News Every Day | 19 April 2024, 02:09

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for EVs

WND

By H. Sterling Burnett

Electric vehicles (EVs) have been all the rage among politicians since at least President Obama's first term in office, but they've never really caught on among the unwashed masses.

Average folks with jobs, shopping to do, errands to run and kids to transport actually want their cars to deliver them to their destinations in a timely manner while toting everything and everyone they might want to carry or tow, without blowing up while parked or burning down their residences in the process.

In truth, EVs had been tried and rejected before, largely due to the same problems they still have: range anxiety and cost issues.

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The first electric vehicle, a locomotive, was tested in 1837, nearly 60 years before the first vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine (ICE) entered service. Electric locomotives couldn't compete with steam engines fueled by coal. The first rechargeable batteries were created in 1859, but EVs still couldn't compete. Electric cars pre-existed the first gasoline and diesel-powered private vehicles, all without government support, subsidies, or tax credits, by the way, but they couldn't compete. They still can't. Yet now, in a vain quest to manage the climate, the government is putting its thumb on the scale to mandate or incentivize them with various types of support and regulations.

Electric vehicles are generally much more expensive than their relatively comparable ICE counterparts, which explains why most EVs are sold to people in the top two income brackets, making the tax credits and other government support no more than welfare for the well-to-do and politically connected crony-capitalists.

But, even with support, the chickens seem to be coming home to roost. The top-selling EV maker's stock, Tesla, is in freefall, and its declining dividends reflect that. EV rival Rivian is laying off workers as its stock has fallen dramatically on losses topping $1.5 billion. Another early EV entrant, Fisker, which has already gone through one bankruptcy, now may be lurching toward its second, as its value has fallen to the penny-stock level. As EV inventories mount, Ford and GM, both of which announced billions in losses on their EVs, have reduced production lines and cut sales and production outlooks.

Also, after spending billions of dollars on various EV efforts, Apple has canceled all of its EV projects. It leads one to ask, if one of the most profitable, well-funded corporations in the world can't make an effective EV and make it go mainstream, who can?

Increasingly, even the mainstream media are being forced to acknowledge the numerous drawbacks of EVs – vehicles they have so breathlessly and brazenly promoted as a critical step to preventing climate catastrophe. The child and slave labor EV technologies are built upon is becoming harder and harder to ignore, as is the environmental destruction caused by the mining of the minerals necessary for EVs to function.

A simple Google word search of "electric vehicles" and "fires" or "electric bus" and "fires," will turn up dozens, if not hundreds or stories, detailing how EV cars, scooters and, increasingly, buses are spontaneously combusting, destroying property and killing people in the process. Some insurers are ceasing to offer insurance on EV products or to those who store or transport them.

If electric vehicles had been pushed by automakers in the 1960s and 1970s, consumer advocate Ralph Nader would have had a fit and declared them "unsafe at no speed." For safety reasons, the U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission, or other agencies, would have almost certainly forced EV makers to remove them from the market – as opposed to promoting them as they are doing now.

In addition, because EVs are so much heavier than ICE vehicles, they actually emit more pollutants and inflict much more damage to infrastructure than gasoline-powered vehicles.

From pollution during mining and manufacturing, to pollution during operation, to pollution related to charging (depending upon the source of electricity), the evidence suggests that EVs are dirtier than the ICE vehicles they are supposed to be replacing on the grounds that they are better for the environment.

You can't make these things up. Well, you could, but who would believe you?

The U.S. government never should have intervened in the market to promote EVs. There is no evidence we face a climate crisis outside of elites' dogmatic rantings and the outputs of flawed computer models, and even less evidence that if there were a crisis, EVs would prevent it, rather than making the problem worse.

The question is not if the bell should toll calling an end to the government's promotion of EVs, but how soon will it happen. With any luck, if not before, the coming election could prove to be a turning point.

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., (hsburnett@heartland.org) is the director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit research organization based in Arlington Heights, Illinois.

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