In September, thousands pagers and walkie-talkies held by members of Hezbollah exploded. The incident appears to have been the result of explosives hidden within the batteries of the devices by Israel’s intelligence service, Mossad, and the Israeli military, then triggered remotely.
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Automakers have continued to backpedal on electric vehicle (EV) targets over the last year as a slackening of consumer demand has hampered growth despite the billions in subsidies lavished on the industry by the Biden-Harris administration.
A wide array of auto manufacturers have abandoned key EV goals since February, with Volvo, Ford and Mercedes-Benz all dialing back electric quotas or dropping previously planned product lines. The shifts in corporate strategy suggest the EV transition — once touted by auto executives like Ford CEO Jim Farley as the industry’s future — may not be as feasible as once thought due to consumer aversion to lower mileage ranges, a lack of charging infrastructure and higher prices, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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Though the Biden administration’s emissions standards – often referred to as an electric vehicle mandate – don’t kick into 2032, the policy is already running into problems with charging station availability, declining consumer interest and automakers losing billions of dollars on their EV sales.Â
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The word charade has several meanings, and including an act or event that is clearly false (Cambridge Dictionary), something done just for show (Vocabulary.com), or a situation in which people pretend that something is true when it clearly is not (Oxford Leaner’s Dictionary).
The charade I refers to is President Biden’s $7.5 billion dollar investment to install 500,000 electric charging stations along America’s highways by 2030. A reliable and convenient public EV charging infrastructure is critical to achieve the President’s goal of meeting the recent EPA CO2 emission regulation that require nearly 72 percent of U.S. new light vehicle sales to be fully electric or plug-in hybrid by 2032. Without diving deeper into the announcement, one would likely assume that $7.5 billion is sufficient to construct the 500,000 charging stations, one every 50 miles along the nation’s highways.
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Nearly half of American electric vehicle (EV) owners want to buy an internal combustion engine model the next time they buy a car, according to a new study from McKinsey and Company, a leading consulting firm.
Approximately 46 percent of Americans who own an EV want to go back to a standard vehicle for their next purchase, citing issues like inadequate charging infrastructure and affordability, according to McKinsey’s study, which was obtained and reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The study’s findings further suggest that the Biden administration’s EV push is struggling to land with American consumers, after 46 percent of respondents indicated that they are unlikely or very unlikely to purchase an EV in a June poll conducted by The Associated Press and the University of Chicago’s Energy Policy Institute.
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An electric vehicle (EV) producer that was once a splashy start-up company has filed for bankruptcy.
Fisker filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Tuesday after trying and failing to secure more investment to stay afloat, the company announced. The company once attracted robust interest and hype, marketing itself as the Apple of vehicles, but it struggled to run as a public company and was stuck with thousands of EVs that it did not sell, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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Criminals are increasingly stealing cables from electric vehicle (EV) charging stations around the country, according to The Associated Press.
In a growing trend, thieves are targeting EV chargers to cut off their cables and take the valuable copper contained inside the wiring, often rendering the vandalized chargers useless until repairs can be made, according to the AP. Especially if they accelerate, the thefts could be another hurdle for the Biden administration’s major EV push, which has struggled to beat back consumers’ concerns about EV range and charger availability.
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President Joe Biden has pledged to install 500,000 public electric vehicle (EV) chargers around the U.S. by 2030, but logistical hurdles may be too much to overcome.
The Biden administration landed $7.5 billion to build out a network of public EV charging stations around the country in the bipartisan infrastructure package of 2021, but those funds have only led to a handful of operational charging stations to date. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg reaffirmed the administration’s goal to build 500,000 chargers with the money by 2030 during a May television appearance on CBS News, but challenges like adding transmission lines, navigating the permitting process and coordinating with utility companies figure to make the goal improbable.
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China’s largest electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer, BYD, announced Tuesday that two of its new hybrid models have ranges that far exceed those of American competitors, The Wall Street Journal reported.
BYD’s chairman Wang Chuanfu claimed at an event in Xian, China, that the company was launching two new hybrid models that could go 2,100 kilometers, or 1,306 miles, on a single tank of gas and a full charge, according to the WSJ. The range is almost double the range of global hybrid competitors, which is around 1,100 km, or 683 miles, at the upper limit, and far exceeds the 700-mile range achieved by America’s longest-driving hybrid in 2023, the Lexus ES 300h.
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Electric vehicle (EV) maker Lucid Motors announced that the company would be laying off staff in a bid to lower expenses amid a slowdown in the market.
The layoffs will affect 6% of its workforce, equating to around 400 employees, and will trim from all employee levels, including leadership and mid-level management, according to a filing submitted Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Lucid is one of several EV makers to announce layoffs in recent months as consumers decline to adopt the product at the rate expected.
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