Accelerating the electric vehicle doom loop

I’ve been writing about electric vehicles since 2011.  EV cheerleading never stops. They’re inevitable! We’ll have 500,000 chargers coast to coast any minute now (the federal government has built approximately two)! By 2030, 50% — or more — of all vehicles on the road will be EVs!  EVs will save the planet! Ve haf vays to make you buy EVs!  And eat bugs!  Don’t forget about the bugs!

Real reality is, of course, different than Mummified Meat Puppet Administration reality. In real reality, Americans have rejected EVs. GM is “postponing” EV production, Ford has cut future production in half, America soon will have about 50% fewer Buick dealers, bought out because they refused to sell EVs, and Hertz is dramatically reducing its EV fleet. Americans wisely won’t rent them. Most charging stations, particularly in Flyover Country, look like this:

Graphic: Author

Sadly, EVs and their mandates, while in a doom loop, aren’t quite dead. At The Pipeline, Buck Throckmorton has a suggestion or two about how to kill them once and for all:

We have won a battle – an important one – but not the war. [snip] They’re just licking their wounds, reloading, and preparing for their next assault on our transportation freedom.

Therefore, we must now put the E.V. advocates on the defensive, making them fear they might lose their precious vehicles as a consequence of their attempted I.C.E. ban. They came after us and we repelled their first assault, but simply repelling an adversary’s attack only sets the stage for their next assault. They must suffer a loss, and they must put all their energy into not suffering any more losses, to ensure that they don’t get the opportunity to come after our gasoline-powered cars again. In warfare, the only thing that counts is the unconditional surrender of the enemy.

In the spirit of the emissions mandates and other dictates that have been imposed on legacy auto manufacturers, I might recommend that we impose the following on electric vehicles:

• Mandate massive weight reductions in E.V.s by 2030, perhaps an across the board 25 percent reduction from the current “corporate average weight” of the E.V. fleet. There would be punitive taxes and levies for failure to comply.
• Mandate an end to dangerous lithium-based batteries by the year 2030.
• Ban E.V.s from parking garages due to the risk of runaway thermal fires.
• Ban E.V.s from bridges due to their weight.
• Assess an annual 4-figure road tax on E.V.s since they don’t pay gasoline road taxes.
• Assess a painful “scrapping fee” on the sale of every E.V. since they have such a short life span compared to I.C.E. cars.
• In the spirit of cigarette warnings, mandate a giant warning label on the hood of every E.V. advising that foreign slaves and child labor were used to source the rare earth minerals in the car.
• Impose a state level E.V. supplemental sales tax that is exactly equal to any federal incentive amount applied to the sale of an E.V.
• Mandate petroleum-free tires on E.V.s to ensure the cars are truly net-zero, and that they don’t release toxic emissions. 

Throckmorton’s just desserts are delicious, but unless Donald Trump takes the White House, and Republicans take both houses of Congress with substantial majorities, his suggestions will surely, sadly, never become law. They won’t become regulations either if we want to reduce regulations.  

I’ve so often written I’ve no objection to EVs, so long as no one is trying to push them down anyone’s throat or taxpayers are forced to subsidize them. If they work for you, buy one for each day of the week and change them like underwear. That way you might have one charged when you need it. True, the average EV price is around $67,000, but what’s paying double the price of a comparable, conventionally powered, vehicle compared to achieving the worthy goal of only appearing to save the planet?

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.