Some
people, not all of them liberals, think that electric vehicles are the wave of
the future, part of an inevitable “green” revolution. But the facts suggest
otherwise.
My friend Robert Bryce testified before a House
committee yesterday on the subject of electric vehicles. Robert is one of the
country’s most knowledgeable experts on energy, and I encourage you to read
his entire testimony. Here are some
highlights as summarized by him:
* I’m pro-electricity, but I am adamantly
opposed to the notion that we should “electrify everything” including
transportation.
* EVs are cool. They are not new. The
history of EVs is a century of failure tailgating failure. In 1911, the New
York Times said that the electric car “has long been recognized as the ideal
solution.” In 1990, the California Air Resources Board mandated 10% of car
sales be zero-emission vehicles by 2003. Today, 31 years later, only about 6%
of the cars in California have an electric plug.
* The average household income for EV
buyers is about $140,000. That’s roughly two times the U.S. average. And yet,
federal EV tax credits force low- and middle-income taxpayers to subsidize the
Benz and Beemer crowd.
* Lower-income Americans are facing huge
electric rate increases for grid upgrades to accommodate EVs even though they
will probably never own one.
* This month, the California Energy
Commission estimated the state will need 1.3 million new public EV chargers by
2030. The likely cost to ratepayers: about $13 billion.
* Meanwhile, blackouts are almost certain
this summer and electricity prices are “absolutely exploding.” California’s
electricity prices went up by 7.5 percent last year and they will likely rise
another 40 percent by 2030. This, in a state with the highest poverty rate and
largest Latino population in America. How is racial justice or social equity
being served by such regressive policies?
* I also talked about resilience, saying
“Electrifying everything is the opposite of anti-fragile. Electrifying
transportation will put more of our energy eggs in one basket. It will make the
grid an even-bigger target for terrorists, cyberthieves, or bad actors. It will
reduce resilience and reliability in case of a prolonged grid failure due to
natural disaster, equipment failure, or human error.”
I also highlighted the myriad supply-chain problems
with EVs. Citing work done by the Natural History Museum in London, I said that
electrifying half of the U.S. motor vehicle fleet would require in rough terms:
* 9 times the world’s current cobalt
production
* 4 times global neodymium output
* 3 times global lithium production
* 2 times world copper production
I concluded by saying:
Oil’s dominance in transportation is
largely due to its high energy density. That density and improvements in
internal combustion engines and hybrids assure that oil will be fueling
transport for decades to come.
Powerful lobby groups want Congress to
spend billions on electrification schemes that will impose regressive taxes on
low-income Americans, reduce our resilience, and increase reliance on China.
That’s a dubious trifecta.
Let’s amplify that last point: reliance on electric vehicles will
put our future squarely in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.
Robert’s testimony included this stunning chart:
I suspect that for many Democrats, turning our future over to the
Communist Chinese is a feature, not a bug.
The extent to which the CCP has co-opted the American
establishment by distributing cash freely is stunning.
Oh, and how deeply have EVs actually penetrated our
transportation industry? This is revealing.
EVs still account for less than one percent of the 276
million registered vehicles in the U.S. Of all the EVs on U.S. roads, about 42
percent of them are in California.
By contrast, states like South Dakota, North Dakota,
Montana, and Wyoming each have less than 1,000 registered EVs. Furthermore, in
2020, fewer than 300,000 EVs were sold in the U.S.
For comparison, Ford Motor Company sold nearly 800,000
F-series pickup trucks last year.
As a result of the “green” energy fad, blackouts are
already fast on the way to becoming the new normal.
If policymakers continue to mandate and subsidize electric
vehicles, the U.S. will look like a third-world country, with electricity
available only episodically and at rates unaffordable for most.
