President Joe Biden signed an executive order Thursday “setting a goal that 50 percent of all new passenger cars and light trucks sold in 2030 be zero-emission vehicles, including battery electric, plug-in hybrid electric, or fuel cell electric vehicles.”
All the major automakers, who had already pledged to manufacture only “zero-emission” vehicles in the future, issued press releases gushing over what Issues & Insights dubbed “the most massive, disruptive, and anti-consumer mandate ever to come out of Washington.”
There’s just one problem: Americans simply do not want electric cars.
Issues & Insights noted in May:
Despite massive taxpayer rebates to electric car buyers, a multitude of subsidized recharging stations, and the constant talk about how electric automobiles will save the planet, sales of plug-ins accounted for a tiny 2% of all cars sold in the U.S. last year. Domestic sales of Chevy’s gas-guzzling Silverado pickups alone last year doubled the combined sales of electric cars from all makers.
Consumers consistently reject electric cars for several good reasons.
First, generally speaking, electric cars cost more than their traditional counterparts, especially if the buyer doesn’t get any tax credits, and they aren’t really cheaper to operate. Car and Driver’s conclusion as to whether electric cars cost less in the long run was a hearty “All signs point to possibly. Maybe. Sometimes.”
Second, electric cars have very short ranges — about half that of gas-powered autos, according to Car and Driver, which also found that using the air conditioner or heater significantly reduces the range.
Third, recharging an electric car takes an enormous amount of time. “Leaving a car plugged into a conventional outlet overnight will give you enough juice to go all of about 30 miles,” wrote Issues & Insights. “Even so-called fast-chargers are tedious compared with a simple fill-up at the gas station. (Tesla’s ‘Superchargers’ take a little more than an hour to fully charge its cars, Business Insider reports.)”
More-informed consumers also recognize that electric vehicles’ benefits are often overstated while their detriments are ignored. Sure, the cars don’t spew visible exhaust containing pollutants and the supposedly global-warming-inducing carbon dioxide; but their manufacturing, charging, and even driving create at least as much pollution and carbon emissions. In addition, the mining of the cobalt needed to produce electric cars’ batteries involves forced child labor under horrific conditions.
Still, whether they are aware of all this or not, consumers know enough not to buy the darned things — and even to trade them in for good, old-fashioned petrol-powered vehicles. A study published in the journal Nature Energy in April revealed that one-fifth of Californians gave up their electric cars because, among other things, they found charging inconvenient.
Given that few people want electric cars, how are automakers going to get half of their customers to buy them in just a few short years? According to the press release from Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis (which makes Chrysler vehicles), “This … dramatic shift … can be achieved only with the timely deployment of the full suite of electrification policies committed to by the [Biden] Administration in the Build Back Better Plan, including purchase incentives, a comprehensive charging network of sufficient density to support the millions of vehicles these targets represent, investments in R&D, and incentives to expand the electric vehicle manufacturing and supply chains in the United States.”
“In other words,” observed Issues & Insights, “massive taxpayer subsidies.
Biden wants to dump $174 billion – with a B – to pay for subsidies, grants, and tax incentives to car buyers, to build electric charging stations, and to replace the entire federal fleet of cars and trucks, including all those used by the already financially desperate U.S. Postal Service.
So, what Biden and the industry are teaming up to accomplish will not only harm consumers, who will be denied the full range of choices they have now, but also taxpayers, who will have to pay for an unprecedented experiment in industrial policy.
Ironically, this comes from an administration whose supporters believe they are opponents of fascism. However, as Issues & Insights pointed out, collaboration between private industry and government “to dictate to consumers what they can and can’t buy” is the very definition of “national socialism, aka, fascism.”
