Our self-imagined elite EV future

The minions of the Mummified Meat Puppet Administration (MMPA), like Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, just know electric vehicles are the future:  

“…the automotive sector is moving towards EVs”…but “we can’t just sit back and let this happen on its own pace…” 

Of course not. If the MMPA lets Americans make their own choices, if the market is allowed to function without government guidance, people will make the wrong choices, choices not politically or financially helpful to the self-imagined elite (SIE)!

Graphic: Le fourgon electrique (face avant). A French electric fire truck.

 Wikimedia Common.org. Public Domain.

The EPA and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have recently announced emissions rules that will force American auto manufacturers to go largely electric by the early 2030s. Unfortunately for them, Americans don’t want EVs, can’t afford them, and won’t buy them. Despite Secretary Pete’s vision of the future, Ford, GM and Stellantis have dramatically cut back on EV production. Ford lost at least $5 billion last year—more than $60,000 per EV–on its EVs, and is on track to lose as much in 2024:

Graphic: X Screenshot

If those rules hold, the only way manufacturers will be able to sell EVs is to reduce their prices far below costs, which means they’ll have to hike prices on their internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, thus beginning a doom loop. As ICE prices rise, fewer and fewer will be able to afford them, and a huge semi-black market in ICE vehicles will spring up. In the meantime, manufacturers will have to try to rebalance their revenues by raising prices on EVs, which people don’t want and won’t buy. All of this assumes Americans, who are even now subsidizing EVs for the wealthy, won’t rise up and overthrow the government in the meantime.

Even worse for the SIE, fewer Americans than they thought will buy EVs, as Gallup recently discovered:

EV ownership grew, with seven percent of Americans saying they own one, compared to four percent last year. At the same time, people who don’t own an electric vehicle aren’t as hot on the concept as they were in 2023. Gallup reported that just nine percent of non-EV owners said they were seriously considering a purchase, down from 12 percent last year.

Americans are less interested in EVs overall, too, with 35 percent saying they might consider one, an eight percent decline from the year before. Less than half of adults say they were considering buying an EV in the future, and the number that noted no interest in the format increased to 48 percent from 41 in 2023. 

That 7% ownership figure represents an all-time high, and almost certainly, a high as high as it’s going to get unless government becomes even more tyrannical and forces people into EVs at gunpoint. In other words, the portion of the population that wants EVs already has them, and they’re among the highest income Americans, people who have 3+ car garages, and $10,000+ for fast chargers. They’re people who don’t have to worry about rising energy costs, and who have as many ICE vehicles as they need. Their EVs are toys, greenie street cred.

But what about that 35% that “might consider one?”  Note the qualifier “might.” Unless they’re part of the wealthy, greenie street cred culture, which already have all the EVs they want, when they discover the average EV currently sells for $60,000 or so, and when they discover all the downsides of EV ownership, “might” is going to change to “absolutely not.”

It’s clear people like Secretary Pete don’t get out much, at least not to where Normal Americans live. Normal Americans like people who live in apartments, where they have no garage and no way to install fast chargers they can’t afford anyway. Sure, they could run 100+ feet of extension cord out to their EV in the parking lot, but wall current takes days to charge an EV battery, and even longer if it’s cold outside. Normal Americans whose work commutes and routes exceed EV range, know when they run out of charge, they can’t get a lift to a station to get a can of electricity. They’re going to be calling for a tow truck they can’t afford.

Perhaps Pete is right. Perhaps EVs are the future, but in an alternate, SIE reality, not in the reality most Americans inhabit.

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. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.