I see Forbes is saying this morning:

The $7,500 EV tax credit was one of many casualties resulting from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. While this bill was signed into law on July 4, the credit did not expire for several months, according to Forbes. However, as of October 1, these credits are no longer available, leading to questions about the future of this segment of the automotive industry. Most notably, the tax incidence for purchasing these vehicles shifts from the Federal government to the purchasers or the car manufacturers.

Buckle up, kids. I’ll tell you right up front: I’m cheering that this tax break has been ended.
 
Truth is, every time I see one of those battery powered go-karts with delusions of car hood, I imagine the owner running out of electricity halfway through his trip for the last time, and with his last straw broken, walking to the nearest gas station buying a can full of gas, and pouring it into the interior of his vehicle and dropping a match. Of course, given the way those things tend to torch themselves, maybe actually using gasoline to put them out of our misery is a needless effort.

The question that the enviro whack job left still is unwilling to answer, even this far down the road, and after all the mandates have been put in play, is how many nuclear power plants they are willing to suborn to support a switch to battery power. The ’60s radicals running the Democrat party these days still haven’t gotten past the No Nukes protests of back in the day. As such, addressing the issue of how much in the way of additional infrastructure they will support is beyond them.

How much more capacity is needed to support our total switch over to electric cars? Let’s look at the numbers.

For example, a home charging system for a Tesla requires 75 amp service. The average house is equipped with 100-amp service. On the average older residential street (let’s say, approximately 25 homes), the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than three houses with a single Tesla each. For even half the homes to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly over-loaded, with the average load per house being double the existing design limit.

So we are NOT just talking about power generation, which is a big enough problem on its own, given the levels of red tape one needs to cut through even to get a power plant approved, much less built. We’re also talking about transmission lines, power-generating stations, switching stations, and new, much heavier infrastructure between the last switch and the houses. In essence, we’re looking at completely rebuilding the entire network, from the power plant to your backyard. 

By definition, the power companies are going to need well over double the current monthly income to support a project of that size and scope. In other words, the result will be sky-high energy costs, not only making your home more expensive, but also wiping out the savings you were pitched on when we started with this nonsense a few years back.

Oh, speaking of rebuilding the network. I’ve seen many times over the years, electric repair trucks heading for one area of the country or another following a hurricane. My hat is always off to those guys. But I’ve noticed one thing about the vehicles they use to repair the electrical systems. The trucks are never battery-powered. I’ll leave it to your imagination why that is.

California, we are told, is a model for how this is all supposed to work in the mindlessness of the left and is, in fact, the way they want the entire country to go.  If that's so, then far as I can see, precisely the direction we should NOT be going. 

The thing is, their electric-powered utopia is unsustainable. The emphasis on that word is intentional; It’s a word the enviro-left likes to use when they believe it advantages them, but you can bet your power pole they won’t mention what I’m saying here.

Current capacity (no pun intended) in our example of California is well under what’s required to support itself. They also have just barely enough in the way of electric infrastructure to get by with under normal conditions at the moment. If they have a heat wave, they’re well beyond capacity. (Gee, California has heat waves? I never knew!) 

California ships most of its electricity from out of state, and so is totally dependent on transmission lines. This leads to shortages of electricity. It’s why the California state government, not so long ago, was famously telling everybody not to charge their electric vehicles. Apparently, there’s only so much in the way of unicorn farts to go around..

You do know, don't you, that a lack of support for modern infrastructure is precisely why (for example) the California fires occurred, don't you? The distribution system broke down from neglect, not because, as the state claimed, of PG&E’s neglect, but because the state wouldn’t allow them to upgrade the system. It overloaded and tossed sparks on dry brush, which was the state's responsibility to clean up. A responsibility it failed on.

In fact, PG&E had been trying for years to get the government to allow it to upgrade the system to prevent exactly that from happening. But the Democrat run state wouldn't have a thing to do with it, and poof! An entire town is gone.

The outcome? The government gets to blame PG&E and tries to take over PG&E completely. It’s a play we’ve seen before with Amtrak. Totally screw things up. Then, solve the problem the government created by having the government that caused the problem take over the operations of a privately held company, which guarantees three things: costs going up, service never approaching what it was before the government took it over. And, of course, pointing fingers of blame at the non-government entity.

Now, I should say that the problems are not at all limited to the state of liberal glory that is California, but affect every American.

Another consideration: Our highway system is supported with taxes on fuel and some other transportation-related items. How to support the roads if we ditch oil as a power source? Yep, costs go up. 

The tax break on Electric cars went bye-bye as a part of the Big, Beautiful Bill. That tax break ended today. As I say, I'm cheering its demise. The Democrats will tell you that the tax break on battery-powered vehicles was supposed to "level the playing field," allowing electric transportation to flourish. However, like we have to for everything else that the Democrats do, look to the money. They gain personally either through graft or simple opportunism and greed every time they get their way on matters of energy. Every single time. In this case, let's consider where the lithium comes from.

When you do, it really doesn't take much to understand the why of the push toward electric vehicles. It's all about the money and China dominating the economic world. As Rush Limbaugh always said: “Follow the money.”

The lithium battery and its construction loom large here.  Let's leave aside for the moment that nobody's ever been able to figure out how to recycle these bloody things safely and cost-effectively. It was almost exactly a year ago that we saw a huge fire at a lithium recycling plant in Missouri. How many people have watched their houses burn down because the electric car in their garage malfunctioned?

Let's also ignore the expense involved in replacing the batteries themselves, often amounting to around half the price of the whole car. What's the life expectancy of an electric vehicle battery? In the real world, particularly in the colder northeast regions, it ends up being something in the neighborhood of two years. Maybe.

Oh, and let's discuss Afghanistan, which is considered to be the Saudi Arabia of lithium. Which in turn also explains the push of the Chinese to get the U.S. out of Afghanistan a while back. Control the lithium, as the Chinese largely do already, and you know who's going to be making money, and who it won’t be. It won’t be the 7-year-olds who are currently digging up the stuff, making that money. 

I did a story a couple of years ago wherein I mentioned the Bidens reportedly owning 10% of a Chinese lithium-ion battery company whose stock at that point had gone up some 300% since Biden attained office. Like I said, follow the money.

China was also already in talks with the Taliban before Biden’s blundering rush to get us out of Afghanistan. (If you’d like to do some research, the company is Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., which is even today the world’s largest electric vehicle battery maker.) Perhaps now we better understand why the tax breaks were created in the first place? And why the Biden administration was in such a hurry to get out of there.

Okay, now that we’ve explored the utter stupidity of these tax breaks from the POV of Joe and Jane Average, let’s turn to the impact of ending them.

I’ve said many times over the years that electric vehicles are at best a niche market, the newest shiny object, a field that, for the most part, only the rich could play on. I’ll also point out that by definition, the only folks then, who could be advantaged by this tax break, which ended today, were the very rich the Democrats claim to be against. Both because they’re the only ones that can afford the cars, but also because they’re the ones investing in the PRC-based supply chains that electric car makers are using.

Perhaps we should also be talking about domestic auto makers who spent billions trying to come up with a workable electric vehicle, with at best spotty results. All of which got wasted, since very few people, comparatively, are actually buying the things. How many jobs have been lost and how many fortunes have been turned into smoking ruins by this nonsense? It’s no secret that the big three were already faltering before these electric car mandates came along. Trust me, the government demanding they make cars that people could not afford and didn’t want didn’t help their survival rating.

I’m not even going to address the pipe dream of converting America’s truck fleet to electric, along with passenger cars. While California already has laws on the books about that, the numbers take on a surreal glow, as do our wallets when businesses have to pay the huge amounts of money over and above what they’re already paying and billing us for.

But to show you how quickly this stuff changes, I’ll note the speed with which the left moved from idolizing to mandating electric cars to burning them down. Put another way, If you want proof that the whole electric car scene was nothing more than political correctness writ large, witness the number of people who are, even today, fashionably dumping the Teslas they bought just a few short months ago, that they were so proud of just a short while ago, because Elon Musk helped to reduce the power of government.

Obviously, political power is more important than the electric car ploy. And, maybe, just maybe, the electric car was never about saving the planet?

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