1 News reports:

Patrick Reynolds’ $8000 e-bike is among those. Three weeks ago, his ride was stolen from Britomart in Auckland.

CCTV footage has captured the thief using an angle grinder to break it free. Reynolds, who is a transport advocate, sought help from police but despite supplying clear photographs, and a live GPS location of the stolen bike, police said they didn’t have enough “evidential sufficiency” to progress the investigation.

Speaking to Breakfast this morning, Reynolds said he’s frustrated by the situation, especially because he has anti-theft technology built into his bike to prevent this happening.

“There is a theft crime epidemic in Central Auckland, there’s CCTV but it still needs humans to do their job.”

This is intolerable. When you can provide proof of a stolen item’s location, it should become a priority for police to follow up.

In a statement to Breakfast, police said the information provided by the GPS wasn’t sufficient to conduct a search warrant.

I’m sceptical of that claim, but if it is true, then the Government should move to amend the law so a GPS record of a stolen item’s location is sufficient for a search warrant,

The Herald reports:

Wellington City Council has decided to replace its parking meter system at a cost it will not disclose, despite paying $1.5 million to install a new sensor network as recently as 2016.

The new pay-by-plate meters that went live this month are a paperless system that uses a vehicle licence plate number, rather than a numbered car park, to record parking time and payment.

The meters also offer the choice of English or te reo Māori instructions, which the council says supports its commitment to Pōneke becoming a bilingual city.

So they spent $1.5 million for a señor network they are getting rid of, and won’t tell us how much they are spending on the new system.

And how much of the undisclosed cost is to make the meters bilingual, considering they tell us they do not have enough money to fix the pipes. What is more important to ratepayers – working water pipes, or bilingual parking meters?

James Shaw has announced his resignation as Greens co-leader. This is not hugely surprising with the Greens in opposition. Almost inevitably Chloe Swarbrick will replaces him as co-leader since they changed their rules to allow two women to be co-leaders (but not two men!).

Chloe could well lift support for the Greens at the expense of Labour.

The next leadership change is likely to be Marama Davidson stepping down in 2025, and being replaced by Tamatha Paul.

David Williams at Newsroom reports:

Mauger attracted headlines in Saturday’s Press newspaper for his “wishlist”, including a “serious bid” for the 2030 Commonwealth Games. (The Olympic Committee has said it’s considering bidding for the 2034 event.)

Yesterday, city councillors discussed Mauger’s motion to get the ball rolling. What was agreed to was council staff, with input from the city’s economic development arm ChristchurchNZ, would give advice about whether a bid for 2030, or 2034, was viable.

“This is just getting it underway to ask the question: is it possible?” the mayor said, defensively. “They could come back and say it’s an absolute fizzer.”

You don’t need a report. The answer is clearly no.

The important international context here is Victoria (population: 6.5 million), pulled out of hosting the 2026 Commonwealth Games because of cost overruns. Fears over funding also led the Canadian province of Alberta (population: 4.8 million) to scrap its consideration of hosting the 2030 games.

To add to this grim picture, Birmingham (population: 4.3 million in the wider metro area), the British city that hosted the 2022 games, is in dire financial trouble, with its city council effectively declaring itself bankrupt.

A city of a few hundred thousand could never be viable for games in this era.

The Glasgow games cost over a billion dollars and 80% had to be funded by taxpayers or ratepayers. The Melbourne games were looking to cost over $7 billion.

Josh Drummond shares his conspiracy theory about how there is somehow a link between the No campaign on The Australian voice referendum, and various groups in NZ.

Now I have no problem with Joshua shouting out his conspiracy theory to anyone who will listen. He’s wrong in every aspect, but he is entitled to be wrong. But what has happened is taxpayers have paid for his conspiracy theory to be turned into a documentary that screened on the state television broadcaster. So we have taxpayer funded misinformation.

Joshua’s conspiracy theory is nothing new. There have been versions of it for 20 – 30 years. Sometimes it is the Mont Pelerin Society who is the evil overlord, but now it is the Atlas Foundation.

Life is too short for me to rebut every sentence of his theory, but here’s just a few.

The short version is that there are a bunch of well-funded, right-wing, neoliberal influence and lobbying groups in New Zealand, who share links with similar groups overseas

Oh my God. There are groups in NZ who have links to other groups. Is he talking about Action Station getting funding from the Global Greens and OPEN. Of course not. What is mundane to almost everyone, becomes evil if it occurs on the right.

They are ostensibly independent groups, but they coordinate their activities, share resources, trade personnel, and — when you zoom out slightly — essentially work as one large body.

Now we have the fact that staff sometimes change jobs and employers. Yes an NZTU staffer went on to work at the NZ Initiative. This was not a sharing of resource. They poached him! Another NZTU staffer got picked by Business NZ. Others have gone in to work at DPMC, Reserve Bank etc. Does this mean the Reserve Bank works with NZTU? Well as NZTU savages them regularly, that would come as a surprise.

Two Green Party MPs now run Greenpeace and Forest & Bird. Is that a sharing of resource? Another worked for the Helen Clark Foundation. Is that a conspiracy? Or it is just that people interested in public policy tends to gets jobs in the same area?

In fact, several of the groups officially operate under the auspices of one giant neoliberal anthill organisation, called the Atlas Network

They don’t operate under the auspices of Atlas anymore than Greenpeace operates under the auspices of the Global Climate Action Network. Joining an international grouping is again an absolutely mundane happening for any organisation.

Their modus operandi is to write stultifyingly dull papers, create model legislation, get pet MPs and parties elected, and incessantly insert their messaging into the public consciousness via the media.

Oh how evil – they write policy papers, draft legislation and communicate with the public. How dare they!

They consistently oppose both climate action and recognition of indigenous rights

The NZTU has long supported the Emissions Trading Scheme and even the inclusion of agriculture into it. The NZ Initiative has been a leading voice for why the ETS is the best policy for reducing greenhouse has emissions. Opposing bad climate policy is not the same as opposing all climate policy.

And the assertion about indigenous rights should be read as not supporting co-governance of public services, which is a very different issue.

Lobbyists and their ilk advance their agenda in the media through the following methods: 

1. Giving journalists their phone numbers and never failing, as I mention in the doco, to pick up when it rings, to deliver some variation on “the world’s richest and most sociopathic people are right, actually.”

Now as you read Joshua’s description of anyone on the right who disagrees with him, remember he was given a taxpayer funded documentary to convince people of his views. Very balanced eh.

Numerous examples include New Zealand Institute asset Luke Malpass waltzing into the job of political editor at Stuff, a position he wields with all the impartiality of a used car salesman

Numerous reporters have worked for organisations on the left. I recall some in the gallery who used to work for the PPTA for example. So again it is only evil when a journalist has worked for a non-left organisation. Malpass incidentally was the opinion and features editor for The Australian Financial Review before being appointed to Stuff.

ex-National leader Simon Bridges failing into a podcast at Stuff

LOL. Simon’s podcasts are as far removed from politics as you can get. They’re actually really interesting as he is very good at getting famous NZers to talk about their lives. How this has anything to do with the a referendum on the Treaty, god knows.

long-time right-wing lobbyist Matthew Hooton getting a seemingly eternal opinionist gig at NZME; and his (current? former? I don’t know, and neither do you, because the media outlets he appears on often don’t deign to tell us) consigliere Ben Thomas, who rejoices in the lifetime appointment of Chief Migraine Officer on the Spinoff’s exhausting political podcast, Gone By Lunchtime.

Hooton being in the media is bad. Left wing lobbyists are fine. And last time I looked Ben Thomas actually worked for a lobbying firm owned by Jacinda’s former chief of staff!

News media can also choose to identify when stories have been shopped to them by members of astroturf influence organisations like the Taxpayer’s Union, or (more ideally) refuse to run their hit pieces.

Now again Josh is quite entitled to think media should not report on stories from any organisation he dislikes. That’s freedom. But again I remind people, this is who got a taxpayer funded documentary – a guy who thinks organisations on the right should be banned by the media. He also repeats the lie that NZTU is some sort of astroturf organisation when it has over 200,000 supporters and is over 80% funded by small dollar donors. But hey facts should never get in the way.

Media should identify and label influence groups accurately: for example, identifying a spokesperson as being from the benign-sounding “New Zealand Institute” tells an audience nothing: labelling the New Zealand Institute (accurately) as a “neoliberal lobby group for ultra-free-market economics with representation from some of the biggest corporates in New Zealand on its board” tells audiences what they need to know.

I’d love it if all organisations had such descriptions. “Now we have a spokesperson for Tax Justice Aotearoa, an organisation that consists of four people in Wellington” or “A spokesperson for Greenpeace, a vigilante organisation run by a former Green Party co-leader”

Now back to Atlas, the so called mastermind behind the No vote in Australia. Let’s ignore that the main no group in Australia isn’t even a member of Atlas.

I’m one of two founders of NZTU. When we founded it, we hadn’t even heard of Atlas. We discovered they exist some way down the track and their aim is to support groups that have a classical liberal outlook. They are a pretty small organisation as far as US groups go,. Their annual turnover is around US$20 million a year. Heritage Foundation has six times their revenue – just for US policy. So to fantasise that the global overlord is run on a budget smaller than the budget for some US house campaigns is farcical.

The impact of Atlas on NZTU policy and positions is basically zero. I can say this as someone who sat on the board for almost ten years. They are a great organisation, and occasionally some initiative NZTU has done wins an award by them and a small amount of funding – say $10,000 or so. Now this is less than 1% of NZTU turnover. Small dollar donors contribute (off memory) over 80% of income to NZTU. There has never been a conversation where we say “Hey let’s do this because Atlas might like it” just as I’m sure Action Station don’t decide their priorities based on what they think will please George Soros.

There are deep seated conspiracy theorists on both the extreme right and left of politics. Those on the extreme right think the WEF and WHO actually run New Zealand. They are rightfully dismissed as cranks. Those on the extreme left think Atlas (or Mont Pelerin Society) run the centre-right in New Zealand, but rather than also being dismissed as cranks, they get taxpayer funding to promote their theories on the state broadcaster.

The Herald reports:

The secretary-general of the United Nations on Sunday called on countries to continue funding the main agency providing aid in Gaza after several of its employees were accused of taking part in the Hamas attack on Israel that ignited the war four months ago.

The UN only has itself to blame. The involvement of UNRWA staff with the Hamas attacks may be the catalyst, but there has been numerous scandals over the last decade ranging from UNRWA teachers promoting Jew hatred in schools, to anti-semitic textbooks to teaching kids how to kill Jews etc. This is not a case of a few bad apples, but a culture that has been allowed to flourish for years.

And every time these issues have been raised, the UN did nothing but deny and dissemble. They had the chance to sort them out, but didn’t.

We should join Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the UK and US and cease funding an organisation that is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

The funding should be transferred from UNRWA to agencies that actually have a history of neutrality such as the Red Cross. We should definitely fund relief for those in the Palestinian Territories – but not through UNRWA.

NewstalkZB reports:

The government has scrapped a bill to lower the voting age in local body elections to 16.

Good. Adults should vote, not children.

I believe the voting age should be the same as the drinking age. If you move one away from 18, then the other should do the same.

Radio NZ reports:

The Department of Conservation has conceded there is no guarantee a walkway to Cathedral Cove will ever reopen but expects to know what may be possible by the middle of the year.

The walking track to the popular Coromandel tourist destination was closed in February 2023 after it was badly damaged in extreme weather, including Cyclone Gabrielle.

Over the next few months the Department of Conservation (DOC) will consult on options for a resilient safe track.

I was unaware until recently that the track to Cathedral Cove has been closed for a year. That’s bad enough, but DOC are now saying that they won’t even make a decision on how to proceed until September this year – almost two years after the weather damage.

Cathedral Cove is an iconic destination for New Zealanders and tourists. Having it inaccessible by land for years while DOC dithers should not be acceptable. A reasonable time-frame would be decide on how to best repair it within say three to six months and get it reopened within nine to 12 months max.

But now we are facing it being closed for years, if not indefinitely. This is devastating to local businesses and the community, let alone all those who now can’t get to go there.

The core business of DOC is repairing tracks. It shouldn’t need three lots of consultants reports.

The land was donated to the Crown so that it would be open for public access. DOC’s job is to facilitate that access, not block it. It is ridiculous that they need 18 months just to make a decision.

This is a good opportunity for the new Government to show they are a Government of making things happen, rather than endless discussion. They should press for the track to be re-opened by next summer at the very very latest.

In Part 1 I covered the individual or Micro level problems with EVs. In Part 2 I will cover the bigger national and international level, system wide Macro problems that are major barriers to the universal transition of all personal transport vehicles to fully battery powered.

1 – ELECTRICITY GRID ISSUES

The widespread transition to EVs has many repercussions with respect to three electricity grid issues: firstly, how increasing EV use impacts on how electricity is distributed (the local issue). Secondly, how the volume of additional electricity required can be generated (the system wide issues) and thirdly, how the first and second issues interplay with the separate but related issue of the wider decarbonisation of all electricity generation.

(i) Local issue: As electricity providers plan their grid capacity for cities and towns, the size and amount of power lines is designed to match the reasonably foreseeable future electricity usage of a typical home in that part of a city. There will be redundancies particularly in newer suburbs with room for growth. For established and settled suburbs of urban areas, electricity providers can plan to make reliable supply around very predictable seasonal usage variations. As more homeowners buy EVs then a new very power-hungry device is added to the family’s power usage. A Tesla 3 is a good average size EV to use as an example and this link tells us that, when you add in the 10% recharge slippage of electricity, the Tesla 3’s average overnight recharge if travelling 14,000 miles (20,000 kms) per year (average US annual driving distance), will use about 380 kwh of extra electricity per month. Various government and important electricity industry websites will give you the average monthly electricity usage of the average home in various countries: for example, in the US it’s 900 kwh, in Australia it’s 500 kwh and the UK more like 300 kwh. Obviously, there are considerable home size and regional fluctuations, but these averages will suffice for the point I am making. The average oven uses about 2 kw per hour and a built-in air conditioner running in hot conditions will chew up 4 kw per hour. Charging an average sized EV will use up 64 kwh overnight so it’s like running another big a/c unit AND your oven all night long. Usually this power is used at night at the cheapest rate hence why the addition to an average monthly power bill is not astronomical in most locations, the point is not about the cost of the extra electricity to the new EV owner, it is about the capacity of the local grid to handle a mass conversion to EVs. In the US an average EV charging overnight 5 days a week adds approximately a 40% extra kwh usage load. In Australia, where average driving distances will be similar to the US, this additional load is 75%! Let’s assume that UK and NZ drivers do half the average annual distance so more like 6,000 miles (10,000 kms) and that NZ’s average home electricity use is between that of Australia and the UK. That’s 190 kwh extra per month and that represents an almost 60% additional kwh load in the UK and 45% extra kwh load in NZ.

Let those figures sink in. The average monthly electricity load increase to charge a Tesla 3 for five nights a week across these countries is over 50%! This is the bottom line when it comes to mass EV adoption. The local grid was not built for a massive 50% increase in the kwh load, the power lines are not thick enough, the small transformers that are situated in neighbourhoods and the larger sub stations across cities that process the electricity from the high voltage heavy duty overhead powerlines were all built to handle standard household usage with SOME redundancy but NOT to handle 50% more power. Right now, all I am talking about is the DISTRIBUTION of the extra needed power not the GENERATION of the extra power which will be covered next. In order for societies to successfully transition to an all-EV fleet, all of the often underground electrical wiring down to at least the street level will have to be dug up and either replaced with heavier lines or have a twin line installed. Neighbourhood transformers will all have to be upgraded to handle the larger power load or they will overload and short circuit leading to a localised blackout and the larger sub stations too will all have to be upgraded. Then there are the high voltage heavy duty power lines that feed cities from power stations that will also require upgrading. Then there’s the installation of inverters that enable electricity stored in an EV battery that isn’t being used to feed that electricity back to the grid which in some energy deficient jurisdictions will be necessary to avoid brown outs. The cost of this on a country-wide basis will run into the many billions not to mention the time it will take to upgrade every street in the western world. I could stop Part 2 right here on this issue alone because who pays for all this upgrading? You guessed it – the electricity customer who will end up with power bills double and triple what they used to be utterly negating the one benefit of overnight home charging an EV, cheaper domestic pricing. Mass conversion to EVs will cost all users of electricity a fortune. How long will voters put up with such cost impositions that will not need to be levied if people keep using ICEVs?

(ii) System wide issue: According to CNBC Business News Analyst Catherine Clifford, US total electricity demand is projected to increase 14 to 19% by 2030 and 27 to 39% by 2035. Over the last 10 years, electricity demand has increased by only 5% per annum and the historical long-term growth percentage has been about 1% per annum. The vast majority of the recent increase is coming from the switch to EVs. In order to support the higher overall use of electricity, the entire line network across the US needs a massive upgrade. These upgrades are not only costly but very time-consuming. In some states with very strong environmental lobby groups, even getting a permit (or what we’d call the Resource Consent) can take 10 years. Furthermore, the US has three distinct regional electricity grids (the Western Interconnection covering 12 western states, the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas and the Eastern Interconnection covering the remaining 25 states in the lower 48) that, barring a few interconnection points, are entirely isolated from each other. Thus, a national grid would require signoff from a myriad of utility companies, lines companies, county stakeholders and state and Federal regulators – a mammoth time-consuming regulatory morass. Who pays and how much; and that’s before you get to permitting hurdles?  There are 2 Terawatts of potential power generation stuck in regulatory queues in the US versus 1.25 Terawatts of current total US power generation!

(iii) Impact of wider de-carbonisation efforts: Getting drivers to switch to EVs is only a part of system-wide decarbonisation required by net zero targets. Across the western world there are stringent efforts underway to have people switch oil and gas fired home heating to electric heat pumps, switch out gas stoves to electric ones and to switch industrial usage more to electricity. These efforts have begun with incentives and are now being backed by targeted climate charges (Canada) and compulsory phase outs (some US states and the UK). With 60% of electricity generation in the US coming from fossil fuels and only 21% from renewables (of which 18% is nuclear), as the need to increase the capacity of the grid grows due to electrification, simultaneously the economy is supposed to switch the supply of electricity to more renewable sources. Not only must electricity wires cope with MORE electricity, there also has to be more new power lines installed to received electricity from the geographically dispersed wind and solar locations whereas fossil fuel, hydro and nuclear electricity generation sources have generation concentrated at a single plant so transportation from generation point to cities and towns is easier and cheaper to achieve.  The California Public Utilities Commission estimated in May 2023 that the total cost of grid investment requirements in only the state of California just to enable the switch to EVs is a staggering $50 billion. Rob Gramlich, President of Grid Strategies, says the US needs to spend another $20 to $30 BILLION PER YEAR on new capacity and new lines miles. When you factor in the fact that private EVs vehicles only comprise 14% of the transportation energy usage, think of the massively greater amounts of power needed to run electric large and small trucks, buses, electric railway locomotives, electrifying the huge diesel engines of container and other ships and then there’s the power needs of air transportation then look at the decarbonisation of other industries dependent on fossil fuel, allowing for the increased power needs of the US onshoring silicon chip manufacturing and the increased computer power needed for the explosive growth of AI, to transition fully to net zero, the total cost to the US economy according to Arum Shumavon, CEO of prominent Environmental Consulting firm Kevala, is going to be $3 to 5 TRILLION!

A preview of what these decarbonisation efforts look like on the ground comes from California. No US state has more stringent green power generation mandates than CA with tough restrictions on electricity sourced from fossil fuels and an aggressive shutdown of nuclear power plants akin to what has happened in Germany. This has led to a greater reliance on more unstable wind and solar power generation sources and with less system-wide resiliency in the event of higher-than-expected usage. These trends came to a head in the summer of 2020 during a heatwave when California power users were subjected to rolling blackouts. Something similar has happened in various Australian cities. These sorts of outages can only be expected to occur more frequently as the transition to non-nuclear and fossil fuel free power sources cannot keep pace with the increasing demand for electricity required by a mass switch to EVs and other forced electricity mandates. The growth in electricity use from EV and other mandates and the need to massively upgrade existing transmission lines intersects with the taking off-line of reliable, instantaneous power sources to create a brewing perfect storm that is progressively going to see certain first world cities, states and countries face the kind of electricity supply uncertainty that bedevils many places in the 3^rd world!

2 – BATTERY ISSUES

The ability of the world to be able to find enough of the raw materials to build the massive increase in batteries needed if the western world is to transition all its private motor vehicle fleets from ICEVs to EVs is beyond comprehension. This is undoubtedly one of the biggest hurdles to any successful full ICEV phaseout and, as you will see, even with the advent of newer battery technologies such as Solid-State batteries, supply issues will remain insurmountable for anything other than allowing EVs to be nothing more than a purchasing option for car owners rather than a compulsory transition. I’m going to discuss SSBs first and then go over the supply chain issues for the three major EV battery components: Lithium, Cobalt and Nickel.

(i) Solid State batteries. SSBs are seen as the panacea that will solve the twin issues of battery size/weight and capacity that currently means only incremental increases in range for EVs. The more advanced technology of SSBs holds out the possibility a car battery of half the weight but with double the capacity and with a better safety profile (less fires) and can be made without Cobalt and Nickel and ultimately at prices at scale maybe less than tradition Lithium-Ion batteries. Some of the challenges with EVs discussed in Part 1 would be ameliorated with SSBs and any defender of EVs is quick to point to SSBs as a game changing development. But in the context of the timescale of a mass conversion from ICEVs to EVs, SSB production, in order to be even remotely price competitive, would require massive production scale. The time frame of moving down the cost curve as production increases is going to be very elongated because there are few other pressing technological applications of SSBs that would see any remotely useful production capacity. SSBs will be trapped in the price production trap for at least a decade as no EV manufacturer can install SSBs in cars right now due to their prohibitive cost and the SSB manufacturers cannot get to the kind of scale that brings prices to a competitive level unless there is mass adoption of SSBs by EV manufacturers.

(ii) Lithium: Lithium is the most crucial component due to its unique electrical storage capability. To give you an example of the scale of the lithium required to expand to an all-EV fleet, let’s look at the lithium needs to construct the average EV car which is 8 kgs.

Now let’s look at the approximate number of annual new car sales for the jurisdictions that have banned the sale of new ICEVs by either 2030 or 2035.

* 13 US States (CA, CO, CT, ME, MD, MA, NJ, NY OR, RI, VI, VT, WA) – 5.5 million

* UK – 1.9 million

* Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Israel, Singapore, South Korea – 9.5 million

making a grand total of almost 17 million new cars not to mention all the other uses for lithium aside from car batteries (e.g. smart phone batteries). Annual global lithium production is around 105,000 tonnes. At 8 kgs per vehicle x 16.9 M vehicles that’s an annual demand increase of 135,200 tonnes or 30% more than current total production. What is the likelihood of growing lithium production by such a massive percentage?

Growth in new lithium mines is thwarted by intense environmental and regulatory opposition due to huge water quantities need to flush the lithium impregnated rock. (e.g. Thacker Pass, NV). Major lithium deposits normally are in arid regions with little water, so mines have to compete for a scarce resource.

The lithium market is dominated by only 4 counties: Argentina, Chile, China and Australia. The largest lithium mine at Greenbush, WA, Australia is owned by Chinese company Tianqi Lithium. Whilst Chinese production is less restrained by environmental regulations and hence they dominate global supply of lithium, when you add to the Chinese control of other major lithium mine companies and sites, Chinese dominance of the global market and thus easily available supply is subject to geopolitical stresses between the US and China.

(iii) Cobalt: 70% of global Cobalt is found in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in central Africa with a majority of cobalt being mined by global mining companies with shady ethics, corrupt dealings with DRC officials and questionable environmental practices combining with a substantial minority of cobalt mining done by illegal artisanal miners who are notorious for hiring cheap child labour with disastrous results such as frequent deadly mine collapses, accidents, deaths and a dramatically shortened life expectancy and fatal birth defects. There is no such thing as ethical cobalt. Furthermore, total global annual cobalt production is around 200,000 tonnes but the average EV has 8 kgs of cobalt so that times 16.9 million new EVs equals 135,200 tonnes or 68% of total current cobalt production. Given the significant environmental problems, how sustainable is a massive increase in the use of cobalt?

(iv) Nickel: Three times as much nickel is used in an EV as lithium on average 30 kgs per car x 16.9 M means an annual INCREASE in nickel production of 300,000 tonnes and current global production is estimated at only 246,000 tonnes

Getting the huge extra amounts of rare earth metals to accommodate the explosion in need to cover EV mandates is going to be extremely difficult if not impossible. Many of the facts above are in a good summary of these issues in Sam Denby’s (Wendover Productions) video (note he’s historically pretty left wing so I cannot be accused of ideologically cherry picking data).

(v) Battery disposal: EV batteries are a physically large component of an EV usually covering the entire floor pan of the car. Unlike ICEVs where their conventional batteries can be recycled because lead and plastic are the major component parts, contrary to the views of EV apologists, EV batteries can’t be recycled in any way we might imagine. You cannot extract from a discarded lithium-ion battery any lithium that can be re-used in a new battery as is the case with an ICEV battery. Yes, the cobalt and a few rare earth metals can be extracted and re-used but because each EV manufacturer has different construction modalities and differing mixes of compounds and locate them in different parts of the battery, there is no simple industry wide affordable mineral extraction protocol and so because there is minimal economic return from such extraction, only 5% of EV batteries are truly recycled. Unless there are costly government sponsored (as in paid for by taxpayers) incentives to safely dispose of EV batteries, most are going to be dumped, incinerated or exported to 3^rd world countries with minimal environmental protections. Exposure to degrading nickel, cobalt and manganese has been demonstrated to cause respiratory and other carcinogenic health problems. Hat tip California environmentalist Perry Gottesfeld.

3 – INFRASTRUCTURE COST ISSUES

(i) Bridges and Car Parks: In January 2024, the US Structure Journal published its findings on the impact of EVs on car parks, bridges and roads. Average EV passenger cars weigh 1,400 lbs. (600 kgs) MORE than their ICEV counterparts. With utes/pickups the difference is a staggering 2,000 lbs. (900 kgs). The standard construction loading for multi-level car parks is 40 lbs. per sq foot and the ratio of failure load to working load is 1.6. With the increased weight of EVs, these structures are edging closer to their design limit. An EV ute/pickup exerts over 52 lbs. per sq ft (12 lbs. per sq ft above the ICEV equivalent). The average EV car is 37 lbs. per sq ft (or 8 lbs. above the equivalent ICEV car) and right up to the standard limit of 40 lbs. per sq ft. A Hummer EV is at 54 lbs. per sq ft or right at the failure load! The article recommends that EVs be limited to less vulnerable parts of the car park such as the ground floor and that the spaces be made wider to spread the load over a wider area. For the owners of car parks (often city councils), accommodating mass EV use simultaneously reduces revenue and increases costs which will have to be passed on to all motorists using the building unless they chose to levy EV owners with a higher parking charge commensurate with the higher impact their cars are causing to the structure of the building further adding a potential additional premium to EV ownership.

(ii) Roads: EVs are on average 30% heavier than the equivalent ICEV. As transition is forced to more and more EVs, the impact on the roading infrastructure will mean that road surfaces will degrade more quickly, and more and deeper potholes will emerge adding to the maintenance costs borne by local and national authorities. NZ’s roads are already in a shambles with billions in needed deferred maintenance. In the 1950’s the US Association of State Highway Officials came up with a ratio of weight to roading cost called the Law of the 4^th Power which says a 30% increase in axle load is likely to increase repair costs by 185% or nearly triple! Safety barriers will also have to be upgraded to sustain the potential impact of heavier EVs. The same Law of the 4^th Power applies to maintenance costs for car parks where costs will increase by the same amount as roads. Who pays for the massive increase in roading maintenance costs that will arise from universal adoption of EVs? You guessed it, large new taxes.

(iii) Future user pricing models: One of the earlier selling points of EVs in NZ was the lower running costs due to no fuel cost or Road User Charges, just the electricity cost. The new coalition government has announced their intention to bring EVs into the RUC regime for the reasons cited above. Now the proposed per 1,000 km charge is well below that assessed on diesel powered cars but the mere fact of having to pay for RUCs adds a layer of hassle to EV ownership that doesn’t exist for ICEVs because their owners pay for their share of the roading and infrastructure upkeep from the excise tax on petrol and diesel.

4 – CAR MANUFACTURER ISSUES

It’s fair to say that most of the major car manufacturers were a little slow to jump on the EV bandwagon content to leave this space to Tesla. But as climate change anxiety began to translate into government policies like the quest for net zero emissions, this began to lead to various jurisdictions (countries and US states) to signal the formal transition of ICEVs to EVs by banning the sale of all new petrol- and diesel-powered private vehicles. This then began an R & D stampede in the direction of EVs and almost all the major car manufacturers began to launch EV products at first mid-range sedans but increasingly now all ends of the market but particularly SUVs, sports cars and pickup trucks/utes. In parallel to the launches from the big traditional ICEV manufacturers were the new EV-only start-ups such as Rivian, Fisker, Bollinger, Polestar and Lucid. For a couple of years, major manufacturers have anticipated a strong transition to EVs and so they announced plans for ever more models in ever more market segments and some signaled their intention to cease manufacturing any ICEVs before the government-imposed deadlines.

Then the explosion in EV sales began to wane. Whilst sales year-on-year were still increasing because of the low numbers base, the growth in the sales of EVs began to slow through 2023 leaving almost all dealers from the major car marques with a growing inventory of unsold EVs. The average time taken to sell an ICEV is around 40 days and the EV inventory at dealerships has now mushroomed out to over 90 days and this trend does not look like reversing. This is because the well-heeled and environmentally conscious car buyers have almost all now bought an EV and the increase in sales must now come from middle and working class car owners who may only have one quality car in the household capable of taking the whole family and all the Micro consumer level issues covered in Part 1 are causing either existing EV owners to return to an ICEV or those expected to transition to an EV are baulking for the reasons covered. The first crack in the dyke appeared when apparently the major German automakers informed the EU that banning petrol/diesel cars by 2030 as planned would have a catastrophic impact on profitability and so the EU quietly moved this deadline to 2035. Britain’s Conservative government soon followed suit also moving their ICEV sales ban to 2035. Over the last few months, as unsold EVs piled up in dealerships globally; GM, Ford, Toyota, VW, BMW, Stellantis (Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Chrysler, Dodge, Citroen, Jeep, Lancia, Maserati, Opel/Vauxhall, Peugeot), Honda, Mazda and Hyundai (KIA) have not only slashed the prices of EVs but have variously announced the deferment of expected EV variants of popular models, the pausing of EV production, cancelling of plans to build new EV plants and also EV battery plants and some have announced greater emphasis on other clean energy options such as hydrogen and some have signaled they are ramping up ICEV production to meet consumer demand.

In a parallel trend, Hertz, the No. 3 car rental firm in the world, reversed its 2022 pledge to purchase 100,000 EVs for its US fleet and announced it was selling off 20,000 of its US EV fleet due to poorer customer uptake and higher than expected costs due to higher repair costs, greater depreciation, and lower profit per rental.

EV market leader Tesla has further scrambled the wider EV market by announcing steep price cuts for its Model 3 and Y cars further eroding the prices of second hand EVs compounding the cost to EV owners due to accelerated depreciation of a new EV compared to an ICEV.

Lastly, the true cost of manufacturing EVs has been masked. The Texas Public Policy Foundation released a study that examines the REAL cost of EVs factoring in manufacturers subsidies, regulatory credits, and other hidden costs and how these costs are “socialized across taxpayers and gas-powered vehicle owners”. They estimate the cumulative hidden subsidies of EVs amounts to almost $50,000 per vehicle! These are broken down as:

$27,881 of regulatory credits to manufacturers

$11,833 of socialized electricity grids passed on to taxpayers and ICEV owners

$8,984 in direct Federal and State subsidies per EV

CONCLUSION

Since writing Part 1 back in November, there has been quite a bit happening in the EV space and all heading in the wrong direction of a mass EV phase-in. The actions of the major car manufacturers in backing away from full steam ahead on EVs became a flood towards the end of 2023. Over the northern hemisphere winter, footage of the impact of extremely cold temperatures on EVs has been rampant across social and regular media with dozens of stories of EV drivers stranded in temperatures below -10 C with long waits for chargers, minimal range if a heater is used and taking many hours to charge due to the extreme cold. It would appear that the approximate 30% range impact of the cold discussed in Part 1 applies for temperatures in the – 5 to 5 C type of winter and not the types of very cold winter temperatures common in Canada, the US mid-west/northeast and northern Europe where the range and charging issues are even more challenging. To witness the spectacle of EV owners having to have their EV towed home due to being stranded in the cold makes a mockery of the drive to force us all into EVs.

The micro and macro challenges discussed in these Posts are not minor transitory adjustment issues that will gradually melt away with technology breakthroughs. They are huge and on the electricity supply and mineral availability fronts alone are pretty much insurmountable if governments are to get their way and force their populations to only be able to buy EVs. Any new technology replaces older technologies because they are quicker, better, and eventually cheaper and such transitions don’t involve massive government subsidies at every level AND punitive mandates that destroy consumer choice. In the end, the race to an all-EV fleet will be stymied by consumers who are voting with their feet to stay with ICEVs because of higher EV sticker prices, collapsing re-sale values, range anxiety and charging station issues, more costly and time-consuming maintenance, rising insurance premiums and safety issues over spontaneous fires. Then there’s the car manufacturers who are essentially defying government mandates and responding to market pressures to stay with ICEVs to stay in business. If governments use more aggressive compulsion to force the issue, then governing political parties wedded to this suicidal mission to destroy the bedrock of modern society (affordable and usable car transport) will be replaced at the ballot box by parties that will see things more rationally where EVs are but an option for certain types of consumers to purchase rather than legislating for them to be the only legal option. For those interested in this issue, a fascinating You Tube channel has emerged run by a Sydney based engineer come lawyer who does short pithy videos covering the myriad of challenges with EVs usually backed by top quality links to solid independent research or reporting.

Newsroom reports:

In a rare, albeit private, criticism of the Government of the day, the Clerk of the House David Wilson told staff in an email last week that new budget cuts would limit the work of Parliament.

The message, obtained by Newsroom, said Wilson received an email from Finance Minister Nicola Willis at the end of last year instructing his office “to make savings of 6.5 percent from the 2024/25 financial year. Vote Office of the Clerk is to be reduced by $1.6 million at the next Budget. All departments [are] required to make similar savings, proportional to their size. …

“The proposed budget reduction will diminish the service we can provide in support of our Parliament. I remain very concerned that the executive can effectively limit the work of the legislature by reducing its funding.”

Dean Knight, a public law professor at Victoria University of Wellington, called the move “deeply worrying.”

“It’s constitutionally concerning that executive government is cutting funding for an institution whose job it is to hold government to account. Democracies like ours cherish the independence of Parliament, especially as our Westminster systems sees some personnel shared between the executive and legislature. The impacts of funding cuts on the separation of powers is obvious,” he said.

This is a valid issue of scrutiny. You do have to be careful that the Exeuctive can’t just cut funding to bodies whose job is to scrutinise the Executive, but on the other hand if the rest of the state sector is having to tighten its belt, a case can be made that it can look hypocritical to exempt parliamentary agencies.

A further Newsroom story also reports:

The Parliamentary Service has been directed to cut spending by 6.5 percent in the next financial year, chief executive Rafael Gonzalez-Montero told staff in an email on Thursday afternoon.

The cuts add up to about $3.5 million, he wrote in the message obtained by Newsroom, which comes on top of existing cost pressures. …

Willis said both agencies would have the opportunity to make their case to ministers about the impact of the budget cuts.

“Departments have been set targets and requested to report back with proposals to make savings. All departments, including the Office of the Clerk, will have the ability to set out their rationale for their proposals, as well as any risks and trade-offs including impacts on their role,” she told Newsroom.

“Ministers and Cabinet will make final decisions on whether to accept those proposals as part of Budget 2024. The Coalition Government is committed to getting Government expenditure under control.” …

“The savings exercise commissioned by Cabinet applies to all departments. It is intended to restore fiscal discipline to the public service and get Government expenditure under control after several years of significant growth across the public sector without corresponding improvement in outcomes,” Willis said.

“I note that both the Office of the Clerk and Parliamentary Service were included in the baseline savings exercise initiated by the previous Government in August last year.”

This is interesting in that both agencies were also asked by the Labour Government to reduce spending, so their cries that this is terrible are somewhat hollow.

But there is still a need for caution. Ideally the Speaker and/or the Officers of Parliament committee would come to an agreement with the Minister of Finance as to how much spending can be reduced without impacting the key functions of both agencies.

Anthony Albenese has just announced amended tax cuts in Australia. His package is different to his promise to keep the tax cuts of the previous Government (and he now has to take electoral consequences of that), but he is still delivering significant tax cuts that again exposes how much more taxed we are in New Zealand.

Someone earning $70,000 in Australia will pay $11,788 in tax compared to $14,020 in NZ. So that’s an average rate of 16.8% compared to 20.0%.

At twice that or $140,000 an Aussie pays $33,094 tax and a Kiwi $37,120. That’s 23.6% vs 26.5%.

If you include our highest GST rate, then someone one $140,000 probably pays $8,461 more tax a year in NZ than Australia – that is equal to $162.71 a week.

Even someone on $240,000 income will pay less income tax in Australia.

I hope National’s tax cuts in May will be significant enough to close the gap between what Kiwis and Aussies have to pay to fund the state.

Stats NZ reports:

New Zealand’s consumers price index increased 4.7 percent in the 12 months to the December 2023 quarter, according to figures released by Stats NZ today.

The 4.7 percent increase follows a 5.6 percent increase in the 12 months to the September 2023 quarter.

“While this is the smallest annual rise in the CPI in over two years, it remains above the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s target range of 1 to 3 percent,” consumers prices senior manager Nicola Growden said.

4.7% is still far too high. If you had annual inflation of 4.7% for ten years, then a $200 grocery shop today would cost $330 within a decade.

Non-tradeable inflation was 5.9 percent in the 12 months to the December 2023 quarter, driven by rent, construction, and cigarettes and tobacco.

Tradeable inflation was 3.0 percent in the 12 months to the December 2023 quarter, driven by petrol and confectionery, nuts, and snacks, offset by lower prices for international air transport.

The Reserve Bank should not assume its job is done. They can’t really impact tradable inflation, but non-tradable is still at twice the legally agreed range and three times the agreed midpoint.

Tradeable inflation is at an almost three year law. Non-tradeable inflation is still higher than in 2021. Talk of lowering interest rates is premature.

Daran Potter may be Labour, but my God he is one of the better local leaders we have. He nails the problem in Wellington:

Ponter told The Front Page the network is ageing and territorial authorities have failed to adequately invest in the infrastructure over many decades.

There has not been a systematic approach to making that investment, he said.

“It should be a core and fundamental activity for investment. The other things that a city might invest in like new town halls, or refurbished town halls, or bike lanes, or whatever issue it might be should be secondary issues.”

Absolutely. They spend hundreds of millions on pet projects, while they fail to invest in water infrastructure.

Part of the answer to the problem does lead to the government’s doorstep to change legislation and ensure councils are more focused on their responsibility for core infrastructure, Ponter said.

Also agree. Core infrastructure should be the primary focus for Councils.

Javier Milei, President of Argentina did a great speech at Davos where he railed against socialism and collectivism. His speech starts at six minutes in.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has pulled out prior to New Hampshire and has endorsed the inevitable nominee Donald Trump.

This makes the 2024 election a contest between a dementing octogenarian and a dementing septuagenarian. How depressing.

Haley will come close in New Hampshire and even possibly win it. But then Trump beats her in her home state of South Carolina, and it is all over.

In my latest monthly Patreon post on which governments are on track for re-election, I look at the polling for Trump vs Biden and it isn’t good for Biden.