Comments by "John Luetjen" (@jehl1963) on "" video.

  1. " I'll never understand why government ministers are so incapable of seeing what is so blatantly obvious to the rest of us." I suggest you watch some congressional testimony by the leaders of the Department of Transportation, Department of Energy, NTSB and so on on the subject of electrification. Also some of the witnesses, like Hollywood actors telling everyone why the nation needs to transition to electric vehicles. You'll all too quickly understand why they are incapable.
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  2. What do I think? Diesels died as a result of a government hit-job because they were too tough of a competitor for the desired electric power-train. So (unelected regulators at ) CARB arbitrarily chose to implement massive reductions in pollutants (increments of 90%) which the diesel manufacturers couldn't successfully hit while maintaining the desired performance and margins. About half the other states pegged their standards to California's. Keep in mind -- no margins, no product. When VW (and later others) were caught cheating, the torches and pitch-forks were hoisted and VW fined so much that everyone in the industry took the hint and killed off diesels. Hydrogen fueled engines sound cool until you dive deeply into the process and economics of generating hydrogen. Currently (at least in the US) it's against the law to carry even a small tank of hydrogen in your car (without specific licenses) on the highway due to the dangers. The challenges of economically generating the needed volumes, keeping it in the tanks and safely handling it are significant. While it's easy to knock the Germans for removing the size limits, the manufacturers there (including I suspect Herr Piech) clearly understood that the margins on small cars will not support massive investments in a new technology. As I said before -- no margins, no product. Electric car technology would not have gotten as far as it did if manufacturers hadn't started with larger "prestige" vehicles. But at the end of the day, most people don't like having decisions made for them (aka: electric cars being forced into their garages), nor do they like being taxed so other people can get discounts on their expensive virtue statements. Economics is like gravity. It will ultimately always win.
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