Peter DeLorenzo’s columns have been getting repetitive of late. In his latest missive he complains once again about efforts to electrify the automotive fleet.
Even though vehicles with internal-combustion engines have reached a “new level of excellence,” DeLorenzo (2024) insists that the “powers that be” are “attempting to dictate our future vehicle propulsion choices for us.”
He expresses the most pity for German automakers, who he says have been “forced at figurative gunpoint by government decrees and lobbying by ultra-green environmental societal factions” to commit to a “Grand Transition” to electric vehicles.
Reasonable people can disagree with government policies, but what’s odd about DeLorenzo’s shtick is that he continues to be deathly afraid to talk honestly about the whole reason for a transition — climate change.
DeLorenzo has an embarrassing hole in his argument
The timelines DeLorenzo complains about were not pulled out of a hat — they are responses to a substantial body of scientific research. As we have previously discussed, one reason why those timelines have been compressed is that the auto industry has been dragging its feet for years in coming to terms with its contributions to climate change.
DeLorenzo doesn’t acknowledge the industry’s complicity. Nor does he offer any productive ideas for how automakers could better respond to the climate crisis.
Instead, he continues to demagogue the issue by demonizing his perceived opponents. That may play well inside the little political bubble in which he lives, but it does nothing to actually help solve the problem.
Also see ‘Peter DeLorenzo launches a lazy attack against decarbonization mandates’
It is entirely okay for DeLorenzo to be sad that Porsche is replacing its legendary lineup of gas-powered vehicles with electric ones. It’s also reasonable to criticize the brand if it undercuts its distinctiveness in that transition — particularly in a quest to boost Porsche’s profit margin to 20 percent (Korosec, 2023).
However, the ultimate problem isn’t the means of propulsion — it’s the decay of the organizational culture that made Porsche great.
One irony of this situation is that if Ferdinand Porsche were still alive, I would not be surprised if he aggressively advocated for transitioning away from internal-combustion engines. Visionary engineers don’t sit around and whine — they invent solutions to problems.
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RE:SOURCES
- DeLorenzo, Peter; 2024. “Not-so-beautiful dreamers.” Auto Extremist. Posted March 24.
- Korosec, Kirsten; 2023. “Porsche adds all-electric flagship SUV to its growing EV lineup.” Tech Crunch. Posted March 13.
Peter has it absolutely right! This transition to BEV is not being driven by natural market forces but by political mandates that disregard the vast majority of the buying public. And, true to form for the politicians and their bureaucrats, they want to set timelines without actual consideration of technological, producibility, and life cycle implications.
Government policy is being driven by science. I get that it has become increasingly fashionable to attack science when its findings conflict with one’s ideological priors, but that doesn’t make the reality being described go away.
DeLorenzo was too busy demagoguing the issue to acknowledge that the Biden administration’s just-announced climate change rules were a moderate response to intense debates about feasibility versus the need for rapid action. That’s the political process in action.
“The rules give manufacturers more time and flexibility than the EPA’s original proposal, which envisaged two thirds of new sales being electric by the end of this decade” (Hall, 2024).
The climate zealots want that everyone agrees with them and will accept that it is OK to shove down their throats all the changes shey claim are needed.
There is a far different reality/perception in the marketplace where it requires normal people to vote with their wallet. The zealots, aligned politicians and the aligned bureaucrats fail to grasp that this disconnect is real. Just because they can pass some laws does not make their version of desired results come to pass. There is also a recognition, by all but the zealots, that mandated timelines can and will get moved as the deadline becomes more imminate.
“Save the Planet” is not a winning reason to make the big change to BEV for average people. Forcing the manufacturers to make more BEVs so they can sit on the dealers lots unsold isn’t sustainable. Of course the zealots, politicians and bureaucrats have no concern that the manufacturers need to produce products that regular people want to use actual money to buy and that these vehicles are profitable.
Peter is seeing an industry and its internal reality of how it has to make business decisons that commit actual money for a marketplace where product is has to be sold. All the other “touchy feely crap” is a sideshow fullfilling some stupid PR stunt.
Peter is also spot on when he sees a long life ahead for ICE. In my take there are going to be companies that do some serious backtracking in their product offerings as the marketplace speaks with their wallet and manufacturers realize that buyers are not giving up ICE. Even California’s politicians are going to be forced to face this when off in the distant future becomes here and now.
What’s curious to me about your rhetoric is that you throw around dismissive terms like “climate zealots” but you don’t even bother to engage the science behind it. In other words, there’s no there there to your argument. It’s all table pounding and no facts.
The facts are in the sales of EVs and how the push for EVs is political mandates and not by natural market forces.
One can even look at Tesla and see that they were not making actual profit from the retail sale of the cars but by selling the EPA credits to other manufacturers. I don’t know but maybe they have finally turned the corner and now make profit directly from the cars.
You live in one of the “green” areas of the country. I, on the other hand, am in the middle of the country where that is not the prevailing attitude. Dealers I know talk of BEV that hardly sell yet the manufacturer wants them to invest huge amounts of money into their store for these limited sale showroom anchors. (One friend gave up a franchise over the investment amount required for the BEVs they expected would not sell.) When I look around on the streets and in the parking lots there are only occasional BEVs to be seen.
You are hung up on the science justifying it all. The marketplace is what really matters and it is speaking with wallets.
Unfortunately for the manufacturers the government is making mandates contrary to their buyers. The result is they are being forced to make massive investments in technologies to placate those that do not have to care about business realities.
If you went to your doctor and he ran a bunch of tests and told you that you had cancer, would you dismiss his words by saying, “You’re hung up on the science”?
I would hope not, but these days? Who knows? Thank you for posting this. As usual, the pushback you received ignores the very sound scientific reasons for the policies. Climate change is here, and it’s accelerating. But as you said, people these days don’t respect knowledge, scientific or otherwise.
I agree 100% with your comment and thanks also to Steve for this post. I stopped reading DeLorenzo years ago because of his right-wing rants. So much for the unvarnished, high-octane truth! He’d make a good companion to Matt Posky, the current editor-in-chief of The Truth About Cars, who never passes up a chance to bash electric vehicles.
If one has researched the maps of the likelihood of the rising sea-levels along all of the coasts of the North American continent in the next 50-years, if one lives along the coasts next to major bodies of water, one might be alarmed. Already in many places seaside, along these coasts people are experiencing high-tide flooding, which is raising everybody’s insurance rates. After all, the highest point in Florida is Britton Hill at 345-feet (105-meters), near the De Funiak Springs, south of the Alabama border. Perhaps those of us who believe that the seas will rise because of global warming should sell some prime real estate in and around Miami on the coast ! Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s maps are likely the worst-case scenario of the incursion of the seas and oceans along the coasts, but the predictions are likely on the money. My minor in college was physics and math, but as a lifelong observer in local weather and as an associate member of the National Meteorological Society (between 1974 and 1999), I was skeptical of global warming; however, the earth’s climate is affected by the wobble in the earth’s axis of rotation, the position of the earth vis-a-vis the sun’s radiation pattern and variations in solar activity. Yes, certain events on earth like the prolonged eruption of the volcano Krakatoa in 1883 can affect global temperatures.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/florida-map-shows-where-state-will-become-underwater-from-sea-level-rise/ar-BB1kJLtu
https://sealevel.nasa.gov/ipcc-ar6-sea-level-projection-tool
The creation of social media (which includes comment threads on websites) has been good in many ways, but one downside is that it has been a powerful conduit for climate-denialist narratives. If you look closely at these narratives you can often trace them back to propaganda groups that are funded by industries that oppose climate change regulations.
One sign that a narrative may have come from a propaganda group rather than credible scientists is when conspiracy-charged language is used such as, “What climate change zealots refuse to listen to” . . . and then they proceed to discuss a “theory” that has not gained much, if any, traction in credible climate science journals.
This is why I decided early on that Indie Auto wouldn’t go very deeply into the science of climate change. If folks want to test out their pet theories about why the scientists are all wrong, then I would invite them to check out realclimate.org. This is a website run by climate scientists who see it as an important goal to better educate the public and media about the issue.
For example, let’s say you are someone who has read about the impact of solar activity on climate change. Real Climate’s current top story addresses that narrative (go here). The language can get somewhat technical but what’s important is that the content is grounded in science that has withstood the peer-review process.
One irony of the attack against the legitimacy of climate science is that this topic has been researched by a remarkably large number of scientists around the world from a wide range of disciplines. The reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change represent a synthesis of that knowledge.