The 2030-2035 Corporate Failures
In 1979 I purchased a new Volvo 242 GT, it came standard in silver with black and red pin striping. I found the most impressive feature with the car was the four-speed manual transmission with electric overdrive. Once up to speed and engaging the overdrive, which was a switch on the top of the gear stick, the engine could barely be heard.
With over 300,000 miles on that car, I traded the vehicle never to purchase another – mainly because since that time I’ve never lived near a Volvo dealership. Whenever I see a classic-bodied Volvo, I adoringly point it out to my wife – she rolls her eyes in “un-matching” and “un-mutual” adoration. I like the square, boxier, classic appearance of older European cars.
After Ford, Mercedez-Benz, and Lucid, a late arrival in the car manufacturing business, headquartered in Newark, California, Volvo has joined in canceling its goal of manufacturing 100% electric vehicles by the year 2030. Hertz, the rental car company, went big into purchasing electric vehicles, but consumer demand for these is extremely low, so they are having a sizeable sell-off of their EVs.
Sales of the Volkswagen electric car have plummeted yet, sales of the VW vehicles with internal combustion engines are doing fine. How long before this German manufacturer reneges on its ‘Net Zero’ pledge?
Italy has asked the European Union to scrap the mandated 2035 Combustion Engine Ban. Italian Industry Minister Adolfo Urso said, “Europe needs a pragmatic vision, the ideological vision has failed. We need to acknowledge that.”
In the article, “The Real Existential Threat “, I wrote about Australian and New Zealand companies abandoning their pledge to curtail CO2 emissions to 2030 commitments.
A Newsroom article from Accenture states, “While more than one-third (34%) of the world’s largest companies are now committed to Net Zero, nearly all (93%) will fail to achieve their goals if they don’t at least double the pace of emissions reduction by 2030, according to a new report from Accenture”. This assertion, according to the article, is based, ironically, on growing energy price inflation and supply insecurity.
The BBC states, “Businesses are increasingly committing to ambitious sustainability pledges. Yet what that means is complicated and opaque, and some companies are struggling to make an action plan”. Translating that to plain English, “Talk is cheap and action is expensive, so we’ll just baffle them with BS”.
So, while a massive number of companies are committing to lowered carbon dioxide emissions or imaginative climate targets, very few are actually going to succeed. The only consequence of this will be higher prices for the consumer on every product and service, as well as higher taxes, as governments give more subsidies to companies failing to meet their CO2 emissions commitment.
These are all cases of consumer demand versus government edict or, in other words, the free market versus socialism. Governments must generate volumes of regulation on climate change, even though it is a deceptive issue. Politically, one cannot claim it’s real and then do nothing about it – it is all part and parcel of the illusory show.