You Won't Believe This, but Italy's Car Industry is Struggling!

You aren’t going to believe this - because no one could’ve possibly seen it coming - but Stellantis and the rest of Italy’s auto industry is having financial problems. No, really, Reuters and Bloomberg and ABC News and lots of other media boosters of the energy transition from those nasty internal combustion engines to electric vehicles have all reported this stunning reality in the last couple of days, so it must be true!

*sigh*

Honestly, where do you even begin. Well over a year ago, I interviewed Lars Carlstrom, the CEO of ItalVolt, a battery startup that manufactures batteries for EVs, industrial applications and renewable power stationary backup. He told me then - and I wrote at the time - that the European car market was becoming overwhelmed by competition from Chinese EV makers who are able to make and sell high quality EVs at prices far below what European carmakers are able to achieve. Carlstrom further warned that, unless the EU and national governments acted quickly to protect native car companies, they could all fail.

Finally, a year later, the media is taking notice, of course shocked (or pretending to be shocked) that car companies that have been forced by government edict to make and attempt to sell electric cars that few people want and fewer can afford are running into financial problems.