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It’s time to get past our EV obsession
When electric vehicle subsidies were introduced around 2010, they were sold as a short-term fix to allow the undeveloped EV market to get its legs and compete with Internal Combustion Engines (ICE). The subsidies were justified on the basis that EVs, emitting no tailpipe emissions, would reduce global warming, later to be known as climate change.
Fifteen years later, far longer than any normal probation period, the experiment has clearly not worked. According to the Expedia Automotive Trend Report, only of 7.9% of new car registrations in 2024 were for EVs. Just 9.3% of the 286 million cars on the road were EVs, paltry numbers indeed considering the strenuous efforts of the federal government to stoke their success.
Purchasers of new EVs are provided a $7,500 federal subsidy, plus state subsidies where available. Used cars can pull up to $4,000 in purchasing aid. Commercial vehicles over 14,000 pounds can receive $40,000. Home chargers are eligible for $1,000.
Even though the fuels of ICE cars are heavily taxed, the charging stations for EVs are subsidized too. Battery factories get subsidized. Then there is the whole sorry history of boondoggle giveaways subsidizing EV production and failed loans beginning with the notorious Solyndra debacle.
Canoo lost $900 million and produced 122 cars. Taxpayers got stuck with the hundreds of millions of dollars in failed loans from Lordstown Motors, which manufactured 56 vehicles total.
EV drivers don’t have to chip in for road construction and maintenance costs, since they don’t pay gas tax or any fuel-based funding source. On the contrary, theirs is heavily subsidized. Their out-of-pocket cost is equivalent to $1.21 per gallon, but direct and indirect subsidies from government and utilities push the true cost to $17.33 per gallon, according to the Heritage Foundation.
EVs require a lot of juice to operate. Even though the EV market has failed to develop as expected, many major utility companies are already struggling to meet the increased demand. They warn that future EV mandates will require greatly expanded infrastructure for electricity generation and charging stations.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation calculates EV cars would cost $48,688 more without the production and purchase subsidies alone. Maybe all this public expense would be justified if EVs substantially reduced hydrocarbon emissions, but they don’t.
These calculations are tricky because net operating emissions obviously depend on the fuels used to produce the electricity. The disappointing failure of solar and wind to supply abundant, reliable energy and our still-limited access to nuclear energy have resulted in fossil fuels producing most of the electricity used to propel these “emission-free”cars.
Moreover, the battery manufacturing and disposal processes are intensely energy-consuming. Most studies show little, if any, overall benefit from switching to EVs. Yet the overwhelming evidence that EVs cost a ton and don’t do much good has so far not deterred the ambitions of government and the enviros to force all or most Americans into them.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas emission standards still require that 32% of new automobile sales be EVs or hybrid by 2027, a fourfold increase in two years from now! By 2032, 70% of sales must be electric. By 2050, we must be emitting no carbon at all.
Here’s a news flash: That isn’t going to happen. The world’s biggest polluters (China and India) aren’t on board and even in the West, citizens are clearly not willing to crater their economy for a dubious ideological goal with better solutions available.
Meanwhile, the government continues mandating that car companies sell EVs to customers who simply don’t want them, even with the massive incentives. What could go wrong?
Companies that can are fleeing the market. Ford projects that it will lose 5.5 billion on EVs this year, which they are forced to produce to meet the EV fleet mandates. That’s $60,000 per car sold, an amount they seemingly anticipate will eventually be bailed out by the government.
Look, it’s America. EVs are actually cool and fun to drive. People who want them and can afford them should have them. But there is no reason that the rest of us, who derive no benefit, should have to pay for them
Let the bubble burst.
Published in General
Our EV obsession? OUR?
THEIR EV obsession.
Their you go again. Wanting to name call and all while we are trying to negotiate a peace deal.
But if they think/we admit that we’re kinda obsessed too, that gives them leverage they shouldn’t have.
Especially when they think everyone needs an EV while also shutting down power plants and not building new ones.
All part of my master plan to turn California nuclear!
I dunno, Californians might be willing to ride it all the way to the bottom.
When there is no electricity, we can build secret reactors in places real Californians would never dream of going and staff them with Americans (doing the work Californians will not).
I dunno, shouldn’t we let them wallow in the muck they created for themselves?
And on the plus side, if they were no longer able to vote by mail, or electronically, that helps the whole country.
Points worthy of consideration.
There are between 1 and 2 billion destitute poor people on this planet that would go wild with a gas powered moped if you gave it to them. They don’t care about any of this.
Furthermore, all of the fires in California equal all the cars in California in CO2 emissions when they have a bad year.
The whole thing is stupid from top to bottom.
There is a libertarian Car analyst (that I forget to pay attention to enough) that says, the very bottom of the electric market doesn’t need any subsidy and it would do just fine. A second or third car for short trips.
All reminds me:
The totality in terms of acreage burned in Calif and Australia combined is considered by those examining real world statistics to be far worse with regards to boosting the carbon footprint than decades of car use in both nations.
With these huge fires, it is not just that trees, brush, cropland, and buildings burn. It is that so many trees have been incinerated that this loss means a major lack of the contribution of oxygen which the trees’ photosynthesis would have offered the planet.
I also think the libertarian car analyst is right about how people in households where one member makes only minor trips each day will go out and get that car without any need to be subsidized.
Meanwhile the “go green” via wind farm ideas are catching flack as well:
But an ICE car would still be less expensive to purchase, and if little used then supposed economies of use for EV (with present subsidies etc) seem unimportant.
As I’ve always said, they’d make great golf carts.
And systems might be developed to have them available for use in urban areas, though I don’t know how that would work. It might help with pollution. But I thought that’s what all the modern engineering in regular cars was for, so is it really worth it?
Plus, it’s being slowly figured out that the shortage of petroleum they were all on about when this started is a myth.
And we could also produce liquid fuels from other materials if needed. Still a better way to store energy than are batteries.
The dirty little secret, besides the lie that climate change models are in any way connected (yet) to reality, is that we are in a short warm spell in a glacial age. It is very rare to have any significant ice formations on this planet looking at the geological record. The serious risk, as Dr. Pournelle of blessed memory never tired of pointing, is dropping temperatures. Glaciers down to Mexico. You won’t be flooding major cities, they’ll be crushed like grapes. Maybe those Judge Dredd comics had the right idea with the cities on tank treads.
Or “Rolltown” by Mack Reynolds, although that was a different scale.
I’ll check it out.
I read and enjoyed a lot of Mack Reynolds “back in the day,” but it’s been a long time since I’ve re-read any of it.
They didn’t give Solyndra this long …
It’s possible that EVs are the only reasonable option while on Mars, and that’s what Tesla is really all about. The man has a plan!
You don’t have to go to the gas station. It effectively doesn’t wear out. It has far more torque.
What are you talking about?
Having said that I have an ICE Subaru BRZ with a manual shifter and it’s tiny and overpowered and I freaking love it. If you live in a town where the transportation systems and freeways are controlled by communists, I can’t recommend it enough. You have other options like the Volkswagen Golf R, Toyota GR Corolla, and the related.
Apologies, all I can do lately when reading about EV is laugh at the marketing efforts over at Dodge. Trying desperately to convince Mopar people that a $70K EV Charger with fake exhaust noise is a proper replacement for their V8 muscle cars.
If it’s little used, you wouldn’t have to go to the gas station MUCH, and there would be no need for the expense and complications of installing a home charger, if you even had a place for one. (Lots of people don’t have their own individual parking area at their apartment/condominium/etc.) They would probably not enjoy spending a couple hours on occasion charging somewhere else, IF they can find a place and IF it’s operational and not already in use…
There are also hybrids, whose battery situation is far less environmentally damaging than full EVs.
Liquefied methane, for one.
You are ignoring 2/3 of the things I said, and you are adding things I didn’t say. It’s only going to be an option for people that are loaded. They aren’t going to charge it anywhere but home. It’s not that easy getting a small, simple, and highly functional vehicle with that much torque.
Like I said, it effectively doesn’t wear out and need servicing like an ICE engine.
I have no idea what the circumstances are where this becomes a good option.
I know 30 years ago or maybe 40, they were using natural gas cars in a few select cities because it was a lot cheaper, even though you lost storage in the vehicle.
What I recall from those times involved Compressed Natural Gas (CNG), not liquefied. One major advantage to a natural gas system is that a lot of pipeline infrastructure already exists.
Also, methane can be produced from other sources, not just drilling.
I don’t actually think it’s a GOOD idea overall, but it has some big advantages over EV. Such as, you don’t need cobalt, lithium, etc for the storage.