EV: noun; abr.; electric vehicle.
Frivolity: noun; acting in a way that is silly or wasteful.
Fiat: noun; an arbitrary order. (arbitrary: based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system)
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Put the three words together: Turning all American car owners into EV proprietors in the span of 5-10 years by government fiat is an exercise in frivolity, and ruinous in the end.
Indeed, the whole campaign is arbitrary (fiat), totally lacking in sound reasoning. The end state of having all Americans junk their fully functional family sedans, minivans, and SUVs would turn upside down wholesale patterns of living just to satisfy a splinter group’s fantasy.
What prompted this observation? AAA’s “Via” magazine and its feature article, “Going the Distance: Tips and tricks from electric vehicle owners” (Nov./Dec. 2021). The splinter group in question is abundantly replicated in the article. The three profiled EV owners are full California urbanistas from the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California (Santa Rosa, Santa Clara, Irvine area). All are degreed in environmental studies, the Humanities, or digital tech. All are cloistered urbanites who visit rental properties, coastal B-and-B’s, the arts-and-crafts circuit, and venture into the forests for the snap visit to mother nature. Trip distances are short or limited in routes.
In other words, they represent the left coast fringe – socially, economically, and politically. These are the type of people who reflect the lives and norms of those who pursue an existence in rather exclusive suburban ranch houses, gentrified flats, landscaped yards, and aren’t likely to get their hands dirty working wrenches and equipment. The supporting cast of workers for this insular urban lifestyle has a separate life that is a world apart. Yet, the white collars want to force their preferences on everyone, no matter our circumstances.
As such, one of the things that Biden brought to the White House was California, meaning its progressive personnel and monoculture. And that means the state’s eco-looniness. The EV-love in the administration’s ukases, like much that gurgles out of the left coast’s sunshine state, lacks any sound rationale, either environmental or economic.
The environmental justification is the easiest to dispense with. The ol’ bugaboo of climate change – as bellowed by that great thinker of our times, 16-year-old Greta Thunberg – is infected with leaps of faith and logic. The reality is that the atmosphere is too voluminous, its content too varied, and influences too multitudinous to justify Greta’s tantrum (Sept. 2021), “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood!” That should give you a flavor of the hysteria to force you out of your fully functional and efficient Chevy Suburban.
What good is accomplished, though, by banishing the $40,000 investment in fuel, oil, metal, plastic, chips, and rubber in your garage, the euthanization of 2 million jobs in the fuel industry, and scotching the great advances in emissions and fuel efficiency down to the present? Nothing, absolutely nothing. Surely, Greta and her handlers in Big Environmentalism must realize that they have no street cred in Beijing and New Delhi – nearly 3 billion people combined and no desire to return to living in the dirt. Stack up their car fleets with ours. You would be replacing the cleaner things in our country with dirty cars, dirty power plants, and dirty air among these teeming hordes outside the developed world. Sorry, Greta, you’re nuts.
In the end, the amount of energy-trapping gases would scarcely budge, if not increase as capital seeking its highest rate of return rushes away from us to refuges of greater opportunity in places hungry to enjoy air conditioning. Dirty expands, clean shrinks. Punishing the clean is not a winning strategy.
So, why the headlong rush to the EV? Climate change doesn’t work for this lifestyle coup. Fact is, the campaign is a jumble of fantasies, fantasies about windmills, solar panels, and EVs. Greta’s fantasy sounds so simple. . . to the simple-minded.
The simple fact is that the EV is no practical substitute for the internal combustion engine. The infrastructure – repairmen, convenient and numerous charging stations, affordable parts and abundant retail outlets – will take multiple decades to arise. But the zealots are impatient: remember, 5-10 years to bankrupt you and the millions employed in keeping the existing fleet on the road. It’s reminiscent of the Stalin’s dekulakization campaign of the 1930’s. Eager to create forthwith Marx’s vision of the communal ideal, Stalin ordered (by fiat) the huge number of peasants in the Russian population – 82% of the total population – to give up their property and many of their belongings and herd them onto huge collective farms. The subsequent upheaval led to massive starvation and a huge expansion of concentration camps. An epidemic of death was inflicted on the bread basket of Russia. Similarly, lifestyle choices outsourced to the federal apparatchiks of Build Back Better will fare no better than Stalin’s Five-Year Plans.
Why should the infantile ramblings of Greta and The Squad have greater weight than my own? Their dream has incompatible elements. Hitched to universal EV ownership is windmills, solar panels, and any energy scheme conjured in a gentrified Brooklyn flat. Sadly, the lab rats who are Californians show us the results. Blackouts and the high cost of energy are the outcomes. So, just as we are bribed and whipped into EV’s, they are making the grid more expensive and unstable. Picture this: you rush out to get to work and find your Nissan Leaf with too little juice to make it to the office or get the kids to school. Blackouts just blacked out your car.
Okay, you and your kids can always Zoom . . . if the lights come back on. The pandemic lockdowns showed how that worked. More than the grid was destabilized.
As for that holiday visit to grandma’s house of 300 miles one way? Think about it, 250 miles is the likely limit before your wheels come to a dead stop. Of course, you know that ahead of time. If the grid hasn’t gone dark and you have the 6-8 hours to charge the thing before departure, you still have to restrict your route to the availability of chargers. Let’s just hope that you chose right and the plug-ins are operational. If not, expect a motel expense and an overnight layover.
If something mechanically should go awry, well, you’re stuck. The ubiquitous shade tree mechanic or guy who built a top fuel dragster won’t be of any help. The ready availability of parts and community knowledge is decades into the future. Hope that the diesel bus or train stops at the nearby hamlet.
If, by chance, you get the thing to the dealership, they might discover that the huge lithium battery pack is plated over and in need of replacement, a $20,000 part. The battery’s life was apparently cut short by all the 30-minute fast charging, a necessary activity due to much long-distance commuting or forgetting to plug the thing for the safer 6-8 hours of overnight charging. The 10-year lifespan was turned into 6. Normally, you’ll notice the deterioration in shorter operational distances as you begin to panic in the desperate search for a charge in the many and expanding derelict urban districts along the way. Maybe the thought of being held up at gunpoint disabuses you of that short excursion to Walmart.
Chances are, if you’re so into EV’s, you’re also apoplectic about open pit mines and polluted air and water, just the type of thing that inhabits third world kleptocracies, Putin’s Russia, and Xi’s China. That’s where we find the rare earth minerals for the batteries of your feel-good EV; however, rest assured that your EV won’t be responsible for inundating the Obama estate on Martha’s Vineyard. Everyone else in the mass of humanity will, thanks to your insatiable appetite for lithium batteries.
The utopian rush to the EV has consequences, many of them not pleasant. It’s what happens when adults turn over governance to childish and monomaniacal fanatics. Their tunnel vision becomes our tunnel vision, their leaps of logic become our leaps of logic. It’s a lesson that the editors of AAA’s “Via” magazine – Whitney Phaneuf, Katie Henry, Mandy Ferreira, and Rebecca Smith Hurd – should take to heart before they fob off on us their niche proclivities.
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Watch a Norwegian Tesla owner destroy his Model S because of the prohibitive $22,000 cost to replace the car’s battery pack.
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RogerG