“Despite the optimists telling us how well EVs are selling and that the charging and cost issues will be quickly resolved, the industry struggles.  The math doesn’t work, and consumers are concluding hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs) better meet their driving needs.  Auto executives are wondering whether their betting on the EV transition, even with mandates, is putting them on the road to bankruptcy.”

“The math doesn’t work,” Mark Fields, former Ford Motor CEO, told Joe Kernen of CNBC early last week.  Until the industry solves charging and cost issues, EV sales will continue to underperform.  The bottom line for Fields is that “the government [Biden administration] will have to back off” its policies mandating two-thirds of new vehicle sales being EVs by 2030.  Absent such an adjustment, emissions will worsen, and the EV transition will lag. …

[Ed. Note: Part I yesterday examined quotations on the primacy of energy for human betterment from friends of conventional energy. Today’s post adds respect from foes of oil, gas, and coal.

Free-market energy proponents gain the high ground when they stress the utilitarian nature of affordable, plentiful, reliable energy. Energy statists must play defense when their opponents stress the need to keep energy affordable for the less financially able and those billion-plus world citizens who do not have access to modern forms of energy.

Increased energy affordability is not bad but good. Yet cheap energy is the enemy to the other side (although the Obama greens will not publicly admit it). Julian Simon noticed as much when he wrote The Cheaper the Energy the Better during the BTU tax debate in 1993:

Some people simply believe that it is ipso facto a good thing to use less energy and have less economic growth.

Ed note: As COP28 wound down, the African Energy Chamber issued this communication.

“African producers have not and will not agree to phasing out fossil fuels. Unlike the rest of the developed world, the continent has not yet had the chance to transform its economies through oil and gas. In order to develop, grow and address concerns such as energy poverty and industrialization, oil and gas will need to remain central for years to come.”

Oil and gas will play an instrumental role in Africa’s economy for decades to come, and as such, African producers will not agree to any phase-out of these resources.

Despite the fact that over 600 million people are still without access to electricity and over 900 million people lack access to clean cooking in Africa, the continent’s COP 28 negotiators are caving into pressure from the West, stating that Africa is open to a phase-out approach regarding fossil fuels.…

“The case of Guillermo Yeatts for subsoil privatization should eclipse ‘climate change’ as the number one policy initiative of the 21st century. This friend of private property, free markets, the rule of law, and civil society, a successful entrepreneur in his own right, a thinker and doer, has set up an excellent opportunity for a new political era in his beloved Argentina.”

Give me liberty, not corruption and poverty! The recent election of Javier Milei of La Libertad Avanza (Liberty Advances) in Argentina was a resounding vote for freedom and prosperity. And don’t let the mainstream media marginalize him (“frequent conservative provocateur” … “far-right libertarian rants” ….). He has a grand opportunity to enact a national “social justice” that could be a model for many other nations in Latin and South America and in other regions of the world.…