Opinion
By Dave Scott, 3-29-24
Folks considering the purchase of an electric vehicle should brace themselves for more than sticker shock.
If they are still charged up after they get past the price tag and end up with one plugged into an outlet in their garage their troubles could just be beginning.
Despite many buyers expressing disappointment with their pricey EVs the Biden White House dictates that in just eight years they’ll have no other choice.
Not since Prohibition has the federal government attempted to ban a product as popular as the internal combustion engine. But last week, the unelected, faceless finger-wagging nannies at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA] released their final emissions standards rule, requiring that 70% of new vehicle sales must be pure battery-powered electric or hybrids by 2032.
An EPA already brimming with more than 15,000 government leeches and nuisances, also announced recently that it is looking to hire another 1,000 full-time harpies this year to further hassle and extort taxpayers.
This is the “Deep State” hard at work folks. Their government overreach is nothing new as these unaccountable bureaucrats already dictate what kind of light bulbs you can buy, the type of dish and clothes washers you can purchase, even the detergents to put in them, and more. They’re also coming for your gas stove.
For folks living in California or Virginia it’s worse. Those states have banned the sale of all nonelectric cars by 2035. By then my family will probably have taken my car keys from me.
The EPA’s decision comes despite the fact that the average consumer doesn’t want an EV and many that bought them regret their decision. A Consumer Report survey late last year found owners of EVs from the past three model year reported 79% more problems compared with internal combustion engine cars.
Senator John Kennedy (R-LA} once said of another politician: “He’s the reason space aliens won’t talk to us.” He could have been just as easily describing the people inhabiting the EPA.
If EVs were affordable, efficient, and saved consumers money as environmentalists and bureaucrats claim, consumers would be clamoring to buy them. They aren’t. People have to be coerced into purchasing them and companies bribed by the government into producing them.
“Rarely has an industry been so heavily subsidized to make a product that so few consumers want or can afford to buy,” opined a recent Wall Street Journal editorial about automakers’ massive stocks of unsold EV inventory.
Some EV car manufacturers have gone belly-up while more established ones have abandoned EVs altogether or limited their production. The spark is gone.
Car rental giant Hertz announced in January that it was is dumping 20,000 EVs and reinvesting a portion of the proceeds from the sale into the “purchase of internal combustion engine (“ICE”) vehicles to meet customer demand.”
EV enthusiasts and those at the EPA either won’t admit it or don’t know it but their electric vehicle charging stations are powered by diesel generators since solar and wind can’t handle them at this point.
The nation’s electric grid is a long way from operating without fossil fuels or nuclear power. The hypocrisy of the hand-wringing climate change doom-and-gloomers is staggering. And the EV’s fire-prone lithium batteries are produced through a process that further pollutes the environment and relies on child labor in China and Africa.
Car dealers nationwide are experiencing six to 12-month backlogs of EVs on their lots compared with a month’s supply of gasoline-powered cars reported the Wall Street Journal last December. Buyer enthusiasm has slowed dramatically. It appears only wealthy virtue signaling buyers are still enthusiastic. They can also afford gas-powered backups.
Numerous news outlets increasingly report that electric car buyers are getting mostly heartaches for the exorbitant prices they paid. The issues include range anxiety, long waits at charging areas if one can even be found, tires wearing twice as fast at twice the price, unavailable parts compared to internal combustion engine vehicles, no cost savings, replacement batteries costing $10,000 and up, dismal trade in values, and fire and explosion fears.
To prevent their cars from unexpectedly bursting into flames, drivers are being warned to avoid exposure to water. Water seeping into EV battery compartments can cause short-circuits and a fire in its lithium-ion battery. These batteries contain flammable chemicals and release oxygen as they burn enabling an EV fire to ignite hours or even days after it appears to be extinguished. They also emit toxic fumes. It’s not very reassuring having one of these electric timebombs sitting in the garage. Some New York and California parking garages are banning electric cars and E-bikes due to their tendency to erupt into flames. Some ships carrying EVs have gone up in flames due to exploding batteries.
During Hurricane Ian some homeowners in South Florida that evacuated in gas-powered cars returned home to discover that saltwater flooding into their garages caused their EV to ignite. Firefighters doused them with tens of thousands of gallons of water only to see them ignite again after being loaded onto a tow truck or in a salvage yard.
According to the American Automobile Association (AAA], electric vehicles also cost 25% more to insure than comparable gas-powered vehicles. That’s because replacement parts are more expensive, labor more complex than for gas-powered ones, and there are fewer people to do such repairs.
For buyers living up north it’s even worse. They’re discovering electric vehicles have an extremely low freezing point and batteries can be drained by as much as 40 percent overnight. That may make for a chilly commute, particularly since the battery heats the car. In freezing weather is can take up to two hours to charge, not the traditional 45 minutes.
Simply put, the government is forcing companies to make an existing product less efficient, less safe, and more expensive and forcing consumers to buy it.
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Good Grief! There’s a local online site hereabouts called “Next Door” where folks from various Nassau County neighborhoods can bellyache to each other about each other and post comments that confirm they have the IQ of hummingbirds.
Mostly its populated by little old ladies looking for one of their many housecats that escaped or reporting stray dogs wandering their street. Most times people get on the site and grouse about service or food at local restaurants. Dim folks with ample time on their hands post photos of their backyard garden hoses and inquire: “What kind of snake is this?”
I’ve rarely seen a worthwhile post but do scan it occasionally as I find it amusing to see what aggravates the querulous gray-hairs.
Earlier this week I spotted one where a woman complained that she was annoyed by cigar smoke from an adjacent business while she was sitting on the downtown Fernandina Beach Patio Restaurant patio. She said the cigar smokers in the cigar business next door spoiled her experience by actually SMOKING CIGARS! Yikes, cigar smokers in a cigar business smoking cigars.
I couldn’t resist commenting on this absurdity and posted the following: “Good grief, local finger wagging harridans want to ban everything that’s fun or tastes good. Order another kale smoothie and leave the cigar smokers in the other building alone.”
For this I was booted off the site because I whined about a whiner whining. The anonymous scolders that run this site said my post was deleted because I was “disrespectful.” Despite this I highly recommend the site as it clearly identifies those folks hereabouts you want to avoid.
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Speaking Of Dimwits: Despite what the Democrats and their surrogates proclaim the poor in the U.S. are so well-fed, their major health problem is obesity. However, when black gangs explode in murderous looting and beating rages and storm retail stores with cars and sledgehammers moronic New York Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC} tells us it’s because they need bread and milk.
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Words To Ponder: In a recent Wall Street Journal interview by black columnist, Jason Riley, famed black economist, lecturer, and author of 49 books, Dr. Thomas Sowell (94], dismissed calls for reparations to blacks in the name of social justice saying: “When someone black says, ‘I’m worse off because of slavery’, there’s no way in hell you can say that with a straight face. If you’re going to base reparations on the difference between where blacks would be if it were not for slavery, then blacks would have to pay reparations to white people.”
He compared slavery to the situation of conquered people, particularly those conquered by the Romans, adding: “There’s no question that conquered people have been treated in a terrible way. Being conquered by the Romans was not a fate you would wish on anyone. But the fact is that the net result has been that those parts of Europe conquered by the Romans have been the most advanced parts of Europe for centuries.”
Dr. Sowell didn’t have anything handed to him. He was born to sharecroppers in segregated North Carolina in 1930, orphaned as a toddler, and raised in Harlem from age nine. He never finished high school and earned a GED after serving in the Marine Corps during the Korean War. He used the GI bill to attend Howard University, moving on to Harvard where he graduated magna cum laude, then to Columbia where he earned a masters, and eventually the University of Chicago where he earned his doctorate in Economics. He was the first person in his family to advance beyond the 6th grade.
Republished with the author’s permission. Read The Dave Scott Blog– subscribe Free
The views expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Citizens Journal Florida.
