Fragile EV Batteries
In addition to the disadvantages of a high purchase price, lengthy recharging times, difficulties in finding charging stations, and occasional spontaneous combustion, it now turns out that electric vehicle batteries are extremely fragile. Fender-bender collisions are resulting in damage to the vehicle's battery that cannot be repaired. Consequently, many of these vehicles are considered "totalled" for insurance purposes. Unsurprisingly, insuring EVs is becoming more costly.
The scrapping of these damaged low-mileage EVs is also undermining the promised "sustainability" performance claims for the EVs. Matthew Avery, research director at automotive risk intelligence company Thatcham Research, said "replacing gasoline powered cars with EVs was supposed to help the environment. In order to do that we need to get a lot of miles out of each EV before it is scrapped. However, if an EV battery has to be thrown away after a minor collision the anticipated environmental benefits will never be achieved."
Despite this discouraging new wrinkle in the EV plan, President Biden remains confident that "my son Hunter can find a way to lower the cost of manufacturing the batteries. He has many contacts in China with companies that have access to extremely cheap Uighur labor. If we could outsource the building of EV batteries to one of these Chinese companies we could cut labor costs to practically zero and prevent the Earth from undergoing climate change."
A potential flaw in Biden's plan is that a key factor besides using slave labor to keep manufacturing costs down is the construction of two new coal-fired power plants per week. Ji Zou, CEO & President of Energy Foundation China, says he is "unconcerned about the unfavorable pollution profile of coal-fired energy because the prevailing winds will blow the smoke away from my country and out over the Pacific Ocean."
