In Teslas’ software package, there is an option called “Ludicrous Mode.” Once selected — and assuming you’ve paid the premium to access ludicrousness — your vehicle can launch at a gut-pummeling rate to achieve a sub-three-second 0–60 mph time. Acceleration that was once exclusive to half-million-dollar hypercars is now available to anyone for under $100,000. Pretty slick, even if it is soulless relative to internal combustion’s furious tintinnabulation. A disclaimer (as is always necessary when discussing things guys care too much about): The following contains criticism not of electric vehicles (EVs) per se but rather of the federal government’s preferential treatment of an undercooked technology.
The EPA, EV advocates, and the Biden administration wish to apply the concept of ludicrous mode to enacting the rapid electrification of American transport, which is wrongheaded for many reasons. Most of all, it can’t be done because no one wants it. So these EV supporters will force it, which is a bit like seating an average 75-year-old (who currently helms a 2002 Mercury Grand Marquis, the Resulta BS 7 to a Tesla’s iPad) and Ford’s accountants and designers on the roof of a Tesla pre-launch and expecting to find them at the other end of the drag strip still atop the vehicle.
The outcome would be much grislier, but that doesn’t stop lobbyists and ideologues from arguing that launching the vehicle just a little slower might do the trick. When everything was looking up for the EV industry amidst Covid, with Americans at home with disposable income and not needing much in the way of long-distance transportation, the headlines crowed about widespread adoption. But now that the expense, fiddliness, and discomfort of these vehicles are becoming known to more Americans (and while those who were excited about the EVs already own one), manufacturers are slashing outlooks and pricing while consultants are writing op-eds filled with happy talk and “it was never going to be clean and swift” mottes.
In an Axios piece titled “Understanding the Slow and Messy Switch to Electric Cars,” the author repositions the debate, saying EV adoption has made noble progress with much work yet to be done:
Reality check: The EV slowdown is real — their first-quarter growth rate was a tepid 2.7% vs. last year’s torrid 47% — while hybrids are becoming more popular.
As I’ve written in the past, the Biden administration does not “get it” at all and is rather attempting to save face while forcing the industry to build vehicles in which Americans exhibit limited interest.
Our Zach Kessel reported on the standards in March: “The new rules set targets for the number of electric models produced in the United States as a percentage of all light-duty vehicles created each year. For instance, in 2030, hitting the EPA’s new targets would require somewhere between 31 percent and 44 percent of new cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks to be fully electric, with the exact percentage depending on the amount of emissions from other vehicles.”
With new EVs accounting for well under 10 percent of new car purchases and significant improvements in charging infrastructure and range still years away, it seems likely that the EPA’s targets are optimistic — at least they would be if they weren’t the federal government and didn’t have the (in my view) unconstitutional ability to thump manufacturers who fail to meet arbitrary marks that have never seen a vote in Congress.
Just as hedging is taking place, so too is there a campaign of contempt aimed at legitimate concerns, as Pete Buttigieg exemplifies with McKinsey & Company flavor:
Cellphones did not become commonplace until the expense of owning them fell below that of owning land lines and their relative convenience became undeniable. Even now, more than 15 years after the mass adoption of cellphones, land lines play a daily role in business and education. But Buttigieg is just a pretty face tasked with saying what Biden needs him to say, so one shouldn’t judge him much over his failed analogies. Jack Butler encapsulated the episode capably: “By speaking in this way, McKinsey Pete merges the worst of private-sector consultants — can’t you hear him patiently explaining the importance of ‘reductions in force’ to you? — with the worst of forced bureaucratic whim.” In other words, Pete is sorry you’re opting out of the future, and if you don’t like the options, there’s always public transport.
The best of the EV-apologism convoy (by which I mean the most nakedly astroturfed) comes from a self-described Republican consultant, Mike Murphy, who in Politico makes the argument that independents like EVs and that the 2024 election will be decided by independents in swing states that have benefited from EV-manufacturing dollars. Murphy concludes:
EV bashing is dumb politics for the GOP. And worse, it’s terrible policy for American jobs. If America steps away from the electric vehicle future, China will step in and utterly dominate the global automotive market even more than it already has. The Republican politicians who trash electric vehicles aren’t helping America’s autoworkers — they are dooming them to obsolescence. That’s a path to watching dozens of American auto plants close as vital U.S. industrial capacity melts away. That is the real potential economic bloodbath, and it surely will not make American great again.
Hard disagree. For one, Americans who favor EVs don’t care about them any more than they care about toasters (NRPlus Facebook group excepted). Those on the left who were initially crazy about EVs have had to cool it after the poster boy Elon became Trump Patch 1.1 in their eyes, and those on the right like Elon but aren’t about to trade in their Buicks, Lexuses, and Ford F-150s. Further, these factories are already retooling from full EV production to instead push out hybrids — which is the opposite of what the 2032 regulations demand. The best thing for American autoworkers is profitability. . . . EVs lose money — $36,000 for Ford per vehicle sold in the third quarter of 2023, in fact. America can’t compete with China in EVs, nor should it. We aren’t going to win that competition. Let China lose money building electric cars. It’s a business of the thinnest of margins. Let it battle with the EU. We’d be better served allowing our domestic manufacturers to produce cars that make them money while we cut emissions regulations in ways that allow smaller, economical cars to become the norm.
EV lobbyists are the Craigslist salesmen of the automotive world: They know what they’ve got (junk), and it’s their goal to make it some dupe’s problem through fabrications (regulatory and rhetorical).