When Elon Musk, who makes his fortune from Tesla electric car sales, boosts an increase in American oil and gas production to make up for the loss of Russian imports, you just know President Joe Biden is on the wrong track.
On March 4th, the billionaire CEO of Tesla tweeted:
“Hate to say it, but we need to increase oil & gas output immediately. Extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures.”
Musk added eight minutes later:
“Obviously, this would negatively affect Tesla, but sustainable energy solutions simply cannot react instantaneously to make up for Russian oil & gas exports.”
He’s right, of course. Yet the fantasy of the Globalists, Green New Deal, AOC, Bernie Sanders, Obama, Biden, crowd ⏤ the electric car goes on unabated even as many of them sank with cargo ship Felicity Ace off the coast of Portugal’s Azores Islands on March 1 after a fire raged for two weeks, likely as a result of their hazardous lithium-ion batteries. Even without any effort on the part of those of us who recognize their liabilities, electric cars will never occupy more than 10% of cars on the American road. By continuing to write the truth about them, we hope to slow the current government and their green promoters from further eliminating our economic and safe dependence on fossil fuels. And, surprisingly, Musk, the EV pioneer, is now on the side of common sense concerning our transportation energy sources.
Here are 11 reasons electric cars will never be the ‘thing”… and yes, I’m sure you can add to this list in the comments:
1 – $10,000 excess cost over comparable internal combustion engine-driven cars
2 – Insufficient places to recharge
3 – Excess time to recharge versus filling a gas tank—at least six times longer requiring six times as many filling stations as we have today
4 – Availability of excess energy in the nation—we simply do not have the electricity available to support a mass transition to EVs
5 – Low mileage, for most owners it is just a second car
6 – Cold-weather range reduction—EV batteries don’t work well at low temperatures
7 – Used car value—due to the high cost of replacing the battery
8 – Limited density per neighborhood—or the neighborhood grid will overload
9 – Battery cost and life—needing two or three expensive batteries in a car’s lifetime
10 – Parking limitations—Germany has banned EVs from underground parking due to fire risk
11 – Serious environmental and human rights abuses abound across the world due to the way in which EV batteries are made
Larry Bell, Professor of Space Architecture at the University of Houston where he and his students designed the International Space Station, stated that the latest de facto EV mandate from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposes to require the current 3% of those magical “energy” plug-in vehicles to make up 17% of the market by 2026. This would be accomplished by increasing the required average fleet miles per gallon to 55 up from 43 mpg agreed by the Trump administration (which itself was uncalled for).
Most auto manufacturers lose between $10,000 and $12,000 on every electric car they make but make it up by raising the prices of their more popular internal combustion cars. According to the Kelly Bluebook, an average EV car costs just over $51,000, which is $11,000 more than the average 4-door sedan conventional car and $30,000 more than a compact.
EV drivers not only pay through the nose when they buy the vehicle, but they also manage half the miles traveled per year because of the limited range and time recharging them.
EPA’s fuel efficiency regulatory over-reach is premised on the fallacious notion that their net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions goal will somehow end billions of years of climate change on this planet. And we will power ourselves primarily with Chinese solar and wind materials while China, exempt from any UN limits on GHG emissions, builds a new coal-fired power plant each week.
We will also need $300 billion of power lines to carry the electricity from the wind and solar stations Biden wants us to install across the nation. And, of course, most folks will want to recharge their EVs at night when neither the Sun is shining nor the wind blowing. They had better hope that America maintains plenty of coal or natural gas-fired electricity generation to make up the difference.
Nevertheless, like the rest of the naïve Biden administration, EPA Administrator Michael Regan is confident of the EV changeover as he said recently that most car manufacturers have “made public commitments to build these cars in the future.”
Not surprisingly, a joint statement issued by BMW, Ford, Honda, Volkswagen, and Volvo said that reaching an electric car future will depend on tremendous support from the government. Similarly, the auto and supplier trade group Alliance for Automotive Innovation argued that it will be difficult to achieve higher fuel standards without federal support to help the industry transition to electric vehicles.
In the meantime, Musk’s Tesla is really enjoying all the politics of the debate as they pocketed $1.58 billion in 2020 selling to other manufacturers surplus regulatory credits, more than its net $852 million vehicle sales income.
So, if you don’t mind the high price, don’t need to drive very far or often, have a reliable, weather-independent recharging source, never need to drive in cold weather, and don’t care about the environment or human rights, then sure, as the British would say, fill your boots and buy an electric car. It is, after all, still a free country. But using billions of American tax dollars to fund Biden’s EV pipe dream is criminal.
Tune into AmericaOutLoud.com this weekend March 19 and 20 at 11 am or 8 pm or both days to hear Dr. Larry Bell discuss these issues and his role in America’s Space Station.
And here’s a video that debunks the nonsense in this article:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15QnAUTKzJw
Let’s see how much you really believe in free speech – will this comment be allowed to stand, I wonder?
It’s hard to know where to start. Why put up 2020 sales numbers. 2021 is in the books and Tesla sold 930,000 cars. If average sales price was 60k, income would be 58 billion. And their gross margins are insane. I am a solid Republican and a capitalist. You are so far on the wrong side of this one that I suspect there is a big oil lobby behind the article instead of science. These are American cars built by non union labor with high USA material content. A private company by the same man is launching rockets at a rate the NASA boondoggle could never match. Wake up to reality
California new car sales are 35% EV and the percentage goes higher each year. Europe and China both have even higher percentages of EV new car sales. Dr. Lehr and Mr. Harris published an opinion piece including many factual errors and older points that are no longer true. Please seriously consider buying an EV when it’s time to replace your car. I can recommend the Tesla Model 3 Long Range sedan or Model Y Long Range crossover. Expensive upfront? Yes and so worth it for drivers who keep cars for 10 years or more. Be sure to order the car a year ahead because demand is high. Hire an electrician to install an EV charger in your garage a month before taking delivery of your 1st EV. The vast majority of charging happens overnight by plugging it in like a cell phone. Trust me, it won’t be your last EV!
Gone will be weekend get-aways to the mountains, unless they are very close to home. In California, power outages are becoming the norm due to fires. Traffic jams during hot summer days mean turning off your car ac to protect the battery. Where will all the needed charging stations be installed? They will be an eyesore due to needed acreage & not able to serve the same amount of cars per hour as gas stations can. The time spent charging takes away from your weekend get-away time which could have been spent shopping, dining out, sight-seeing along the way. Imagine having to hang out at a gas station for a few hours! No thanks.
Well said Georgia!
Tom Harris
None of that is true. A charger can be put anywhere, not just at formall “stations”. I’ve never seen a as pump in the parking garage of a shopping center or at a hotel. A gasoline station is also an environmental nightmare: do some research on “gas plumes” under old service stations. That plume always makes its way into the nearest surface and/or groundwater source. Way over 90% of your charging will be done at home, at night, at rates about 1/3 cheaper than normal electric rates. Nothing but lies, but good try.
Any new technology must be market driven – mostly without government subsidy or heavy regulation or kick backs to government leaders.
A combustion engine that uses gray hydrogen to provide electricity to a battery car, could become a low cost method of transportation while still using oil to make plastics and a whole host of products (but they would cost more because gasoline would not be the largest reason to drill for oil).
On the reason-to-do-it side, we may find tech that helps colonize Mars.
As for now, we need to become the worlds largest producer of oil and natural gas.
Oil extraction has been subsidized and tax-incentivized for over 100 years. When will oil ever stand on its own merit? NEVER. Not if Big Oil continues to get its way. Do you realize that almost all of our foreign policy initiates and almost the entire defense budget is based on ensuring that oil flows around the world? Talk about “subsidies”.