There is a great divide between what electric vehicle (EV) advocates wish their preferred method of movement could do and what it can currently accomplish. While EVs may someday surpass their gasoline and diesel counterparts — and they already do in terms of acceleration and mechanical simplicity (though not ease of repair) — the government has mandated electrification well before it’s ready, to the detriment of all. As an auto enthusiast, I’m ecumenical about power plants up until the point when the government starts picking winners — especially when the “winners” are undercooked. (RELATED: ‘Gas Guzzlers’: The Government Lied About Car Markets)
Further, while the technology is refined and the infrastructure to support them built out, a supply issue benefits those with resources — and those with staffers willing to hog charging spots in internal combustion (ICE) vehicles so that Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm can cruise into the South with her caravan of EVs and pretend that charger scarcity is a myth.
Energy Secretary Granholm recently took 4-day EV caravan trip across the southeast to "draw attention to the billions of dollars the White House is pouring into green energy and clean cars."
What happened next is like a scene out of VEEP: pic.twitter.com/D0uuGJjJIl
— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) September 10, 2023
One could hardly invent a more ridiculous scenario than the energy secretary wending her way through the countryside with a couple hundred grand in machinery — Ford F-150 ($75,000), Cadillac Lyriq ($65,000), and Chevy Bolt ($27,000) — to show the commonfolk the future of transportation. The average household income in Augusta, Georgia, is $43,759.
“You too should purchase a carriage like mine,” the German princeling told the people of Wittenberg. I cannot speak with any certainty if such a hypothetical utterance was the final offense that initiated the Peasants’ War (1524), but it wouldn’t be a surprising catalyst.
NPR’s EV PR
The article on the trip has it all: an NPR reporter riding along with a Democrat bureaucrat to do some PR for EVs, a foreseeable issue made worse by arrogant staffers, and a conclusion that omits a dangerous flaw in one of the most popular electric vehicles:
[A]sk Holmesetta Green. I met her when she was sitting on a curb in the back corner of a Walmart parking lot, parked right next to Granholm, waiting for her Volkswagen ID.4 to charge.
Green, a 79-year-old retired teacher, frequently makes the six-hour drive from her home in Louisville, Ky., to her hometown in Holly Springs, Mississippi.
It was hot that day. Hot hot. “You ever fried an egg on a sidewalk?” Green asked me. She wished out loud for a charging station in a park, with a bench in the shade.
I asked her how she likes her SUV. And her answer summed up the anxieties and the hopes of both the Biden administration and the auto industry at large.
“It’s not enough chargers over on the major highways,” she said. And charging is “kind of slow.”
“Other than that, I wouldn’t take $100,000 for this car,” she said, smiling ear to ear. “We love it. We love the electric.”
While Holmsetta may well love her VW ID.4, that particular vehicle has an outstanding recall for power cables chafing on the steering column, which can cause fires — and EV fires make gasoline flare-ups look like a weenie roast in comparison. ICE fires reach around 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit, and battery fires rate 2,500 degrees and require far more resources to put out. It’s not ideal, and fire departments are only now starting to develop action plans for such intense temperatures.
EV Innumeracy
Then there’s the silly math (one could accuse an economist of motivated math, but journalists don’t know better) that precludes the price of purchasing an EV when estimating the cost of operation:
Road trip charging can be cheap too. Granholm’s 770-mile trip cost one of the Energy Department’s drivers just $35 total, less than half of what gasoline would have run in a similar vehicle.
An ICE vehicle comparable to the Cadillac Lyriq, such as a Lexus ES 250, retails for $50,000. Using the U.S. Department of Energy’s calculator, one can observe that the operating costs of the Lexus are $0.29 per mile, while the Cadillac is $0.22 per mile. While seven cents fewer per mile, because of the starting price disparity of $15,000, the Cadillac will never recoup its markup relative to the Lexus.
Less car for more money is a losing proposition, so it’s no wonder that EVs are now sitting on dealer lots, as the people willing to deal with the peculiarities of electric vehicles now own one.
Screenshot from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Vehicle Cost Calculator, obtained Sept. 11, 2023
Let Them Compete
In its effort to sell the American public on EVs, the Biden administration has shown that even with thousands of dollars in incentives and plenty of exposure, electric vehicles are not compatible with what most Americans want in a car — reliability, reasonable features, and value — as evidenced by the overwhelming popularity of the ICE Toyota Camry and Rav4 (with a nod to domestic ICE trucks, though many are fleet vehicles). The exception to this observation is the Tesla Model Y, which bucks the trend by being a decent bit of engineering at a sub-$50k price point. Compared to the BMWs and Volvos in the school drop-off in a well-heeled neighborhood, the Y offers the same air of ubiquitous exclusivity and some giddy up for relatively little money. But Tesla has consciously bucked broader EV trends by building its own network of chargers and shedding as many interior bits and bobs as possible to keep costs in check. If you like extra kit, there’s always the option to tack it on in multi-thousand-dollar chunks.
The problem with EVs has almost nothing to do with the cars themselves and everything to do with the government regulating the alternatives out of existence. The realized environmental advantages of electrification are minimal, but a nation of EVs makes Democrats feel warm and fuzzy as they sit behind a Walmart charging their cars. When Republicans regain the executive branch, they’d be wise to do away with these subsidies and remind the EPA that it is an enforcement mechanism, not a quasi-legislature.
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