EV Subsidies, Fantasies and Realities

Townhall.com ^ | March 6, 2021 | Paul Driessen

[Kaslin]

Tesla may be synonymous with electric vehicles right now. But within a few years, GM, Volvo and many other manufacturers will be making mostly or only EVs, because they’re emission-free, climate-friendly, socially and ecologically responsible, and more affordable every year. Which explains why we need subsidies to persuade people to buy them, and mandates to force people to buy them. 

resident Biden wants all new light/medium-duty vehicles sold by 2035 to be EVs. Vice President Harris wants only ZEVs (zero emission vehicles) on America’s roads by 2045. Various states are considering or have already passed similar laws; some would even ban the sale of new gasoline and diesel vehicles by 2030. Climate Czar John Kerry will likely be happy to buy EVs to expand his fleet of twelve cars, two yachts, six houses, and the private jet he flies in to accept climate crusader awards. 

AOC would use her Green New Deal to “massively” expand electric vehicle manufacturing and use. She herself now drives an EV, most likely a $48,000 Tesla Model 3 Long Range (350 miles per charge). 

Mini AOC also has an EV, pink and suitably sized for a 10-year-old. She launched her GND and bought her mini-car after viewing, “like, the most important documentary on climate change. It’s called Ice Age 2: The Meltdown. That’s not me saying it. That’s science!” she explained. “My Green New Deal will cost, like, 93 trillion dollars. Do you know how much that is? Me neither. Because it’s totally worth it. If sea levels keep rising, we won’t be able to drive to Hawaii anymore!" (Not even in her EV!) 

For some people EVs are an easy choice. But why the hefty subsidies? Why do the rest of us need mandates and diktats – and a new Henry Ford dictum, letting consumers have any kind of car they want, as long as it’s electric. Regardless of needs or preferences. (But at least we can choose the color.) 

More important, who’s actually getting the subsidies? and who’s paying for them? What other costs and unintended consequences are Big Green, Big Government, Big Media and Big Tech keeping quiet about? 

A 2021 Tesla Model S Long Range can go 412 miles on a multi-hour charge; its MSRP is $80,000. The Model Y all-wheel-drive is $58,000. A Nissan Leaf is “only” $34,000 but only goes 149 miles. Similar sticker-shock prices apply to other EV makes and models, putting them out of reach for most families. 

To soften the blows to budgets and liberties, Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wants to spend $454 billion to install 500,000 new EV charging stations, replace US government vehicles with EVs, and finance “cash for clunkers” rebates to help at least some families navigate this transportation transformation. 

Politicians are being pressured to retain the $7,500 per car federal tax credit (and sweet state tax rebates) now scheduled to lapse once a manufacturer’s cumulative vehicle sales since 2009 reach 200,000. EV drivers also want other incentives perpetuated: free charging stations, access to HOV lanes for plug-ins with only the driver, and not having to pay fees that substitute for gasoline taxes to finance the construction, maintenance and repair of highways they drive on. 

A 2015 study found that the richest 20% of Americans received 90% of these generous EV subsidies. No surprise there. Clearly, lobbyists are more valuable than engineers for EV manufacturers and drivers. 

This perverse reverse-Robin-Hood system also means subsidies are financed by taxpayers – including millions of working class and minority families, most of which will never be able to afford an EV. 

Any cash for clunkers program will exacerbate the problem. By enabling sufficiently wealthy families to trade fossil-fuel cars for EVs, it will result in millions of perfectly drivable cars and trucks that would have ended up in used car lots getting crushed and melted instead. Basic supply and demand laws mean the average cost of pre-owned ICE vehicles will soar by thousands of dollars, pricing even them out of reach for millions of lower-income families. They’ll be forced to buy pieces of junk or ride buses and subways jammed with people they hope won’t be carrying next-generation COVID. 

The United States will begin to look like Cuba, which still boasts legions of classic 1960s and ‘70s cars that are cared for and kept on the road with engines, brakes and other parts cannibalized from wrecks and even old Soviet cars. Once the states and federales ban gasoline sales, even that will end. 

Perhaps even more ironic and perverse, the “zero emissions vehicle” moniker refers only to emissions in the USA – and only if the electricity required to manufacture and charge ZEVs comes from non-fossil-fuel power plants. Texans now know how well wind turbines and solar panels work when “runaway global warming” turns to record cold and snow. Californians have to dodge future rolling blackouts. 

For several years now, production engineers have been pondering how to retool plants from ICE to EV engines. They better start thinking about how to retool and power their entire factories – and our planet. 

With many politicians and environmentalists equally repulsed by nuclear and hydroelectric power, having any electricity source will soon be a recurrent challenge. Having reliable, affordable electricity will be a pipe dream. Simply having enough electricity to replace all of today’s coal and gas power generation, internal combustion vehicle fuels, natural gas for cooking, heating and emergency power, coal and gas for smelters and factories, and countless other now-fossil-fuel uses, will be a miracle. 

Every home, neighborhood and city will also have to replace existing gas and electric systems to handle the extra loads. More trillions of dollars. There’s also the matter of nasty, toxic, impossible-to-extinguish lithium battery fires – in cars now, and soon in homes, parking garages and backup battery facilities. 

We’re talking millions of wind turbines, billions of solar panels, billions of battery modules, thousands of miles of new transmission lines. They’ll kill birds and bats, disrupt or destroy sensitive habitats, and impair or eradicate hundreds of plant and animal species. As electricity prices rise, US factories won’t be able to compete against China and other nations that don’t have to and will not stop using fossil fuels. 

Zero emission fantasies also ignore the essential role of fossil fuels in manufacturing ZEVs (and pretend-renewable energy systems). From mining and processing the myriad metals and minerals for EV battery modules, wiring, drivetrains and bodies, to actually making the components and finished vehicles, every step requires oil, natural gas or coal. Not in California or America perhaps, but elsewhere on Planet Earth, especially Africa, Asia and South America, most often with Chinese companies in leading roles. 

A single EV battery module needs some 30 pounds of lithium, plus many other metals and materials totaling at least 1,000 pounds: from commonplace iron, copper, aluminum and petroleum-based plastics, to “exotics” like cobalt and multiple rare earth elements. An EV requires three times more copper than its ICE counterpart; a single wind turbine needs some 3.5 tons of copper per megawatt of electricity. 

And every 1,000 tons of finished copper involves mining, crushing, refining and smelting some 125,000 tons of ore – and removing thousands of tons of overburden and surrounding rock just to reach the ore. The same is true for all these other materials, especially rare earths. Try to imagine the cumulative global impacts from all this mining and fossil fuel use – so that AOC, Al Gore, Leo Di Caprio and other wealthy, saintly people can drive “clean, green, climate-friendly” electric cars. (That’s okay, mini-AOC can’t either.) 

Even worse, many of these materials are dug up and turned into “virtuous” EVs, wind turbines and solar panels – in China, Congo, Bolivia and other places – with little regard for child labor, fair wages, workplace safety, air and water pollution, toxic and radioactive wastes, endangered species and mined land reclamation. It’s all far away, out of sight and out of mind, and thus irrelevant. And amid all this is the touchy issue of Uighur genocide and their people being sent to re-education/slave labor camps, to help meet China’s mineral, EV and other export markets.  

How long will we let real social, environmental and climate justice take a back seat to EV mythology?

[centurion316]

I wonder what Texans with EV’s did when the lights went out?

[Fresh Wind]

They flew to Cancun?

[joshua c]

Do EVs even run in extreme cold?

[norwaypinesavage]

"within a few years, GM, Volvo and many other manufacturers will be making mostly or only EVs"

Everyone needs to be reminded (again), that we've been through all of this before. In the 90s, California, in all their wisdom, passed a law requiring that ten percent of all the cars sold in California starting in the year 2000 had to be electric. GM, in all their wisdom, poured $2 billion into the GM EV. The problem was that when the year 2000 arrived, no one would buy them. All the problems with EVs have today, few charging stations, short range, small size, high cost, etc., were even more true then. GM even tried leasing them, at unbelievably low lease prices, but few even tired that.

So California quietly rescinded the law, and shortly thereafter GM went bankrupt. I'm quite sure that had GM been able to keep the lost $2 billion on the EV, they could have avoided the bankruptcy.

The same will be true again. There is simply not enough electrical generation capacity to charge an all electric US fleet, nor is there adequate transmission line capacity to get the power to the cars. Even the Democrat party can't spend enough trillions of dollars to put that online, even with natural gas and nuclear generating plants, much less with wind mills and solar panels.

It is a pipe dream of ignorant children, not a viable economic plan of adults.

[BobL]

I expect the EV apologists to show up here soon touting the wonderfulness of plugging in your car every night.

[norwaypinesavage]

"Do EVs even run in extreme cold?"

They do just great, with a couple of 'minor' caveats. Batteries, like all chemical processes, tend to lose about half their energy for every 20 degrees F colder than their room temperature rating. That means their range is cut roughly in half at 40 degrees, into 1/4 at 20 degrees, and 1/8 at zero. Of course, you can use heating to keep them warmer, but that takes power, too.

Then, at zero degrees, some people like to turn on the heater. Note that range is determined with the heater off, so that cuts the range even more. Then you also need to think about lights, wipers, and defrosters, all which cut the range.

So, just remember to bring along a couple of extra warm coats, emergency warning beacons, ear muffs, and mittens, and maybe a cell phone with a good gps, in order to make it easier to find your body. But keep it tucked close inside your coats. It, too, will lose power in the cold.

[FreedomPoster]

I’ve been saying for a while that anyone pushing for all EVs that isn’t also advocating for a crash plan to develop and deploy massive numbers of nextgen nuclear power plants, probably using thorium, is smoking too much hopium. You can’t power anything anything like the economy we expect on wind and solar.

[crosdaddy]

“Do EVs even run in extreme cold?”
Pretty sure that most of the world wide billion dollar plus, auto industries, set aside a few dollars for extreme (Hot&Cold) weather testing of new vehicles.
The batteries themselves, have active heating and cooling.

[crosdaddy]

Not an “EV apologist”, ( I’m single and own 3 ICE cars ;-), but a lot of people wouldn’t have to plug them in”every night”.

[Pollard]

Biden wants all new light/medium-duty vehicles sold by 2035 to be EVs

This is a medium duty truck

I live in the ozarks, hill country, rural, where a minimum round trip might be 100 miles. Ain't gonna work. I suppose it would do regenerative braking. How about the rockies where you drive uphill for a few hours? Ain't gonna work. Would the truck above need a 50 amp 240 volt circuit to charge in a decent amount of time? If they want to do electric cars, fine but leave the trucks alone. Interstate only 18 wheelers? Maybe if it's not too heavy of a load. Concrete trusses for a bridge riding on a flat bed with three back axles? Insanity

[jdsteel]

I have an electric vehicle on order. Ford Mach E SUV.

Why?

Unless I get “Bidened” with a tax law change I will get both the $7,500 tax credit and (because I own a business) can write off the price of the vehicle in one year. My commute is a 10 minute drive. I can charge it at home overnight cheaply. And it is car #4. By my using the EV for short driving purposes, which are the hardest on ICE vehicles, I can extend the lifespan of my other vehicles. Plus, the financing deal offered by Ford will give me the opportunity to turn it back in to them after 3 years which ends my worries about battery life.

I am working the insane system that exists to my advantage as much as I can.

[Jim Noble]

Do EVs even run in extreme cold?

Yes but you can't use the heater.

[Jim Noble]

I live in the ozarks, hill country, rural, where a minimum round trip might be 100 miles

And I live in the woods, on a lake, close to Canada - but their plans do not involve our children and grandchildren living anywhere like that.

[snoringbear]

“ A 2021 Tesla Model S Long Range can go 412 miles on a multi-hour charge;”
************

I will believe the Tesla long range numbers when I see how it fares on a road trip from Dallas to El Paso at 70 ~ 80 mph in July, AC on full blast and Willie on the radio. 😂

[ActresponsiblyinVA]

Someone needs to calculate how many windmills or solar panels it takes to charge an EV for one day. Require that many to be put in service for each EV sold.

[cyclotic]

So you’re proudly taking money from the rest of us so YOU can feel good about yourself. Real conservative principles there.

If you want an EV, buy it yourself at full price, not subsidized by we the people.

[Labyrinthos]

When do I get a thank you note for helping you to buy a car?

[DUMBGRUNT]

If you want an EV, buy it yourself at full price, not subsidized by we the people

It is a safe bet that he pays a pile of taxes and is simply following the law.

Please do not ask me about the able-bodied lifelong welfare recipients, parasites, and they are allowed to vote.

[DUMBGRUNT]

—”Would the truck above need a 50 amp 240 volt circuit to charge in a decent amount of time?”

And a whole more if you want a fast charge.

” Since watts is a function of volts * amps, to achieve 250 kW at ~315 volts, the peak current has to be somewhere close to 800 amps, which is unprecedented for EV charging!”

50 amps 240 volts = 12,000 watts (12 KW)-— Tesla Superchargers max out at 250 KW !!!

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/03/08/supercharger-v3-shocking-power-smart-strategy-by-tesla-charts/#:~:text=800%20is%20a%20big%20number,up%20by%2020%25%20or%20so.

That said, the state of Illinois has fleets of them just like that one, same color too.
And they never come close to being driven over one hundred miles in a single day.
At the same time, a school teacher friend drove a gravel truck in the summer.
Paid by the load, stopping for nothing...as long as the quarry was open; 200+ miles on a good day!