The administration has just mashed the accelerator in its relentless drive to outlaw affordable cars and the freedom they represent.
The National Highway Safety Administration’s July 28 proposal would raise the mandatory average fuel economy target for automakers to an improbable 58 miles per gallon, essentially forcing Ford, Toyota, and Kia to sell more electric cars, whether customers want them or not. [emphasis, links added]
Automakers, which generally do their best to get along with their federal masters, indicated that the new rule is neither reasonable nor achievable.
Manufacturers otherwise have dutifully played along by parroting the party line that the phase-out of internal combustion is inevitable, but the cold, hard fact is that dealer lots are jammed with electric cars that are gathering dust, despite massive state and federal subsidies.
According to the analysts at Cox Automotive, Ford made some 46,000 Mach-E electric SUVs in the first half of the year, around 32,000 of which hadn’t sold.
Volkswagen reportedly had a four-month supply of its ID.4 electric SUV.
While consumers increasingly are considering the switch to electric, the analysts explained: “Being interested is easy, of course, but far fewer people actually buy.”
If the administration’s scheme goes forward, manufacturers would quickly run out of the rare minerals needed to build electric vehicles.
The excellent analysis by the Manhattan Institute’s Mark P. Mills makes it clear that it will be impossible in the short term and improbable in the long term to mine and process the necessary minerals at a cost American consumers would tolerate.
Of the roughly 1.5 billion cars and trucks on the road worldwide, over 300 million are in the United States.
Replacing the current vehicle fleet would require about 40 times as much lithium, 20 times as much cobalt, and 10 million more tons of copper each year.
Moreover, the massive increase in mining would have to happen under a system that takes almost 20 years to permit and open a mine, according to the International Energy Agency.
As if that weren’t enough, China owns or controls about 80% of the critical materials needed to make electric vehicles. Converting to electric would make the United States as beholden to Beijing as we were dependent on Middle East oil in the 1970s.
American consumers and, eventually, American policymakers will not tolerate dependence for energy on our most aggressive global adversary. Nor should they.
The biggest problem with the administration’s push to eliminate gasoline-powered cars and trucks is that voters have never had a say in this policy.
Citizens ought to be involved in deciding what would be the most important economic, environmental, trade, and national security issue that the country will face over the next two decades.
Fittingly enough, the Biden administration has let someone who was essentially rejected by a Democratic-led Senate write and publish the rules at NHTSA.
The White House was forced to withdraw Ann Carlson’s nomination as NHTSA chief in May after bipartisan critics pointed out that her professional career centered on climate change policy and activism, not highway safety.
Even so, she is still running the agency as acting administrator.
Ms. Carlson’s undemocratic scheme should be rejected. Consumers who want electric cars can vote with their wallets by buying one.
The administration should stop trying to foist its unrealistic electric vision of the future on everyone else.
Top photo by Cindy Shebley
Read more at Washington Times
“Consumers who want electric cars can vote with their wallets by buying one” Please keep my wallet out of someone else’s choice.
The Mustang Mach E is mentioned. They’re not a big vehicle, but weigh about 4500#.
At current prices, replacing the batteries is over $30,000. Let’s say you buy one and drive it until the batteries are nothing but ballast. Would you invest that kind of money fixing a used car, knowing that you’d lose money in the process?
Take away all Biden’s Presidential Limos and have him and all those Global UN Big Wigs using Flintstones cars using their feet to stop and go
From the article, “voters have never had a say in this policy.” From the climate activist view point, it is critical that the voters can never have a say. When people can vote on it directly, action on climate change almost always fails.
So the people who don’t agree with the climate change nonsense shouldn’t have a vote?! We’re all stupid? Is that what you’re saying, just because we disagree with your ‘climate emergency’ rubbish?!
I’m trying to understand your point Pauline. David said that we are not getting a vote on these changes being pushed down our throat but when we do get a vote we resoundingly say “NO!” It’s starting to happen in the UK and in Germany. We’ll see if it spreads to the US, Canada, Australia as the costs of “Green” shows up in our pocketbook.
Steve, thank you for your comment. Your clarification is spot on as to what I intended to say. Pauline, thank you for your comment. It taught me that I need to more careful in the way I word things so they won’t be misinterpreted.
Maurice Strong single handedly got the global warming movement going in the UN. His writings include statements that national sovereignty has to yield and that ballot box democracy needs to be modified. Other activists writing during this period of time identified democracy as one the greatest threats to their cause.