Posted on 12/12/2023 11:16:53 AM PST by Red Badger
It’s nearly 2024 and there’s a two-month-plus supply of cars – many of them 2023 models – waiting to be sold before they become last year’s models. Most of these waiting-to-be-sold models are electric cars that aren’t selling because (drum roll, please) buyers don’t want them.
Never before in the history of the car business has the cart been put before the horse – as it has when it comes to electric cars.
Government has been interceding between car buyers and car manufacturers for more than half-a-century, imposing requirements that new cars must have equipment such as seat belts and air bags and back-up cameras, irrespective of the buyer’s desire to pay for them or his lack of desire to have them in his car.
It has decreed bumper-impact standards and even gone so far as to require that speedometers be dialed back to register no faster than 85 MPH.
But not until just recently did the government (feeling its oats, no doubt) go for broke and order the car manufacturers to build only one type of car – the electric car – and never mind whether people will buy them.
We see the results collecting dust on new car lots all around the country.
Of course, this was inevitable once it was allowed to pass that the federal government had any legitimate (constitutional, moral) business interposing itself between car buyers and car manufacturers. This began half-a-century ago, when self-styled “consumer advocates” such as Ralph Nader presumed to “advocate” for “consumers” – who were implicitly too stupid to form their own decisions and use their buying power to influence the car manufacturers to build cars they were willing to buy.
These “advocates” succeeded in leveraging the government to impose on “consumers” equipment such as seat belts and air bags – both of which had previously been made available to “consumers” (loathsome term; it smacks of hogs at the trough) who were free to buy them if they wished.
And free to not buy them, if they didn’t wish.
That was back in the Before Times, when people who bought things were still customers – and had the power to buy what they wanted without interference from “advocates” (or the government).
They were not made to consume whatever was placed before them – like hogs at the trough.
Once the “advocates” got their way – even just a little bit (and so it seemed at the time; what was the harm, after all, in having seatbelts in cars?) the precedent was set that got us to where we find ourselves now. The government – suffused with “advocates” – insists people must have electric cars and that the manufacturers must build nothing but.
A problem arises, though.
It is getting the horse to pull the cart when he has the option not to.
The government can (and has) decreed that nothing but electric cars will be permissible to manufacture – via being the only kinds of vehicles that are compliant with federal regulations pertaining to how much gas a car you choose to buy is allowed to use (and if that’s not sufficient, how much of a gas that does not cause pollution it is allowed to “emit”).
But it hasn’t decreed that buyers must purchase them.
Yet.
But it will. Because it must. Because that is the only way the government will be able to clear the inventory glut of electric cars people don’t want to buy. And the way it will make them buy electric cars is by making it illegal to keep the cars they have that aren’t electric.
Or too costly.
The government will say: Due to the climate crisis, only zero emissions electric cars will be permitted on public (that is, government-controlled) roads. You may keep your non-electric car.
Provided it’s parked.
Or they will say: Due to the climate crisis, we are levying a carbon tax on every vehicle that isn’t a zero emissions electric vehicle. Never mind that plenty of “carbon” is “emitted” via the burning of hydrocarbon fuels to generate the electricity that powers “zero emissions” electric cars. These taxes will be exorbitant. Most people won’t be able to afford to pay them.
Via such means and methods, the government will – so it hopes – clear the glut of EV inventory that is collecting dust at new car lots all around the country.
Except for one other problem.
Even if people no longer have any choice to buy something other than an electric car, if they cannot pay for it, they still can’t buy it. The government might as well decree that everyone in the country buy an “energy efficient” $600,000 house – else live under a bridge. Paraphrasing Margaret Thatcher – from the Before Time – after awhile you run out of other people’s money to spend.
The government lacks the means to pay everyone who currently owns a car to buy an electric car because it has no means except those it extracts from those it is forcing to buy electric cars. At some point, the bill comes due – only in this case there’ll be no one left with the means to pay it.
. . .
Zero pity for car dealers and that’s not even including my “market adjustment”.
Surprise. Fed.gov engages in Chinese-style, neo-marxist central planning. And fails. With unexpected side-effects
wash, rinse, repeat.
We crossed over into overt government force with the passing of Obamacare. Then there was the Fauci Ouchy. Now cars. Then gas appliances.
I bought a new 2008 Nissan Frontier in 2009 that was leftover. Guess what was coming next on the economic front.
Charging an electric is equal to paying $17.33 per gallon.
https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_a609f8aa-7443-11ee-83d3-df5b22909078.html
bttt
I beg everyone’s forgiveness in the client cult. I purchased a large gas guzzling
F-150 last week.
It was my company car which was replaced with a large gas guzzling F-150.
This is a great endorsement for capitalism and its main tenent of the invisible hand of the economy. Socialism doesn’t work.
They need to take a whole bunch of crap off of them and sell a reduced price good basic car. Stepping back 20 years would be a good idea. Even further back, the Buick Roadmaster in the B body has been unequaled for mileage, comfort and safety in the last 30 years. The Ford Panther platform of the Grand Marquis is about as refined automobile design as you can get. 25 to 27 mpg, 75 mph and you can drive it all day long comfortably. It may look like a granddad car but it will out run most junk today. I still have my ‘08 work car.
Are we not seeing classic fascism here where the government directs and controls private industry? Where did the car manufacturers get the idea that people wanted electric cars? Did the government mandate the manufacturing of electric cars and trucks? Asking for a friend.
Utter, complete fake news. Car inventories are still only a third of their pre-covid levels, which at the time was an absolutely, unprecedented low: about 90% below normal levels.
One of the most contrived examples is the fake metric MPGe. For example, according to the federal govt my EV gets 114 MPGe combined city/hwy. So the car makers making EV's get to average that sky high fake 114 MPG into their fleet average to meet the CAFE standards.
I'm not slamming EV's from a free market perspective. Our EV car meets our needs and wants and saves us tons of gas (we drive a lot of miles, a necessary characteristic to make owning an EV worth it in the end). We also like our ICE pickup for what it brings to the table. But I have a real problem with the government twisting every regulation imaginable to force EV's onto people who have no need for them.
At a men’s function at church last month I sat at a table with a 35 year veteran in car sales.
He stated the dealerships are marking up the price of ICE vehicles to offset what they are loosing in lack of EV sales.
Just when I thought car dealerships couldn’t get more lowlife and despicable they go and prove me wrong.
A state managed market never works. Case in point.
I had “zero pity” for the car dealer I bought my last new car from 2 1/2 years ago. I got such a great deal that the car is still worth what I paid for it.
That’s the first time THAT ever happened.
That’s basic economics...............
In the news this week a man had bought an eight year old electric car for $16,000 and had it for a year or so when the battery needed to be replaced...for $24,000
Insane.
The government can be the lender to finance the mandated EV. Then you can pay for the rest of your life citizen/slave for the freedom to travel. Electricity rates to charge your EV will be set for each individual based on your social credit score.
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