Saturday 12 August 2017

Quote of the Day: On sports cars, subsidies and so-called sustainability [updated]


"The Tesla, in effect, is a beautifully engineered toy for the conspicuous-consumption market, accessible to millionaires but beyond the reach of the commercial market. Neither it nor most other electric vehicles have any place in a competitive, free-market environment. As an indication of how economically injurious these playthings are to society on the whole, the U.K.’s National Grid estimated that Britain would need to increase its peak generating capacity by 50 per cent to meet the government’s plans for electric vehicles, the equivalent of building 10 new nuclear plants.
      "The driver of the electric-vehicle industry — government fixation on global warming — has spurred even larger fake industries, led by wind turbines and solar photovoltaic cells. Neither they nor the many other anti-carbon inventions such as carbon sequestration plants are in any business sense ‘real.' The global renewable-energy industry, having squandered trillions of dollars building economically unjustifiable infrastructure, represents the greatest loss of wealth in the history of commerce….”
   
~ Lawrence Solomon, on ‘How Elon Musk Became the Master of Fake Business'


UPDATE: Commenter Mark T. tells me “the ‘10 new nuclear power stations was an extreme worst case scenario, and the mid-range estimate and most likely estimate was nowhere near that.”

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4 comments:

Don Walker said...

Bill English has pledged that a third of all gov't vehicles will have to be electric vehicles by 2021. Does he have a plan on building more power plants.? I know, we have plenty of coal. These people don't live in the real world.

Anonymous said...

What really annoys me about the Tesla is that it is subsidised by people who can't afford one to make it cheaper for those that could whether it was subsidised or not.

3:16

Dinwar said...

I can see value in solar cells--I often work in remote areas and they make a convenient way to keep electronics charged. That said, I agree with the objection to industrial scale solar farms.

MarkT said...

I used this in replying to a Chch Press editorial calling for more electric cars, and I was challenged on it by another commenter, with some partial justification. Turns out the "10 new nuclear power stations" was an extreme worst case scenario, and the mid-range estimate and mist likely estimate was nowhere near that. Doesn't change the basic conclusion - but let's not do what the climate catastrophists do by over-stating our case with unlikely worst case scenarios.