From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
From the Telegraph:
Where have all the green jobs gone?
End repost from NALOPKT
Here’s some of the hype from a couple years ago.
So many buzzwords:
We design everything from the ground up. So the platform architecture, the components, the body structure, the materials and the software that powers our vehicles, to make sure that we can make a vehicle which is not only more efficient in its cargo volume, its payload, but that we can really target technologies and features specified and optimized for commercial fleets.
we do it to enable scalability.
So where traditional vehicles are using complex, expensive, high pressure stamped metals, which are then painted, we have built a new body structure entirely and a new proprietary material from the ground up. All of these panels are fully recyclable, so at end of life or in the instance that we do need to replace a panel by taking this part, putting it through a recycling process and really finally bringing a circular economy to body structures.
You lose the will when informed that this thing failed because they couldn’t afford the ‘glue‘ that held these crates together..
Glue ffs? Glue?????!!!!
kindergarten science meets kindergarten engineering
If they’re going to make them out of plastic, there are tried and tested methods of assembly without employing adhesives:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj0bp2nIsCk
Slightly o/t, but it seems that Geoff might’ve stumbled across the reason that people are reluctant to buy any sort of EV:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-zKTqe19ss
By George, I think he’s got it..
“going to make them out of plastic…”
Then, there will be some more interesting compounds in the smoke when they burn.
Sounds like their “Circular Economy” might bring a final destination of the “Circular File” for the company.
In this case it sounds like they are getting close to the old circular firing squad.
“Circular Economy” apparently means they started with nothing and will end with nothing.
This type of circular economy is just the event horizon for an economic black hole.
Geoff Buys Cars – Brilliant analysis : Subscribed!
Those are the only plastic vehicles that should be produced.
Whither the plastic once we have ‘transitioned’ from fossil fuels? Can wind turbines produce it?
There’s a photoshop opportunity for someone skilled at it.
An EV van made of scrapped windmill blades!
Bad news for Tesla’s – the mayor of Chambery (where the French Tesla dealership fire happened on Oct 6th) said it may have been a Tesla charging that spread to all 14 cars, based on initial reports from fire crews. It was also mentioned that this was unlike the German (Frankfurt – Sept 13th) car dealership fire where environmental activists had set the fires and 10 Tesla’s were destroyed with 5 more damaged. On the same day (Oct 6th), in Turkey, a lorry carrying 6 model Y Tesla’s was destroyed after all 6 went up in flames. Don’t buy Tesla.
In the industry they call them adhesives. I’ve been out of manufacturing for a while but they used adhesives on metal body parts also.
glue, adhesive
horse mackerel, bluefin tuna
windmill, wind turbine
idiot, cretin, retarded
Sometimes you can get a reset by changing the name of something, but not always.
My entire life, Honda and Toyota have had the same names for their vehicles. Ford, GM and some others seem to change every few years. Only Icons like Corvette, Mustang and F150 have stayed the same.
Snickers, Cif cleaning products.
My favorite glue story:
The Mosquito fighter/bomber was made of wood and glued together. It’s performance was amazing and it was invisible to radar. The Germans tried to reproduce it but couldn’t figure out the glue. The Brits realized what was going on and belatedly made the glue top secret. On the other hand, when they tried the Mosquitos in the South Pacific, they fell apart because of the humidity.
My own experience with glue is mixed. I did a couple of small projects with construction adhesive, which failed rather quickly, ie. a few years. On the other hand, I built a small tray of glass glued together with silicone caulking. It’s still kicking around on my workbench after about 40 years.
From the above story:
Old steel cars are crushed and turned back into steel. As far as I can tell, the scrap metal industry is older than the automobile industry. ie. Recycling wasn’t invented by the greenies.
The free market is pretty good at recovering value.
The only time when recycling has to be mandated, is when it costs money.
Though stealthy, it was not “invisible” to German Radar. Ground radar could track them with difficulty once the operators knew what to look for.
A good number of Mosquito bombers were lost to German night fighters. The majority of those lost were “pregnant Mosquitos” designed to carry a single 4,000 lb. blockbuster bomb nick named the “cookie”. Carrying such a load the Mosquito lost it’s advantage of speed, maneuverability, and rate of climb until the bomb was released. And of course that big hunk of metal increased the radar signature.
The whole idea for the Mosquito was based on two problems.
Geoffrey de Havilland had an uphill battle selling the aircraft to the Air Ministry, but in the end the cream rose to the top and the Mosquito was the most successful aircraft Geoffrey designed during his long career.
Eventually they did solve the problem of the glue holding up in tropical conditions and the Mosquito flew important very long range recon missions in the CBI theater the last year of the war.
They switched to Resorcinol glue, which is formaldehyde based… another chemical banned from everyday use. It is so good that I have an 80 year old airplane with some of the original Resorcinol glue holding things together quite well.
I design and build small boats, the biggest is 20ft, I use construction adhesive exclusively, PL Premium 3x or 8x, and have never had a failure. One of my older boats was retired and my brother used in his chicken yard for shade, still going strong even though it is exposed to all sorts of weather.
Good posting. When you look up the ARRIVAL story it has many alarming and damning aspects. Like “burning through huge piles of cash” and “US customers getting a $40,000.00 subsidy credit due to Inflation Reduction Act” (so, that’s where inflation is coming from!). Good riddance to this rolling barbecue wannabe..
I suspect the dumbfek investors of my pension fund have put my money in this train wreck.
Arrival was DOA.
Somebody actually did the maths and discovered the cost versus the sale price in an open market did not add up.
Having a range restricted by the weight and recharge time of the battery might have also become clear as a bit of an issue too.
Sad to see any new venture collapse, but those that rely totally on state support for their development and in their pricing strategy, do not belong and should never exist in a free market.
Maybe Cuba or Venezuela or North Korea would like to take up the product and its pricing strategy?
Perhaps sniffer Joe is offering better subsidies?
“Arrival to shrink UK operation and move van production to US
Arrival is abandoning plans to build its new electric van in the UK and shifting production to the US.
https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/van-news/2022/10/21/arrival-to-shrink-uk-operation-and-move-van-production-to-us
They used to call a house a money pit……
Arrival’s departure.
It’s probably never been true but in a free market/capitalist economy private business ventures are meant to survive or perish according to the whims of the marketplace. Hundreds of vehicle marques have disappeared from the US since the advent of automobiles and trucks. Subsidizing products, only necessary when they are rejected by consumers for whatever reasons, flies in the face of the free market. A current example might be low flow toilets meant to conserve water. The user pays for that water. As long as that is the case, what justification is there for its limitation? When water becomes dearer or harder to supply its price will rise and consumers will use less of it, at least in generally accepted economic theory.
Subsidizing EVs or heat pumps or whatever is government’s method of picking winners and losers, a contradiction to free market principles. Maybe it’s time we just admit that we’re living under socialism of a most nefarious and expensive form.
And in science a failed hypothesis is usually thrown out…..
Yes, in science but not with “The Science™,” as in follow the Science™ as the green death cult calls itself sometimes. Has nothing to do with science as practiced by Galileo, Volta, Mendel and Lemaitre.
The governments impose those low flow toilets, and in the same vein, high efficiency or ‘energy star’ washers and dryers so they don’t have to spend money to upgrade the utility to keep up with demand – you pay extra for inferior products to save them money on facilities so they can hand out more to their special interests. There’s a divorce, a Grand Canyon of separation between the who pays for the regulation and who benefits from it.
When generous government subsidies are offered businesses don’t need to be viable for the owners to get rich. They just need to last long enough to skim off a few million $ and stash it in an offshore account before going belly-up. If they’re really smart the owners might be able to go public and rake in much more cash. In many cases these government subsidized industries are just a legalized scam that will collapse once the subsidies run out.
No one wants a plugin electric toy. People want real vehicles. Period. Full stop.
I remember clockwork toys. NO Duracell bunny required.
I have a couple of clockwork engines that will run on O gauge track.
Somebody had spray pointed them. Years ago I used WD-40 to get most of the spray paint off of one them without removing the original lithograph underneath.
Now that I’m retired, maybe I’ll take another crack at it … someday.
(Priorities and all that. My lovely wife assigns me lots of things that “priorities” to her.) 😎
Replace “Vehicles” with “telephone”, read, think.
I knew a girl once that could have saved a fortune in batteries if she’d just bought a plugin electric toy. Just sayin’.
Electric vehicle manufacturers are not just closing down in UK. China is also bumping up against the economic reality of manufacturing costs versus sales without state support.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/china/china-electric-vehicle-wm-motor-files-for-bankruptcy-5508789?utm_source=uschinanoe&src_src=uschinanoe&utm_campaign=uschina-2023-10-13&src_cmp=uschina-2023-10-13&utm_medium=email&cta_utm_source=uschinanoecta&est=TSaHUzAal5GIuvHIgBVhYcR8sSOC8jEPCv3UorU9ZQGYQaR1tFsyAgVBoOnZNcBYE6Q%3D
Nobody wants EV’s, let alone cheap Chinese knock-offs when even domestic EV’s won’t sell. Time to sell at scrap value.
I want a Tesla, just not for what it costs.
Don’t buy Tesla. Unless you want it to be the central part of Nov 5th bonfire night celebrations (or regional equivalent).
Most rational people at least. Of course, that skips all the greentards. Sometimes, even families disagree quite hilariously. I’m teaching a women to fly whose husband bought an electric Ford 150. She told him, great, I’m going to spend all the money you’re saving on car gas on airplane gas.
Yep. All Chinese EV manufacturers have been having problems selling their cars recently – and this in a country which the IEA says is home to 60% of all the EVs in the world. The Chinese Government has had to reinstate tax breaks for purchasing EVs at a cost of £56.9bn to 2027.
Steel is strong, light, inexpensive and very much recyclable. That’s probably why most other vehicles are made of steel. I guess he’s not smarter than all the engineers at all the auto companies.
Dutch vehicle maker DAF has been producing electric trucks for a few years now. They largely look similar to their conventional trucks and use mostly conventional materials. They have recently introduced a new version, the DAF XB electric which comes in 16 and 19 tonnes versions and has a range of up to 350kms with lithium iron phosphate battery.
But what is the net cargo weight, that is the killer? The battery probably weighs 3-5 tons.
Their brochure doesn’t give any details other than the 360km applies to “light applications” and “For more intensive use a DAFB with two batteries (!) can travel up to 200kms”
As you say they are unlikely to rival many current HGVs in terms of load. Obviously they are looking to niche areas.
“light applications” lol…meaning running empty on level ground at room temperature without A/C or heat.
But with government subsidies, all things are possible.
Composite materials are stronger and lighter than steel. Which is why many manufacturers have been switching to them for things like body panels.
Composite materials are stronger and lighter than steel, plus reduced tooling and simpler assembly times reduce costs. However composite material costs are at least 3-4 times more expensive than the equivalent steel making them far more expensive as a finished product.
Which according to your analysis is why aircraft (which have to take off with their fuel energy weight onboard) nowadays are made out of composites and lightweight alloys such as dural and titanium?
When did they stop teaching marketing in business studies?
Marketing is the process that takes place PRIOR to any product being presented to the market, or stopping it being presented and making an expensive mistake.
It includes: regulatory climate, legal regime, political state, market size, consumer, preferences, competitor activity, resource requirements, resource availability, costs, pricing, timetable to gain market share, required sales/promotion activity return on investment… well it’s a long list.
Years ago, when dealing with one of those development corporations that want to attract business to their area, and who have a goody bag of treats to encourage, one of their number remarked that anyone who needed a subsidy to get their business up and running, didn’t have a business.
Any business in the Green industry that had done its marketing, would not proceed. The truth is, all of them only got going and survive (and yes that’s you too Mr Musk) with huge taxpayer provided subsidies and protectionist regulation.
You don’t need much of a marketing effort to see and understand that a business that is wholly dependent on an alternative to fossil fuels, actually requires an apparent, viable alternative, which doesn’t exist nor is on the near horizon.
It is nice to see increasingly the chickens coming home to roost.
“Any business … all of them”
Danger. e.g. There was a tiny electric car market before Inconvenient truth.
Don’t worry it’ll be a tiny electric car market again soon.
Worse than just buzzwords, flaunted lack of wisdom:
“We design everything from the ground up.”
So hundreds of guys paid well for several decades figuring it out were all dummies?
Insert here some trope-ish blanket statement or vignette about learning how seemingly dusty old men built important stuff not long ago.
Workhorse – Manufacturing electric vehicles work horse is an EV maker in Ohio, I wonder how much they get in subsidies?
What? Steel isn’t recyclable?
Super kudos to Paul Homewood and/or the WUWT editor(s) that came up with both the photoshopped image-grab and the Doctor McCoy quote from the TV series Star Trek that top off the above article.
Just perfect in context, with all those concerned-looking expressions!
Thanks. I felt extra silly last night and it slipped out onto the site.
When I first saw the picture I thought it was a David Middleton post!
Keep letting things “slip out”!
Let’s see . . . a current company valuation of 13.3 million euros from a peak value of 13 billion euros represents a 99.86% loss in value. Ouch!
No one can say the warning signs weren’t there:
— founded by Russian “entrepreneur” Denis Sverdlov
— planned to revolutionize EV production with a previous undemonstrated “microfactory system”
— “sought to move manufacturing to the US to take advantage of subsidies available from the Biden administration” (this is the biggest laugher of all . . . we’re gonna get on the US gravy train!)
— nice, glitzy YouTube infomercial loaded with buzzwords, as noted at the end of the above article
Looks like Arrival is soon to be departing, never to be seen again.
Hate to be an outlier but there is a place for delivery vehicles like this in cities, where they return to a central place for charging, at times when electrical demand is low.
Until the charging building burns down. Which seems like a matter of when, not if.
Think milk float, worked for years. Nobody noticed.
Milk floats had heavy lead acid batteries and didn’t need to go over 15-20mph
The subsidy on every pint of milk was paid by charging every customer extra delivered on the doorstep at a time when cars were somewhat rarer.
You will find for this reason, milk floats have largely vanished – put out of business by the local supermarkets.
The newspaper delivery round boy biz also vanished largely caused by the paperless internet.
Best know some facts before quoting the electric delivery systems of the past.
Best think what might happen if the green fanatics get their way before dissing the possible electric delivery systems of the future? Few, if any, cars and no electricity for luxuries such as the internet? We would be lucky just to go backwards to a lifestyle of the 50’s or 60’s.
Maybe.
Let the unsubsidized market decide.
Yeah, well. Arraviste.
And Au Revoir!
Let’s bankrupt the California school districts also.
story tip
California mandates all new school buses be electric by 2035 (yahoo.com)
Such mandate will disappear upon the first lawsuit filed for the serious injury or death of a child due to an EV school bus catching fire while being occupied.
This is not something that I would ever wish for . . . but the evidence says it WILL happen.
It makes you wonder how far away the buses will need to be parked for safe distance charging before driving to the needed areas. Maybe it would be better for them to have African children push the buses instead of being exposed to pit wall collapses in African makeshift cobalt mines.
Norway is perhaps going to be the ‘control test’ for Evs having passed a law that all public procurement of cars have to be Evs from 2023 and all city buses from 2025
It’s nice to imagine that bureaucrats and politicians in the US, UK and Australia would be open to revising their positions based on objective data coming out of, say, Norway’s “control test” for EV mass transportation . . . however, this phrase rings true for them: Don’t confuse me with the facts, my mind’s made up.
Yeah, great idea. If you don’t like your kids..
EV’s are incredibly expensive to repair. That is partly due to the manufacturer using non-optimum approaches to design and assembly. There is a recent article that a minor rear end collision with a Rivian cost $42,000 to repair apparently due to the body design where a single panel comprised the whole rear of the vehicle. This necessitated replacing over half of the car for a minor accident. Absolutely insanely dumb engineering.
The escalating expenses of repairing vehicles with advanced technology underscore the challenges posed by electronics and complex components.
Rivian pickup repair for a minor rear-end collision cost $42,000, nearly half the truck’s price.
Rising repair costs are linked to complex electronics and challenging-to-replace components in modern vehicles.
Mitchell data indicates a 36% increase in average accident-damaged vehicle repairs since 2018, with potential costs exceeding $5,000 this year, and EVs incurring higher repair expenses.
The $42,000 Fix: Rivian Pickup Repair Cost Underscores Modern Vehicle Challenges – Motor Illustrated
It saves money to make with far fewer parts and the repair is someone else’s problem. suckers
A hybrid Range Rover EVoke just took out a multistory car park and 1500 vehicles at Luton airport.
Saving the planet , one day at a time.
It’s Evoque and it might not have been – that was one possible contender, the more likely one is a Land Rover Sport hybrid. You might find it interesting to go back and look at the article posted up on WUWT a little while ago for more information.
Quite!
History as my history teacher told us at school, is made by what people BELIEVE happened instead of what actually happened!!
Well partially correct – history is made by what the survivors of history want to believe happened, or want you to believe happened!
Before you suggest I’m maybe buying into the ‘diesel only’ theory – I did mention the other contender was a hybrid, didn’t I? And both are Jaguar Land Rover cars, from a company with a track record of engine faults and fires?
Interesting about the body panels. A new ‘proprietary’ material? Plastic? Wood? No wonder the glue.