President-elect Donald Trump made a multitude of “day one” promises throughout the campaign to begin work on an array of issues, setting himself up for an extremely busy first day back in office.
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Volkswagen (VW) said Wednesday that it needs to cut costs amid slackening consumer demand for electric vehicles (EVs) and weaker car sales in China.
VW’s profits fell 64% in the third quarter of 2024, driving the company’s share price to its lowest level since October 2010. Now, the world’s largest automaker by sales is looking to lower its expenses, with VW’s top labor leader announcing earlier this week that the company was aiming to shut at least three of its German factories, slash wages 10% and lay off thousands of employees.
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Swedish automaker Volvo Cars said on Wednesday that it is scrapping its goal of going fully electric by 2030 as the electric vehicle (EV) market continues to struggle.
The company announced it now aims for between 90 percent and 100 percent of its cars to be fully electric or plug-in hybrids by the end of the decade, with the remainder being “mild,” non-plug-in hybrids, a company press release stated. Volvo’s backpedaling comes amid lower-than-expected consumer demand for EVs and a recent industry shift away from electrification.
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Ford said Wednesday that it is canceling its plans to build a three-row electric SUV as the wider U.S. electric vehicle (EV) market continues to struggle.
The company announced that it expects to take up to $1.9 billion in write downs and other special charges related to its decision after losing billions of dollars on its EV product line in 2023. In addition to canceling its three-row electric SUV, Ford is also pushing back its plans to roll out an electric pickup truck model until 2027, a one-year setback.
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In a recent interview, World Energy Council Secretary General Angela Wilkinson told me that one of the main impediments to the energy transition today is a lack of what she calls “systems thinking.”
“Energy transitions are a change in the organization of society,” she pointed out. “They’re not a simple case of swapping out one technology for another and everything else stays the same. Yet, we have this very simplistic narrative that we can take the oil system, we can put renewables in, it’s going to happen immediately, and nothing else will change. It’s like saying we’re going to take your thighbone out, but we’d like you to run a marathon.”
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As state and federal policies mandate the electrification of virtually all end uses to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels. For example, 18 states have adopted California’s Advanced Clear Car II rules requiring increasing percentages of new vehicle sales to be EVs, reaching 100% for the 2035 model year. In 2019, New York City enacted Local Law 97, which requires all residential buildings larger than 25,000 square feet to convert to electricity by 2035. Other states, such as New Jersey seek to convert all residential heating to electricity.
Together, mandates for electric vehicles (EVs) and electrification of space and water heat will likely double electricity consumption and peak demand. Coupled with policies that mandate supplying the nation’s electricity with zero-emissions resources, notably intermittent wind and solar power, not only will electricity prices continue to increase but the ability to meet consumers’ increased demand will become more problematic.
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The U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer and its top executive have given hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign cash to Democrats in recent years.
Stella Li, a top executive for BYD Americas, and the company itself have given tens of thousands of dollars in campaign cash to Democratic candidates and organizations in California and beyond over the past decade, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation review of federal and state political spending records. Based in China, BYD is the biggest EV producer in the world, and Congress moved in January to ban the Pentagon from buying its batteries due to security risks, according to Bloomberg News.
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Ford is reversing course on plans to manufacture electric vehicles (EVs) at a major plant and instead will produce gas-powered, heavy-duty pickup trucks at the facility, Reuters reported Thursday.
The company initially planned to build three-row electric SUVs at its facility in Oakville, Canada, between 2025 and 2027, but the plant will now add capacity to produce 100,000 F-Series Super Duty trucks at the plant, according to Reuters. Ford said that it is still committed to producing those EVs on that timeline, though it is unclear which of its plants will handle that production.
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The Biden administration announced Thursday that it is spending billions of dollars more to help automakers mass-produce electric vehicles (EVs).
The Department of Energy (DOE) is spending $1.7 billion to help manufacturers convert closed or struggling manufacturing facilities to produce EVs or EV components in eight states, including swing states like Pennsylvania and Georgia, as the American EV market struggles. The funding complements $12 billion the DOE unveiled in August 2023 to help major manufacturers retrofit plants for EV production, and the agency projects that the cash announced Thursday will allow for the retention of 15,000 union workers while creating nearly 3,000 jobs.
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The lithium-ion batteries that are essential to the green energy transition are an “unrecognized and potentially growing” source of chemical pollution, according to a new study published in Nature.
The study sought to fill in knowledge gaps about whether or not chemicals used in lithium-ion battery components can pose environmental hazards, a key question given that Western policymakers are relying on the technology to help replace fossil fuel-fired infrastructure and meet long-term emissions reductions targets. After conducting “a cradle-to-grave evaluation” on the subject and collecting dozens of samples in the U.S. and Europe, the study’s authors “[confirmed] the clean energy sector as an unrecognized and potentially growing source” of chemical pollution, and that the growing prominence of lithium-ion batteries around the world makes pollution from their waste “an issue of global concern.”
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