerd Walker. “We don’t want any standalone lighthouse projects on greenfield sites. Instead, we are investing in our existing plants so they end up being just as efficient and flexible as newly built production sites or greenfield plants.” According to Walker, this is sustainability in action – in economic, ecological, and social aspects. “The path Audi is taking conserves resources and accelerates our transformation to a provider of sustainable premium mobility,” Walker emphasizes.
Report: Layoffs Coming To Tesla
Electrek, which is often fairly well-sourced when it comes to Tesla, is reporting that Tesla is going to reinstate a hiring freeze and start laying off people soon. We’d reach out to Tesla for comment but they don’t have media/comms people anymore so we can’t. [Editor’s Note: Maybe we’ll just tweet at Elon Musk from The Autopian’s account. That seems to get things done these days. -PG] It’s not clear how extensive the hiring freeze will be as Tesla is still planning to expand in some manufacturing locations. No further details were made available at this time. The moves come as Tesla’s stock has been falling all year despite the company’s financials hitting new records virtually every quarter.
Wells Fargo To Pay $3.7 Billion For Auto And Mortgage Chicanery
And now for a brief musical interlude: Oh well, the Wells Fargo wagon is a… comin’ down the street, I can’t wait to see how they’re gonna screw me! Wells Fargo is finally going to pay up for royally misleading customers of its auto loan and mortgage products, including repossessing cars for no reason other than greed. From a CNN report: Has Wells Fargo learned its lesson? The CFPB ordered Wells Fargo (WFC) to pay the $1.7 billion civil penalty in addition to more than $2 billion to compensate consumers for a range of “illegal activity.” CFPB officials say this is the largest penalty imposed by the agency. Yeah, get’em! […] During a call with reporters, Chopra said the new settlement should not be read as a signal that “Wells Fargo has moved past its long-standing problems or that the CFPB’s work is done here.”
The Flush
Are these sudden changes in the enforcement of tax provisions make you want to get off the fence and buy an EV? Or are you still waiting for the industry to catch up?
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin Is In A Fight With Hyundai Over EV Tax Credits Ford Raises The Ford F-150 Lighting Base Price Again Elon Musk Sells $3.6 Billion In Tesla Stock The Volvo XC40 and Escape are the only two SUVs that did well on new IIHS test The 2023 Subaru WRX Miraculously Only Costs $31,625 Lucid Gets A $915 Million Boost From The Saudis
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Photos: GM, Tesla, Audi
I’m not trading anything in, though, because long distances still belong to ICE and hybrids.
I look forward to more availability, but for now you still have to stick to major routes and plan stops around charging stations. That’s a nerdy kind of fun that I’m not always in the mood for.
I like rural fishing spots just a little too much to live with only an EV right now.
Also, I wouldn’t want to go cross-country distances in something as small as a Bolt unless I had no other choices.
Road tripping in an EV is a lifestyle choice. You can do it, but it is not something a normal person should be expected to deal with yet. It takes extra time, advance planning of stops, and altered driving style. EVs aren’t ready for mainstream road tripping yet.
And really, the biggest problem is something that EV advocates write off with comments about range anxiety and bladder capacity: destination chargers basically don’t exist. In your gas powered car you can drive 200 miles to your destination and spend a minute or two gassing up at the corner station before finishing your trip and spending time with your friends and family, or participating in your chosen activity. In your EV you travel 200 miles with range to spare and need to park your ass at some shopping plaza or rest stop for 40 minutes (if you find a DCFC) or several hours while your car charges up, because the place you’re going doesn’t have a Level 2 charger – and if it does, there’s a fully charged Leaf or Bolt taking up the spot anyway.
I also want to see the technology improve a bit before I choose to daily one. It seems like the general consensus is that no one outside of Porsche has managed to infuse much driving character other than GOES FAST IN A STRAIGHT LINE into them just yet. Hopefully than changes, but based on all the reports of fake manual transmissions being developed for them and such I’m not particularly optimistic yet.
I have a PHEV and I rent. I probably won’t get an EV until and unless I buy a home. I’m tempted, but a huge portion of my driving is covered by electric and I can just plug into a regular outlet or run on gas at ~50 mpg.
That said, the option to trade my Niro for a Bolt and get money back is kind of tempting.
US power plants produce around 4.11 billion MWh per year.
Converting 3.2 trillion VMT/yr from gas/diesel to electric (BEVs) would require an additional 1.25 billion MWh per year for the US alone.
Hydrogen fuel cells require (by my calcs) 3-3.5x as much energy per VMT as BEVs. Now we’re talking 3.75-4.38 billion MWh.
Synfuel is made from hydrogen, and by most estimates, it is 4-4.5x as energy intensive as BEVs, so now we’re talking 5-5.63 billion MWh.
If we want to maintain anything resembling a modern standard of living, we have to decarbonize every industry, and fast (carbon budget is gone by 2032 at this rate). But the cruel irony is, if we’re too focused on our standard of living, too attached to the way things are, we guarantee the loss of our way of life. We’re walking the proverbial razor’s edge.
Synfuel has excellent and obvious appeal, but its scaling potential is awful and the energy costs would bite into residential and industrial decarbonization efforts (those also require tons of electricity). Synfuel lets us preserve things the way they are, but to scale it fast enough, we’d have to turn our entire economy upside down and likely nationalize the energy industry. (Not saying that’s entirely off the table.)
So that’s why hundreds of billions of dollars go into battery tech while tens of billions go into fuel cells and hundreds of millions go into synfuel research. Outside of nationalized responses (which includes light rail), BEVs should be shouldering the majority of transportation, while synfuels and hydrogen should be limited to smaller niches with more stringent requirements.
The future is definitely going to be some form of hybrid powertrain for the rest of the market. So the question is what the second fuel will be. I think hydrogen has the lead right now, but I wouldn’t write off synthetic fuel or internal combustion.
So update those W-2s now to have an extra dependent or 2 if you think you’ll be buying an EV next year.(I am not a tax guy, do not follow my tax advice, just saying, it’s tax stuff not a check they give you when you buy it).
The terminology is a bit confusing, and it might be a good idea to check with a tax professional to be sure you don’t do anything to lose it (such as taking capital losses that reduce your tax liability too much), but you can still qualify even if you get a tax refund.
Unless that $2B is completely and totally refunding every victim – with interest – of Wells Fargo’s continuously criminal activity, and the CFPB is actually going to fucking shut the place down? What’s the point? Wells Fargo’s licenses should have been permanently revoked one of the first 5+ times it’s been caught engaging in – and I cannot emphasize this enough – wanton and explicit criminal activity. But they aren’t. There’s no monitoring, no auditing, no revocation of licensing, no real consequences at all. $3.7B penalty? That isn’t even a blip on their balance sheet. Their gross profit for 2021 – that’s profit – was $78.5 billion dollars. That’s how much money they pocketed. 5% of gross profits? That’s literally cost of doing business.
“Are these sudden changes in the enforcement of tax provisions make you want to get off the fence and buy an EV? Or are you still waiting for the industry to catch up?”
Show me an EV that isn’t the very definition of an unrepairable, disposable car. Go ahead. I’ll wait.
“Prius!” Nope, HV battery goes, it invariably costs more than the car is worth. “Chevy!” Uh, they’ve recalled those for fire how many times? And a rock to the underside totals them out. And good luck finding the battery – dealer price on the part ranges $12k to $35k. “Uh… Mitsubishi i-MiEV!” Just the remote for those things sells for $400+ if you can find one and the battery is thousands of dollars.
As for Wells Fargo, all I can think of is “if that company really were a person per Citizen’s United, it would be in jail.”
No thankyou I’ll just keep releasing Hydrocarbons from my vehicles like the 100s of this world countries that will continue to do so as well….even long after the bam of ICE vehicles.
My 2012 Volt is down to about 20 miles for a full charge, and I’m running it on “Mountain” (Hold) mode whenever I drive it to try and extend the battery a bit longer, thus giving me only 10 or 11 electric miles each time I take it out. I doubt I’m going to get too many more years (months?) out of it, so picking up a new Bolt right now would be ideal. I won’t be able to drive it halfway across the country and back like I did with the Volt a few times, but I prefer to take my ’94 Brougham on trips like that anyway.
And I have a Spark, so a Bolt would also allow me to complete my Chevy electricity-name-theme collection. I think GM needs to make grill-badges for that achievement.
The min state of charge for the Volt seems to be really conservative. Running it down to zero is normal.
Why not run it as designed?
I am just surprised we are still subsidizing the EV’s at all at this point. If they are so much better, they should stand on their own.
The Leaf Plus (62kWh) is $36k, the Kona is $34k where available, and the Niro is $40k. Even the Mini is $30k.
It may not be my platonic ideal (I want faster charging for road trips), but whether Chevy’s made a deal with the devil or they’re just taking the loss on the chin, I respect their commitment to making this little hatch the most affordable EV in America.
We test drove it and liked the car a lot, but passed on it because of the tax credit and will probably order another one with the hopes it comes before March (my wife wants it but now wants it in a different color than what we ordered).
There are EVs I like just not enough to buy them NOW NOW NOW.
