The government always picks winners and losers. It doesn’t matter if it’s a more consensus-minded society like Sweden, or top-down authoritarianism like China. Governments pick winners and losers. In America, those losers are anyone in the EV supply chain.
There’s a new article out that talks about the ‘Battery Belt,’ which is a useful neologism for the mostly rural and historically Republican areas that were supposed to be the source of batteries for future electric cars. That’s not happening at the speed most predicted, so what happens to those communities?
The Morning Dump is a news roundup, and all the news today is built around batteries. We know what’s happening, but who is to blame?
Is it the automakers who had too lofty ambitions? Is it the politicians who halted an industrial policy before it could be started? And where does this go?
‘That’s On Everybody’s Mind, Quite Frankly’
Back in 2022, Ford announced it would spend billions building a battery and EV truck-making facility in Stanton, Tennessee. This small town of 450 people would suddenly get thousands of new workers.
This facility was to be a part of the Battery Belt and, maybe, still will be. Ford keeps delaying the project, just like nearly every major automaker with EV ambitions in the United States.
What if it never happens? From the Reuters piece on the dashed dreams of the Battery Belt, that’s the question:
The uncertain fate of these massive, high-tech factories and their employment has rattled the small rural communities that spent years hitching their economic futures to these projects.
“That’s on everybody’s mind, quite frankly,” said Allan Sterbinsky, who retired as mayor of Stanton in December and advocated for the site for years before Ford came to town. Some residents worry that Ford will never follow through on the plant, the former mayor says. Others hope the company will repurpose the 3,600-acre site if demand doesn’t increase for EVs.
A Ford spokesperson pointed to the automaker’s community work in Stanton, including grants to public safety organizations as part of a broader $9 million commitment to the area.
Essentially, the industry was preparing to build enough battery capacity to cover roughly 80% of the current car market, or around 13 million cars. Now? Maybe a quarter of that will be necessary.
What happens to these communities? How did we end up here?
‘Electric Vehicle Subsidies Were… Distorting The Market’
I have already written at length here about how electric vehicle subsidies were, ultimately, bad politics, even if you think they were good governance.
Ford and General Motors thought they’d be clever and use a loophole in the IRS guidance around the ending of the IRA tax credit to extend it for a few months. Both GM and Ford have bailed on those plans after two Republican Senators cried foul.
Here’s the letter from the Senators that explains some of their reasoning:
We write to alert you to a serious violation of Congressional intent that threatens great harm to U.S. taxpayer dollars and ask for your immediate assistance in rectifying this problem.
As you know, Congress recently enacted Public Law 119-21, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, giving working class families massive tax relief, ending the Green New Scam, and fully funding our border security and national security needs. As part of this law, Congress amended Sections 25E, 30D, and 45W of the tax code, which collectively provide tax credits for the purchase of certain “clean vehicles.” These electric vehicle subsidies were costing taxpayers billions of dollars each year and distorting the market for automakers and dealers across the country, and we are extremely pleased that Congress acted decisively to cut these credits off.
Senator Moreno is a car dealer, so you might expect he’d have some sort of sympathy for dealers or automakers who are now trying to move these vehicles (that the previous government pushed).
I think the bit about how these subsidies were “distorting the market for automakers” kind of gives the game away. A 2023 report from Climate Power showed that there were 24 planned battery projects and 11 electric vehicle projects in rural areas, representing more than $20 billion in investments. Because it’s hard to build plants in urban areas, it’s not surprising that most of these plans were in Republican districts. They are in a mix of historically swing and not-so swing Republican states, however.
The political ramifications of potentially killing many of these projects seem, from the Republican side at least, not to be as big of a deal as continuing the tax credit.
‘It’s Going To Be Smaller, Way Smaller Than We Thought’
Credit to Ford CEO Jim Farley for having a quote for every topic. While recently expanding on his belief that we need more skilled tradespeople (we do), he also made a point of being honest about how expectations for EV adoption were not matched to the reality of consumer demand.
Farley on Tuesday said he “wouldn’t be surprised” if sales of EVs fell from a market share of around 10% to 12% this month — which is expected to be a record — to 5% after the incentive program ends.
“I think it’s going to be a vibrant industry, but it’s going to be smaller, way smaller than we thought, especially with the policy change in the tailpipe emissions, plus the $7,500 consumer incentive going away,” he said during a Ford event about promoting skilled trades and workers in Detroit. “We’re going to find out in a month. I wouldn’t be surprised that the EV sales in the U.S. go down to 5%.”
Farley said the industry learned that “partial electrification,” such as hybrids, are easier for customers to accept for the time being.
Even if the Democrats won every seat in every election and the White House, it’s not like all that battery capacity we were building would have exactly been necessary (some plans were being paused before the election). We’d have ended up somewhere in between, or at least closer to in between than where we are now.
Either way, the post-Tesla overheated projections definitely contributed to this mess.
‘It’s Not Something (We), In Any Way, Shape, Or Form, Expect To Give Up’
Could General Motors do the one thing it doesn’t normally do? Could GM be right on the technology and ahead of the market, and not suddenly retreat at the first sign of an obstacle?
Here’s a quote from a Detroit Free Press interview with GM President of North America Duncan Alred:
Still, GM invested significant money and planning to offer the range of EVs it has today. Though the industry is bracing for an EV sales slump, GM’s leaders insist that investing deeply and early in a broad range of electric offerings was not a mistake.
“We believe EVs will remain a strong part of the GM portfolio. Quite honestly, it’s one of the reasons why our market share has grown so much this year,” Aldred said. “It’s not something (we), in any way, shape or form, expect to give up.”
Year to date, GM estimates that its 17.2% market share across vehicle propulsion systems is the highest it’s been in 10 years. So far this year, EV total sales more than doubled to 144,668 vehicles.
Cool? Cool! GM is already deeply invested in its EV project and has approximately a dozen models out there, compared to just three for Ford. It also has affordable vehicles like the reborn Bolt coming to the market.
EVs are the right car for a lot of people, including consumers who haven’t been able to afford one yet.
If everyone else (other than Tesla) is retreating to some degree, it’s maybe not the worst position for GM to be in to soak up all that excess market share.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
I started dancing to this in the car with my daughter before realizing I definitely could not allow the song to continue to the chorus. Either way, Nelly’s “Hot In Herre” is a bop. Also, peep that Aston.
The Big Question
What’s low-key your favorite car cameo in a music video?
Top photo: Colombo, Ford
“As you know, Congress recently enacted Public Law 119-21, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, giving working class families massive tax relief, ending the Green New Scam, and fully funding our border security and national security needs. ”
Seriously – Fuck. Those. Douchebags. What a bunch of hypocritical liars. Their actions and the capitulation by the automakers are COSTING Americans money and costing this country its leadership position in technology and innovation. FYI, Federal debt and spending are UP this year. DOGE didn’t save a penny and the clowns in charge of this shitshow are only making things worse for the average American and better for the average 1-percenter.
https://usgovernmentspending.com/fed_spending
But the we have a government that is the 1%. The ones that are not in the billionaire executive branch require billionaires to fund their campaign, think tank, or policy law firm. Its all only for the 1%. For 50 years they have made the rest of us fight about crap that barely matters to keep power, and now they are going to start fighting each other to gain more. We are watching the wealthiest people on earth tear apart our society to try and secure their own ability to have more. They are abandoning the pretext of politics and just going for naked power grabs to secure what they think could be theirs. Votes and people are just too annoying to try and deal with so maybe the new idea is to do away with all the costly mess.
And this is why they all have to get the neck choppy choppy vis a vis 1789 France, but most Americans are too comfortable in their mediocre existences and worried about dumb shit (OMG I might GeT ArReStEd iF i Do SoMeThInG’ bruh… there won’t be a democratic republic or a future worth living in if we don’t depose these monsters, post haste.
I’d love to see GM finally follow through on something. The return of the Bolt is exciting. When the market really starts to shift to EV in a big way (it will eventually) GM is going to be ahead of everyone else (presumably).
As for the battery factories, I’d like to point out that I HATE the way that these factory plans were developed. Building factories on cheap land in the middle of nowhere does nothing for anyone, and forcing people to commute to said middle of nowhere is shit. We have so many dead, struggling small to medium sized cities throughout the country with empty buildings and large tracts of abandoned land. If incentives are being used to develop such factories, that money should be pumped into cities that already exist.
And that’s doubly true for the new data centers. But, gravy train money, etc.
The “data centers” are going where the power is cheap. Its not cheap in cities. They, and these battery plants, want rural for the ease of regulation, small oversite, and mostly close development to major highways. They just built o a battery plant not to far from me in a small town outside a city for all those reasons.
I’ve nothing to comment other than that I always appreciate TMD: not just Matt’s excellent and entertaining writing, but it’s easy and enjoyable to read: the clean/clear layout and nicely selected/edited photos make it the first thing I go to with my morning coffee. Five years ago, it’d have been the Fry’s online ad, but sadly that’s a relic of the past, so now it’s TMD.
I’ll also say that the metallic blue on the relaunched Bolt is nice. 🙂
Thank you, also I do miss the Fry’s online ad.
Maybe, just maybe, things like GM’s EVHummer weren’t in everyone’s best interest.
Either Billy Bob Thornton’s ‘67 Firebird in Travis Tritt’s “Modern Day Bonnie and Clyde” or Bruce Willis’ El Camino in the Gorillaz’ “Stylo.”
Gotta be the ZZ Top Ford Deuce Coupe from the “Eliminator” album’s videos. I still can’t find the correct, video version of Legs.
Nothing like this administration claiming they’re going to accelerate American Manufacturing like antagonizing foreign businesses who are investing huge and actively stripping away funds specifically allocated to American companies to improve their domestic manufacturing.
The entire past week or so of communication coming out of the WH and congress has been so deeply aggravating, aggressively partisan and showing a deep contempt of the American public, telling deliberate half truths and outright lies with a smile while pointing the finger at those in the minority. I just hope some people are finally able to see through the BS now that it’s getting harder and harder to make up believable lies about.
It is crazy to me that anyone actually believes their bullshit. Like you literally would have to have the mental power of a gnat to agree with their garbage.
I, being a middle-aged white male, know a lot of middle-aged and older white males. One of them last night said something to the effect of “They should send the National Guard to [nearby city] to clean up the homeless population.”
That’s not even the stupidest thing I’ve heard him say, if you can believe it.
The level of brainwashing on the Right has reached critical mass and I don’t know how we escape it. You can’t have a rational conversation with someone who is starting from a completely irrational basis.
The important thing to remember is that it’s not brainwashing, this is just how these people were all along. The difference is now they feel entitled to say whatever and not suffer any consequences.
oops
The best car cameo(s) in a music video were the General Lee and Starsky and Hutch Torino in Barenaked Ladies One Week.
Of course when a government dumps billions of dollars into a market, those dollars will change that market. It just depends on your politics whether you see that change as ‘distorting’ the market or ‘influencing’ the market.
Agreed. Pick your vocabulary word, just don’t claim that this or any other government intervention makes the market more “free”
Agreed. Adding government money to the system is an intervention. Taking that money away suddenly is also an intervention.
Matt, great reporting and analysis. When all is said and done, it’s the Republicans who want nothing to do with EV’s or batteries, and the whole issue of electrification is complex enough that they’ve been able to attack it from every angle, with great success. And the Democrats? When mis-management becomes a contest, the Democrats are winners. Electrification is here to stay, whether it be hybrids or full EV’s. But the pace and shape of this rapidly developing industry is simultaneously stunning and frustrating.
As many American jobs as automakers are responsible for, they are not the star you want to hitch your wagon to. Even if it were pickups instead of EV batteries.
There is nothing stopping them from doing what they have done in the past: forcing Americans to chase their job across North America before ultimately sending it all overseas and leaving entire communities holding the bag.
But that’s true for almost any industry unless you’re in local Govt/Teacher. Many a corporate HQ have come and gone in my area.
Well. And of course the enormous Health Care industry in US…it’s hard to shop out doctors, nurses and technicians, etc. beyond the border, though many have tried.
But they do shut down more rural medical facilities if they are not ‘profitable’. Or they get bought out and scaled back. Happens a lot. Also, some move to ‘TeleDoc’ instead of on-site staff.
“Essentially, the industry was preparing to build enough battery capacity to cover roughly 80% of the current car market, or around 13 million cars. Now? Maybe a quarter of that will be necessary.”
For now.
Eventually BEVs will be 80% of the market or more. The current administration won’t be in office forever.
And climate change is real and we will HAVE TO reduce emissions.
BEVs are an important piece of that puzzle.
If Farley thinks BEV market share will stay around 5-10%, then he’s an idiot.
The Republicans are deluding themselves into believing they can go back to “the good old days”. In reality, they are causing the USA to fall behind and the rest of the world will pass it by.
the simpsons always has an applicable reference: “we’re going to catch up by going slower?”
Cuckoo…cuckoo…
In Farleys defense, I don’t at all read it as “market will maintain 5% share” but rather “the next few quarters the share of new sales will likely be 5% due to the incentives retraction” which I think is very realistic given MSRPs are not going to move much while ATP will skyrocket due to incentives being eliminated on a federal level.
Otherwise I hard agree. BEV technology still has plenty of room to grow, range will go up, as will charging speed, costs will come down relative to ICE, and charging infrastructure will continue to grow, it’s simply a matter of time. How much time is the important question that the industry got wrong once, and I suspect at least half of the industry will get wrong again.
That’s really the question, isn’t it? Not if, but when. And forced migrations rarely work out well. At least in a country as stubbornly independent as the US of A. Europe, maybe, they tend to be a lot better about doing what is good for them. But even then – they are actually kind of poor when it comes to disposable income (the price of that generally wonderful social safety net – and I would make that trade in a heartbeat). The Chinese populace do what they are told with minimal backtalk. Most of the rest of the world’s masses are thankful if they can get a 50cc scooter to ride around on.
Not to be picky, but most minimum size scooters are 80 cc overseas.
They actually build most exported engines of that type as 80 cc and swap the internals out for export to 50 cc countries.
Who fucking cares exactly how many cc’s the damned things are?
I’m sure that extra oomph is helpful when you have your family of five hanging off the thing though. And they are thankful they aren’t walking.
Who cares about power and displacement?
I must be misreading that!
Evidently, my point went so far over your head it might as well have been in orbit.
No, I got it.
This. Farley is CEO of a publicly traded company, forward-looking statements are a regulated thing, so they talk (and often prioritize decisions) in terms of very near-term future.
Will we have to reduce emissions? The conservative’s denied climate change for decades even when presented with evidence to the contrary. When it became impossible to ignore, they switched their narrative to the Earth’s natural cycle and not man made.
It wouldn’t surprise me if they suggested we need to burn coal like there’s no tomorrow to create a thick smog cloud around the world to reflect the sunlight away and cool the Earth down.
Like the dog sitting in the fire saying this is fine, one day we’ll see Congress on C-Span sitting in a flooded capitol due to rising sea level saying “This is fine.”
“Will we have to reduce emissions?”
On a per-person basis, yes.
“The conservative’s denied climate change for decades even when presented with evidence to the contrary.”
I would argue the conservatives who do aren’t real conservatives. A true conservative would care about doing research, educating themselves and making prudent decisions. A true conservative would also care about conserving resources and using what we have efficiently so it lasts longer.
Today’s crop of self-proclaimed “conservatives” are anything but conservative.
I was born in ’89 and all my life the word Conservative has always been someone who wants is regressive in their thinking and who is scared of anything they don’t know and the future.
They love to clutch their pearls and play the victim.
It wasn’t always that way. Consider that the EPA was brought in by the Nixon Republicans. In my view that seriously started to change in the 2000s with George W Bush.
Back then we all thought he was the worst ever.
And it was like the Rebublicans saw/heard that and said “Oh yeah? Hold my beer… watch this..”
And then proceeded to give us Crooked Trump.
Depends, reduce harmful emissions like NOx and the like in cities, or industrial pollutants ? Yeah, that’s a good thing that should happen. Reduce the “carbon footprint” of the average Jane and Joe so politicos can wank themselves off in their private jets? Fuck no, there’s solutions to that, see my above comment. CO2 levels are an engineering problem with engineering solutions.
and the solution for the wankers in private jets was developed by the French over a century ago. Sure worked fine for their revolution
I think you vastly understate the lengths this administration is going to in order to stay in power.
Oh I don’t think I am. I’m running on the assumption that Trump and his gang are a bunch of dishonest crooks and he’s gonna at least *try* to stay in power beyond this term.
And I will be completely unsurprised if Trump’s presidency ends with a Luigi Mangione-style incident. And if it doesn’t end that way, at his age, it could be a stroke or heart attack that takes him out.
I said it before and I’ll say it again… with Trump and his gang of crooks in power, the only thing we can count on is chaos.
I agree with all of that. I just believe that the never-soon-enough end of Trump won’t be the end of MAGA. The playbook is very clear and will be picked up by one or more of the other vile people with little hesitation. Their internal chaos might provide some hope, but once that much power is assembled, it doesn’t dissipate easily. The Republican Party is now simply a collection of the worst people on the planet, and any one of them would be happy to continue the current trajectory.
I’m not sure there is one non-Trump candidate they could all rally around. It might work if you made a Frankencandidate.
The issue is that it won’t really matter if it is a “candidate” since they think those pesky elections are optional.
Yes to the first part. Emphatic NO to the second part, and every brain-dead leftoid insisting on treating it like a fucking religious crusade (which is most of them) is just throwing more gasoline on the fire, and ultimately harming their cause.
Climate change is an engineering problem. It has engineering solutions. More importantly, it has engineering solutions that do not involve hypocritical rich fuck politicians and media figures tut-tutting the plebes about their carbon footprints just before jumping on private jets to Davos to discuss which round of short-sighted “fuck the poor” regulations and restrictions they are going to push this year.
The root of the problem is that we are emitting more CO2 (and other GHGs, but the solution looks fundamentally the same and uses the same infrastructure) into the atmosphere than is being removed, and as the concentration of atmospheric CO2 increases, the effects are detrimental. The technology to remove CO2 from the atmosphere exists already (the Sabatier process being the oldest, other processes such as fractional distillation exist). Some companies are already running a great scam by capturing CO2 from the atmosphere and doing things like storing it underground and then extorting “carbon credits” from a scheme implemented by guilt-tripping politicians as payment for their efforts. This, while technically reducing carbon in the atmosphere, is in all other aspects goddamn idiotic.
What is not idiotic is simply looking at the atmosphere as a carbon sink with levels to be managed, just like hydrocarbon levels in the ground, which is nicely tied together by the fact that ca. 500 million years ago, all of those carbon atoms trapped below ground bonded to hydrogen atoms were zinging around the atmosphere bonded to oxygen atoms instead. Time + energy put them below ground and reduced atmospheric CO2 levels to something resembling the values we are used to today, and it’s not surprising that time + energy can return them to that useful state. How fast this happens is just an economic question that comes down to “how expensive is energy?” Once your energy gets below $7-8ish/MMBTU, suddenly it becomes economically viable to just refine your hydrocarbons from thin air, and if energy prices drop even further than that, it starts to price out hydrocarbon manufacturing via the current extraction methods. Fun fact: current utility scale solar in the US already drops as low as $10/MMBTU, and even further in ideal conditions. We are on the cusp of ending oil drilling as an economically viable activity simply because power is getting so cheap. The great thing about getting your fuel from the atmosphere is, since petrochemicals already take up 10% of the hydrocarbon supply chain and growing, is you are carbon-negative and every year you will be pulling more and more CO2 out of the atmosphere (in the future we might have to start drilling again just to have more carbon to work with).
That is how the “climate crisis” is solved, not with a bang but the quiet whisper of market forces. Push the price of power low enough, and energy companies will respond to the financial incentive. Best part is that you don’t have to crap all over your population with environmental guild about their carbon footprint. In fact, cheaper energy makes life better for pretty much everyone. Build the nuke plants, build the hydro, build the solar, and the future gets greener.
“. Emphatic NO to the second part”
You are wrong.
” The technology to remove CO2 from the atmosphere exists already”
But that approach is expensive nonsense compared to simply putting out less CO2 in the first place.
“. In fact, cheaper energy makes life better for pretty much everyone.”
And having a society with more efficient infrastructure so we are less dependent on energy would make things even better still.
“Build the nuke plants, build the hydro, build the solar, and the future gets greener.”
I do agree with that statement. However it will be most effective to do that in conjunction with reducing emissions in other areas… like transportation… which is best done by helping along the shift to BEVs.
No, I’m not. I’ve worked in the space and done the math. Other smarter people than me have done the math as well, and are betting lots of money on it. First google result is here, no endorsement of the company but broadly speaking they get the idea correct.
Way to not read any of what I read. It’s not expensive nonsense, it is literally out-competing oil drilling on price.
Tell me you have never, ever, ever worked in any sort of industrial process ever. CO2 emissions are absolutely everywhere, in every product, in every industry, in every country, and they are absolutely critical. Having less of them while the human population continues to grow is directly equivalent to saying our quality of life should plummet and progress should stagnate.
No one is stopping you from being a hermit. But energy isn’t just for powering that stupid screen that makes you feel good, energy is the foundational building block of civilization. Energy is what enables all productive activities, all improvements of life, all advancements. Without energy we as a species are no different from the chimpanzees. Saying you want less energy available is just waving the white flag of Good Enough For Me, Fuck The Next Generation.
You know, I read through your comments and would pay more attention to your discussion, if you weren’t as insulting as hell to many of us.
Well, given the level of absolutely vile shit flinging that is accepted as normal on the “environmentalist” side, boo-fucking-hoo. You want civility, you have to be civil.
Happily, the approval of faux-environmentalist control freaks is not required to solve the problem, just smart people and market incentives.
I checked out as soon as you said leftoid. That just shows we will never get a fair assessment out of you and that everything you say is most likely wrong.
Thank you for articulating your ad hominem fallacy. You have no reply to the argument, so instead you resort to “rightoids baaaaddd!”
Happily, your approval is neither sought nor required.
Ok hypocrite.
I agree with Farley being an idiot, but not for the reasons you’re suggesting. That moron won’t give the American buying public what they want, and trust me, IT IS NOT EV’S!!!
Bring the damn Puma over to compete against the Trax/Envista, bring back the Transit Connect van to provide needed capacity for small businesses (which has an excellent PHEV option now that would be optimal for inner city businesses and regional usage as well), give us the ability to order the damn Transit Trail with AWD, diesel and the stick (the diesel motor meets US emissions), and lastly bring the Focus/Focus Active back to the US Market. Use some of that capacity at the TN plant to build actual ICE/PHEV cars that people can afford, and the money will flow in.
I don’t see the math working for battery cars or kwh costs.
I think GMs decision to keep pushing on with EVs is great and gonna keep them competitive long term in the US and near immediately globally. However, I am concerned about their lack of hybrids. It would have been great if everything they fairly recently standardized on for downsized engines like the turbo 3 cylinder, 1.5L turbo 4, 2.5L turbo 4, and 2.7L turbo 4 were hybridized. Seems like a big miss on some fairly new engines to not even have any amount of mild hybridization let alone full hybrid or PHEV.
Per usual, GM isn’t sticking with EVs out of some noble goal or learning from history, it’s because they already fired everyone involved with developing new engines. There’s nothing coming down the pipeline, except slight modifications of what is currently on the market. Hybrid was a dirty word, until very recently. GM went all in on EVs to such extent that they don’t have another option but continue for the next 5 years.
Planning for 80% of new cars being electric was absurd no matter who is in power and what bills are passed. That wasn’t happening in the next 25 years absent carrots or sticks way bigger than what was deployed (or what is politically possible). Quite a few of us have been saying this for years and it’s not going to be limited to the US.
And yes this is downside of industrial policy – you’re at the whim of who is in power since your business depends on subsidies rather than market demand. I have come around on industrial policy being necessary in certain scenarios (for example I do not mind propping up Intel or critical minerals companies), but it has major downsides that we must be open about. It’s a trade-off.
Isnt the real issue regarding 80% electric cars is the lack of infrastructure to charge the dang things up?
Charging infrastructure yes. We need more low cost, reliable charging infrastructure since most vehicles sit parked 20+ hours a day (DOE stat from 2024).
That’s your regular 120/240v outlet.
Charging is problematic. Battery costs are problematic. Battery weight is problematic. Once batteries hit 5% the energy density of gasoline (currently around 1% after factoring in power efficiency), the calculus changes significantly.
400+ miles with less than 40% of current battery sizes would erase charge anxiety for the majority and the cost reduction would enable much higher market penetration.
Can you kill something that never really existed, except in a vague fever-dream growth trajectory moment?
I expect that electric and electric-adjacent cars will eventually be a thing here, but the fever dream of the early 2020s was extremely optimistic given the structural biases against rapid adoption in capital-intensive industries and the realities of the North American vehicle market.
I know that China has warped our perception of what’s possible with regards to infrastructure development and consumer adoption, but it is safe to say that their economy operates in a different fashion than ours.
Speedrunning looks amazing from the outside – compare China of 1989 to China today. The United States and much of the developed world don’t look that different during that time span, comparatively speaking.
Sprinting looks amazing in the short-term. I think we’d best plan to run the marathon though.
“…but it is safe to say that their economy operates in a different fashion than ours.”
Yes – Their economy works largely to the benefit of the people.
Ours works to the benefit of a few Billionaires and whatever shareholders happen to be on their side.
Ahaha. Hahahaha. HAHAHAHA.
Hoooo boy…..
Tell me you have never done business in China without telling me you’ve never done business in China.
China cooks the ever-loving fuck out of their books, hides the wealth of the ruling party members behind a vast labyrinth of “state-owned” enterprises, and still manages to have a Gini Coefficient nearly as bad as the US (independent estimates put the numbers something more in line with S. Africa).
That’s a good one.
Well put. Their economy, like pretty much every real-world economy, works to the primary benefit of the people making the rules.
So exactly the same – except their people get healthcare and a great transportation system and a government which doesn’t shut down and decide not to pay people because someone didn’t get a Nobel prize.
Pertinence’s “Drop Top Beater” features a Lamborghini Power Wheels car as the main vehicle, and a bunch of awesome beaters as a backdrop. The video was clearly shot on the street with a budget of about $6.
The song is great and feels like a modern tribute to Sir-Mix-A-Lot’s “My Hooptie”, which also features great cars.
Had forgotten about Sir-Mix-A-Lot! That’s a good video. Kids of today don’t know the ‘fun’ of rolling in a Hooptie/POS.
His production team managed to find the perfect ’69 “deuce-and-a-quarter” for that video shoot. I bet it cost him $250.
I like that the front is smashed for authenticity. Back in high school, one could really pick up those ‘wrecked’ hoopties for $250-$500 all day long but it would get you were you’re going.
What’s low-key your favorite car cameo in a music video?
I haven’t actually watched the video, but the Citation in the Sabrina Carpenter video is a fun one. I would not expect her generation to find that car and decide to feature it in a music video. Mine was orange, but the brown she used feels like the most correct color.
Unabashed repost;
You know, I could handle the whole world turning into the gong show better if it wasn’t for the constant gonging.
Dear rural Republican voters: this is the Find Out stage.
they’ll blame Ford, not Republicans
At least they know who really pulls the strings.
Good riddance. EV make their sons gay*.
*according to the classical definition. Once they experience the sub-3s 0-60 time, the come-at-the-speed-of-light torque, and the sub-10c/mile running cost, we would all be enjoying driving gayly.
Golf cart technology?
I’ve ridden in a friend’s unlimited Tesla.
He says he’s saving money, but fully optioned I think the break even point is in the future.
And my Ford is faster past a certain speed, because no gears in most battery cars.
It’s fast from a stop, but very heavy.
They will get a bail out from the government. They love socialism when they are on the receiving end.
Payout in Soybeans.
Haywood County is one of two majority-Black counties in Tennessee, and voted for Harris in 2024. (Though it has been trending rightward as the population decreases, and they also voted for Blackburn.)
They get washed out by the rest of the state.
You’re presuming there’s a capacity to learn here.
There will be a bunch of “the Democrats didn’t do enough to reel things in when we needed them to, so I’ll never be able to vote for those guys” mentality that’s going to persist well into the future.
Voting is a bit too much like car buying – it’s more emotional and based on intangibles than it is on facts and cold hard logic. People buy cars they shouldn’t (too expensive, not practical enough, more flashy than usable, etc) when there are much better options available. We vote the same way.
For many, the siren call of that Camaro is much louder than the cries of the two kids still in booster seats. It’s just human nature, unfortunately.
I remain confused about where all the workers for Blue Oval in Stanton are supposed to come from. It’s 40 miles in either direction to Memphis or Jackson.
Maybe people who live in the far northeastern exurbs, but that’s still a long way to go to work in a factory in the middle of nowhere.
Honestly same situation for Blue Oval SK in Kentucky. It’s 45 miles from LAP (Ford Escape Plant) which is on the south side of the Louisville metro area.
I think the idea is that it is far enough out to provide jobs to a lot of rural areas (desperately needed in parts of KY), while not being so far out that someone in/around the Louisville area couldn’t work there. I drive that section of I-65 regularly and it’s crazy, the whole thing is over a mile long. Not 100% sure if that’s the reason but it would make sense.
Whenever there is any crash on the freeway here, it locks traffic for miles.
When there is a large enough event, it gridlocks both directions on 40 AND on every possible alternate road.
So we already lack enough roads to carry normal traffic without the freeway.
My end of Jackson is gridlocked half of any normal day.
Am I eager to spend two to three unpaid hours commuting on dangerously overcrowded roads?
Not if I can work somewhere else
I’ve worked for a number of companies w/ factories in the south – not uncommon for workers to have extremely long commutes for these types of jobs.
40 mile commute is common for people living in the more rural counties surrounding our small city and visa versa. That’s why the used cars from these area tend to have really high mileage.
I commuted 50 miles to a manufacturer in a rural small town from my city. For ten yrs. My wife only commuted 16 miles in other direction to her employer in nearby small town.
40 miles is not “that” much. Especially for people who live in middle of nowhere but it’s on family land that they have no mortgage. I know trademen to will regularly drive 1.5+ hours, one way, to get to some jobs.
I’m confused that you seem to think people won’t commute 40 miles for a good job.
How about 60 miles?
In how much traffic?
I’m counting travel time as unpaid work to be divided by offered pay, for any work.
i’m old enough to remember when there was nothing south of nashville, except alabama. just like the nissan plant in smyrna, the workers came from everywhere, not just murfreesboro.
New plants come.
Stores and homebuilders follow.
There’s already no affordable housing anywhere close.
Did you hear how low the offered pay was?
Apparently that got a big no from any skilled workers.
It was doubled last I heard.
Lmao. I don’t think I’ve ever heard “legislative intent” being used directly to strong arm folks *and* then for big corps to just surrender. Strange times indeed.
Yeah I don’t think it was solely the letter. This sort of thing is not that uncommon anyway. It was a stupid move to begin with because the arbiter of whether or not you followed the IRS rules is…the IRS. So they can just say “no that’s not allowed” and your choices are eat it or attempt expensive litigation you’ll have a good chance of losing (and thus eating it harder).
If the loophole attempt wasn’t cleared all the way to the top of GM and Ford, some people got fired.
The fact that GM has only one hybrid is the worrisome issue. EV charging in CA is pretty expensive, to the point that running a hybrid is cheaper than a pure EV.
To all the small rural communities. GOOD! Voting has consequences. You don’t get to be regressive in your thinking then think you are entitled to the benefits of living in the modern world like the rest of us do. FAFO!
What good is a decent paying job and a vibrant community in a country where you aren’t allowed to be openly racist?
Amen
Favorite car cameo? Why, the 1983 Rosso Corsa Ferrari Mondial QV Cabriolet in Madonna’s “Material Girl,” of course!