New York Sen. Chuck Schumer has proposed a law requiring every car in America to be electric by 2040. Sorry, Senator — “not gonna happen,” to use President George H.W. Bush’s iconic phrase. And anyway, it wouldn’t begin to make a dent in carbon emissions.
The first problem is consumers don’t seem to want electric cars. And that’s no surprise — they’re more expensive. Batteries add about $12,000 to a typical car. That’s meaningful for all but the 1 percent.
The fact is, automobiles comprise the biggest share of household spending on consumables, twice that of health care. (Housing, a non-consumable, is the biggest.) So, yes, people care about price, and lawmakers ignore that at their peril.
Americans also care about what they get for their money, so suggestions that automakers “decontent” EVs to cut costs — that is, take out all the features that people like — is another non-starter.
Consider, too, that SUVs and pickups now account for 70 percent of all vehicles purchased. And the minority who buy purely for economy choose small cars with gasoline engines. That’s the reality of what Americans want.
Should Washington subsidize EVs to make them more attractive? Only if it has an extra $2 trillion lying around because it would cost at least that much in handouts to replace inherently cheaper gas-fueled cars.
Even China seems to have capitulated to realities. Although it must love Schumer’s plan — since China makes the majority of the world’s lithium batteries for EVs — it has abandoned EV subsidies this year (causing sales to dive) and will instead order automakers to have EVs account for just 4 percent of production. That’s no revolution.
Meanwhile, the main claim for pushing widespread EV use is that it would radically reduce global carbon-dioxide emissions. It won’t. In fact, an all-EV America would barely trim 8 percent off-world oil demand. And the impact on carbon-dioxide emissions would be smaller.
Why? It takes energy — the equivalent of 80 to 300 barrels of oil — to fabricate a battery that can hold energy equal to one barrel. Thus, the energy used to make batteries means EVs carry a carbon “debt” that greatly diminishes, or can even cancel out, emissions saved from avoiding oil.
Sure, EVs can be genuinely exciting options for niche markets. Credit for that goes to the scientists who won a 2019 Nobel Prize for inventing the lithium battery — and to Elon Musk.
If Teslas weren’t great cars, even subsidies wouldn’t have enticed well-heeled buyers. Nor would every automaker be trying to compete.
But here’s some perspective on adoption in niche markets. Even Tesla’s impressive sales — 500,000 cars sold in just six years after introduction — was smoked by the Ford Mustang: 2.5 million sold in its first six years.
Considering that Americans buy 100 million cars over a six-year period, there’s no way a stroke of a pen will radically change that market.
And by the way, as the International Energy Agency notes, expected efficiency improvements for combustion engines will save 300 percent more global energy than will all the EVs forecast to be on the roads by 2040.
Schumer is looking for a transportation revolution in all the wrong places. New York City was the epicenter of history’s last mobility revolution, wherein citizens embraced the automobile, leaving behind the era of filthy streets congested with inconvenient, expensive horses and a fatality rate tenfold higher per passenger-mile than for cars today.
It’s no more revolutionary to change the fuel source of a car today than it would have been to change the type and source of horse-feed 120 years ago.
Policymakers should join Bill Gates in calling for the only viable path to genuine energy revolutions: far more research in the basic sciences. That requires different budget priorities and patience.
Someday a chemist or physicist may discover, for example, a way to make a low-cost, room-temperature superconductor. That would really change the world.
Such a discovery would mean that electrons could be poured into a meta-barrel as easily as oil is poured into a steel one, revolutionizing the cost of storing electricity.
Meantime, if today’s electric cars were genuinely compelling, consumers wouldn’t have to be ordered to buy them.
Read more at NY Post
Free will, the first thing that goes out the window when socialist governments start to tell people how they should live.
You want X? NO! You must buy Y instead. And pay more. And be more inconvenienced. And have a more deleterious impact on the world. But, heh, an unelected bureaucracy knows what’s best for you.
Time to make Schumer walk to all his little functions and fund raisers after all Jimmy Carter walk to his ingareation just like Thomas Jefferson did Lets see you hoof it across America Chucky
Electric cars make no sense as long as the energy source from which the battery is recharged is fossil fuels. Also, it takes additional energy to cart around the heavy battery. Charging the battery from solar panels or wind energy also makes no sense. Because the sun doesn’t shine all the time and winds are intermittent, these sources of “renewable” energy must be continually backed up by nuclear or fossil fuel electrical generating plants. It would make far more sense to use the subsidies going into electric cars and “renewable” electrical generation for research into truly sustainable sources of energy, such as the cheap and safe thorium molten salt nuclear reactor.
“When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.”
P. J. O’Rourke