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.
. . .
“I wouldn’t own one if it was given to me”
Aside from all the issues often discussed here, I give the middle finger to power-freaks who want to order me around.
The answer is “no” followed by a bunch of expletives about what they can do with themselves and their EVs.
“Climate change” of “climate” or whatever the propagandists are calling it these days is a hoax by power-mad insane people—and this is part of their scam.
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-failed-eco-pocalyptic-predictions
👍
Concur 👍
I’d be afraid to own one. I’d never get any sleep worrying about it catching fire in the middle of the night and burning us to death in our sleep!..............
Sure worked out swell that the all powerful Zentral Union Government got preserved.
It’s the dogs J.B., they just won’t eat it...
Right on all counts.
An Author friend of mine once put it this way, “Just because no one asked you to sing... in no way means you should sing louder.” - L. Neil Smith
-e cars should have remained a niche market. Once the government got involved, it artificially distorted the automobile market into the dying leviathan it is now. You thought the last round of bailouts were bad? Just wait...
This time it will cause a mfr to go under permanently............
Electric is alright for around town…..not a trip to Yellowstone National Park
A guy across the street and 2 houses down has a Tesla Y model.
The proximity of that vehicle to my home it too close IMO.
Electric cars get recycled to make real cars is about all they are worth.
You are of course entitled to your opinion but there are lots of recently produced YOUtube videos that support the idea of a glut of unsold vehicles the bulk of which are EVs. And why would a bunch of Ford dealers write a letter to Cho BiDung asking the FedGov to rescind any EOs and other regs that are forcing EV on to their lots? All that doesn’t jive with your comment.
The horribly corrupt US government will just end up subsidizing car manufacturers. We’ll pay for them to be scrapped eventually too.
Tesla bought a BMW dealership nearby after BMW built another new dealership. That Tesla dealership is packed full of new cars. At the new BMW dealership a salesperson I know told me they will do almost anything to get rid of the EV’s they have on the lot.
I believe another corrupt government in the past to create "The peoples Car" VW
And fedzilla will bail them out again, and fools will continue to buy their inferior products.
My “trips” around town are generally over a 100 miles. I don’t have time to wait while my car charges for hours. Now add in Minnesota winter cold...
Unless you have an onboard generator, instead of idiotic and expensive batteries, it’s useless up here and more a status symbol/virtue signal than anything practical.
“Hitler car!”
"Und ziss is ze Jewish version, where the exhaust pipe goes into ze car."
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