Right Wing Granny

News behind the news. This picture is me (white spot) standing on the bridge connecting European and North American tectonic plates. It is located in the Reykjanes area of Iceland. By-the-way, this is a color picture.

Right Wing Granny

Tag Archives: electric cars

This Shouldn’t Surprise Anyone Who Has Been Paying Attention

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On March 25th, American Experiment posted an article about renewable energy.

The article reports:

Bloomberg recently ran a very interesting interview with Brett Christophers about his new book The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet.

In the interview, Christophers argues there’s a widespread misconception about what’s needed to expand the deployment of renewables and transition away from fossil fuel generation. 

Christophers makes the following argument:

The basic argument is simple, and it’s something that the world doesn’t want to admit: The business of developing and owning and operating solar and wind farms and selling electricity is kind of a lousy business. 

Whether new solar or wind farms get built is ultimately about the expected profitability of those assets. Even though the generating cost aspect has become increasingly beneficial over time that doesn’t necessarily mean that the expected profits are going to be there. 

Generating costs are only part of the costs that a company that owns and controls a solar or wind farm, and sells the electricity, incur. There are also costs associated with delivering that power to where it gets consumed. 

For renewables the delivery costs tend to be higher than they are for conventional power plants because conventional power plants on average tend to be located closer to centers of demand. 

That’s because unlike conventional power plants, renewables like solar and wind farms require huge amounts of land to produce significant amounts of power. 

Unless governments are willing to either assume the burden of renewables development through public ownership…they will have to keep subsidies and tax credits in place indefinitely or else renewables investment will collapse because of the unfavorable economics. 

The article concludes:

The author obviously favors wind and solar and later advocates for a tax on carbon dioxide emissions. However, it is interesting that he acknowledges there is no economy-wide business case for wind and solar without government support.  

It’s time for our politicians to be honest with Americans about the cost of ‘green energy’ both in dollars and in damage to the environment. The people who advocate for electric cars fail to mention the children mining lithium in Africa or the environmental devastation lithium mining causes. Those who favor offshore wind farms fail to mention the number of whales that have died in the implementation of those wind farms or the number of birds that are killed by either wind farms or solar farms. Let’s do the complete research before we back something that is more damaging than what we originally had.

The Problems With Electric Vehicles Are Becoming Obvious

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WITN posted an article on Wednesday about the impact of the current cold snap on electric cars.

The article reports:

OAK BROOK, Ill. (WLS) – Tesla drivers in the Chicago-area are complaining about charging stations not working due to the extreme cold, leaving them with dead batteries.

Many Tesla owners were stranded Monday with dead batteries from the cold and not enough working charging stations at a location in Evergreen Park, Illinois. For most of the day, the temperatures were expected to be below zero with wind chills from -25 to -35 degrees.

“Our batteries are so cold it’s taking longer to charge now. So, it should take 45 minutes, [but] it’s taking two hours for the one charger that we have,” said Tesla owner Brandon Welbourne. “I have seen at least 10 cars get towed away from here because the cars, they died, they’ve run out of battery.”

In nearby Oak Brook, some drivers who went looking for a charge waited hours.

“Right from outside the highway, there’s a whole line of cars, over 20 cars, all Tesla cars … and every single car is a Tesla in this whole parking lot,” said Tesla driver Sajid Ahmed. “We’re waiting and waiting for over an hour. It’s unfortunate that these cars are sitting dead in the spots.”

For many drivers, it was too late. Their cars died during the long wait, and they had to leave their vehicles stranded and wait for the stations to get up and running again.

We should also note that charging an electric vehicle is not the five minute process that filling up your gas tank is–in cold or hot weather. Green energy is a nice theory. However, until we perfect it, we really shouldn’t encourage drivers in parts of the country where the weather is extremely cold to invest in electric cars.

Tell Us Something Without Actually Telling Us Something

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Recently WWAYTV3 in Wilmington, North Carolina, reported that Hertz is cutting back on its rental of electric vehicles.

The article reports:

Hertz, which has made a big push into electric vehicles in recent years, has decided it’s time to cut back. The company will sell off a third of its electric fleet, totaling roughly 20,000 vehicles, and use the money they bring to purchase more gasoline powered vehicles.

Electric vehicles have been hurting Hertz’s financials, executives have said, because, despite costing less to maintain, they have higher damage-repair costs and, also, higher depreciation.

“[C]ollision and damage repairs on an EV can often run about twice that associated with a comparable combustion engine vehicle,” Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr said in a recent analyst call.

And EV price declines in the new car market have pushed down the resale value of Hertz’s used EV rental cars.

“The MSRP declines in EVs over the course of 2023, driven primarily by Tesla, have driven the fair market value of our EVs lower as compared to last year, such that a salvage creates a larger loss and, therefore, greater burden,” Scherr said.

Simply put, people are generally willing to pay a certain amount less for a used car than for a new one. As the price of new car goes down, that also pushes down what people are willing to pay to buy a used one.

As of now, electric cars are not the answer to green energy. There are serious ethical questions about the mining of the lithium that is used to make the batteries, and there are safety issues–don’t try to evacuate from a hurricane in an electric car if the puddles you are driving through contain salt water–that can cause the car to ignite. Iceland successfully uses hydrogen as fuel for its busses. There are other options for cutting pollution than electric cars.

Who Wins Under Bidenomics?

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On Saturday, The Washington Examiner posted an article about Bidenomics, the name given to the Biden administration’s economic programs.

The article reports:

President Joe Biden announced $12 billion in corporate welfare to U.S. automakers and their suppliers this week to subsidize a transition from gasoline-powered cars to electric cars.

This should be understood as part of the long-term effort to ban gasoline-powered cars while insisting that they are not banning gasoline-powered cars.

Check out this paragraph in this CNN article on the subsidies: “The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reported last year that aggressive, pollution-slashing changes in the global transportation sector — including the transition to EVs — could reduce the sector’s emissions by more than 80%.” The New York Times likewise writes in its article on this $12 billion in handouts: “Transportation is responsible for about one-third of the greenhouse gases generated by the United States, pollution that is dangerously heating the planet.”

But more interesting than the climate angle here is the redistribution angle. Biden administration officials present this corporate welfare as a way to help auto workers.

The article notes:

“Under Bidenomics, building a clean energy economy can and should provide a win‑win opportunity for auto companies and unionized workers who have anchored the American economy for decades.”

This is literally trickle-down economics. Biden gives billions to big business in the hope that big business will pass the money on to workers. The irony is that Biden always pretends to hate “trickle-down economics” and claims that Bidenomics is the alternative.

“Here’s the simple truth about trickle-down economics,” Biden said this summer: “It didn’t represent the best of American capitalism, let alone America.”

This is totally empty rhetoric, as Biden’s $12 billion corporate welfare to automakers shows.

Actually, Bidenomics is simply a plan to raid the American treasury, bankrupt the country and force everyone into a government-controlled crypto-currency. The only way to recover the American economy is to lower taxes on people and corporations, reduce regulation, and decrease government. The chances of that happening under a Democrat administration are non-existent.

The Fire Hazard The Government Has Failed To Mention

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On Thursday, The American Thinker reported that The Fremantle Highway, a boat, is is burning “out of control.”

The article reports:

Seventeen miles offshore from an island belonging to the Netherlands, a nearly 20,000-ton vessel loaded with vehicles is burning “out of control,” and officials are in a race against time; Lea Versteeg, spokesperson for the Dutch coast guard, reportedly said, “we’re currently working out to see how we can make sure that…the least bad situation is going to happen.”

…Given the details of this specific incident and what we know about EVs, all signs point to the culprit being…an electric vehicle! When EV batteries catch fire, they burn hotter and longer than most fires and the fire is “impossible” to snuff out, so mitigation strategies instead focus on “cooling”  (instead of extinguishing) the vulnerable or burning apparatuses. A prominent blog on fire science gives us the working knowledge of an EV battery blaze:

A high-voltage battery is made up of many cells packed tightly together inside a watertight, fire-resistant box. When a single cell fails, it is essentially a small explosive that produces a tremendous amount of gas and heat (1,200 degrees F) in tenths of a second. The failure is an exothermic chemical reaction that does not require oxygen from the atmosphere to sustain itself. The heat released from each individual cell is transferred to the neighboring cells, which causes them to fail as well.

Once a battery cell fails, it is impossible to extinguish the failed cell as the chemical reaction inside the cell happens far too quickly. The only way to stop a thermal runaway is by directly cooling the cells involved to ensure that the failed cell does not cause the cells around it to also fail.

The article concludes:

Worst case scenario, the vessel overturns, and we’re left with millions of pounds of debris littering the sea floor (at a world heritage site no less) and oil spills. Furthermore, what about all the pollution created during the manufacturing process, including the mining for the rare minerals used in EVs, for cars that are now unusable? And, here’s an unanswered question, but since water does next to nothing to cull flames from an EV fire, are first responders spraying any toxic flame retardants onto the ship?

What about the financial ramifications? Versteeg, the spokesperson quoted at the opening, stated that of the nearly 3,000 vehicles on board, only “25” were EVs. These numbers would mean that the EVs on board account for less than one percent of the total load, so if an EV is in fact the origin of the fire, it would show you how substantial the risk is. Ergo, insurance rates would increase (if an insurer even chooses to cover such a hazard), which in turn makes shipping rates rise.

Now as it turns out, this isn’t the first time—last year, a fire ravaged and sank the Felicity Ace; the ship was transporting both electric and non-electric cars. As far as official narratives go, the cause of the fire is still “unclear.”

Are these little “eco-friendly” batteries the catalysts for massive environmental calamities? I’m not a gambler, but if I had to wager, I’d suspect…yes.

It’s time to realize that electric cars are not at present a viable plan to save the environment. If we truly want to save the environment, we might want to consider the fact that China is building a new coal plant every week. Replacing Chinese coal plants with natural gas plants would actually help save the environment.

Biden Is Making You Poorer

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Author: R. Alan Harrop, Ph.D

In a prior article I mentioned how federal government agencies are taking away your freedoms by unnecessary and tyrannical regulations. The situation is about to get much worse as revealed in a recent article in The Epoch Times, a national newspaper that I strongly recommend for truthful news.

The effort by the EPA, (Environmental Protection Agency) to outlaw gas stoves is being followed by similar proposed draconian regulations by the DOE (Department of Energy). This time it is your household appliances they are after. The regulations will require substantial increases in efficiency ratings by cutting energy and water consumption by one-third, which can only be met, according to manufacturers, by reducing the size of the units (e.g. washing machines/dryers) and adding technology that will increase the cost by an average of $200 per unit. Shortages and decreased reliability can also be expected. Like most government schemes, you pay more but get less. By the way, top loading units will no longer be available. Other items like micro-waves, water heaters, air conditioners, and etc. will be similarly impacted. Manufacturers estimate that the availability of lower cost appliances will be the most impacted.

The EPA and DOE are also teaming up to implement vehicle emission standards that gas powered vehicles will not be able to meet, resulting in increased reliance on expensive, unreliable electric vehicles. Which is, of course, exactly what the Biden administration and the environmental fanatics have always wanted. The average EV costs $20,000 more than a similarly sized gas powered vehicle without the weight carrying ability or the range. What the EV advocates who tell you that EVs can go up to 300 miles without a charge don’t tell you, is that this can only happen when there are no passengers, no luggage or air-conditioner running. Importantly, the value of an EV drops dramatically when the batteries approach the end of their life cycle since they are so expensive to replace. Get ready to have your freedom to travel greatly restricted; also where you can live.

Is this the direct result of the Biden administration? You bet it is. In December 2022, the White House bragged about creating 110 new regulations that would impact the appliance and vehicle manufacturing industries. The environmental fanatics are getting everything they want from the Biden administration, and you, the average citizen taxpayer are going to get everything you do not want. It is not enough for the Marxist Democrats to allow technology to advance and have people exercise their inherent freedom to choose what they decide to buy; they want to tell you what you shall be allowed to purchase since they know what is best. What ever happened to our property rights as guaranteed in the Constitution? Show me where the Constitution gives the federal government, control over what we purchase. They can’t, because it doesn’t.

There is a glimmer of hope. The Republican controlled U.S House of Representatives is reportedly working on a bill that would require federal agencies to have proposed regulations approved by the House prior to implementation. This is long overdue and is only likely to be enacted when Republicans control the Senate and the White House; making the elections in 2024 even more critical to our freedoms.

 

It Is Really About The Environment?

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On Wednesday, The Daily Caller posted an article about the Biden administration’s push toward electric vehicles.

The article reports:

Chinese electric vehicle (EV) makers continue to grow faster than their European and U.S. competitors in 2023, even as the Biden administration pushes rules that could eventually end the sale of gas-powered vehicles, according to Semafor.

Chinese electric vehicle titan BYD has introduced its vehicles in Germany this year, while Chinese automakers outperformed foreign competitors in their domestic market, Semafor reported. While China continues to dominate both the supply chain for and sales of EVs, President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) introduced its strictest ever proposed set of vehicle emissions rules on April 12, which the agency forecasts would lead to over two-thirds of all vehicles sold after 2032 being all-electric.

The new regulations would severely limit the sale of gas-powered vehicles, which critics allege is the administration’s first step toward a California-like ban on new gas-powered passenger cars, something that EPA Director Michael Regan denied in a statement. Myron Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center for Energy and Environment, told the Daily Caller News Foundation at the time that the Biden administration is “trying to bend every federal rule they can find to force people into buying EVs.”Similarly, the Biden EPA previously approved a set of California regulations that experts say would effectively result in a nationwide ban on new diesel-powered truck sales by 2035, since automakers would be unlikely to sell different models in both California and nationwide markets. The California regulations would essentially act as a “backdoor … for California that sets standards for the U.S.,” Dan Kish, senior fellow at the Institute for Energy Research, told the DCNF at the time.

The article concludes:

China produced roughly 60% of rare earth minerals worldwide, and 60% of the world’s graphite supply, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). In terms of refining, China processes 60% of all cobalt and lithium worldwide, in addition to 30% of global nickel and copper processing.

Domestically, Chinese firms gained significant ground against their foreign competitors in 2022, as Chinese consumers purchased more than 4 million all-electric vehicles in 2022, with BYD unseating German automaker Volkswagen as the nation’s top seller of EVs, according to The Wall Street Journal.

So why is the Biden administration pushing electric cars when the result of Americans buying electric cars would be to strengthen the Chinese economy and weaken the American economy? China not only has the manufacturing capability, it has the natural resources to make electric cars. Even it this is not a conscious effort to undermine the American economy, that will be the result of the administration’s push for all Americans to buy electric vehicles.

Remembering The Yugo

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On Tuesday, Issues & Insights posted an article titled, “EVs Are The Yugo Of The 21st Century.” I think they are on to something.

The article reports:

Way back in the mid-1980s, communist Yugoslavia exported the Yugo, a compact car that sold for around $4,000. It was so poorly made that bumping into a pole at 5 mph could total it.

Fast forward to today, and a new class of cars has a similar problem. A minor accident can cause a total loss, even if the car’s been driven only a few miles. The only difference is that these cars aren’t cheap imports from some godforsaken socialist state. These are state-of-art electric vehicles that come with an average sticker price of $55,000.

Why are insurance companies totaling low-mileage EVs that have been in a fender bender? For the same reason you could total a new Yugo when backing out of a parking spot. The cost of repair is exorbitant.

As Reuters reported recently, “For many electric vehicles, there is no way to repair or assess even slightly damaged battery packs after accidents,” which means the only viable option is to replace the battery, which represents about half the cost of the car.

The article notes:

A replacement battery for a $44,000 Tesla Model 3 can cost up to $20,000.

One expert told Reuters that Tesla’s Model Y has “zero repairability” because its battery is built into the structure of the car.

The article concludes:

EV advocates say not to worry. Car makers, they say, are designing batteries to be more modular and replaceable. They promise that repair costs will eventually come down, and all will be well.

Maybe so, but that’s why force-feeding this technology is so reckless.

In a normal market, carmakers would work out such kinks before mass producing a vehicle, much less converting their entire fleets over to a new and relatively untested technology. If they couldn’t resolve problems of affordability, reliability, and repairability to consumers’ satisfaction, automakers would scrap the effort and move on to something else.

But our elites think they know better. And they want new cars to be 100% electric within a decade. So, carmakers feel like they have little choice but to plow ahead.

Which brings up another way that today’s EVs are like the Yugos of yesteryear.

One auto critic said of the Yugo that it “had the distinct feeling of something assembled at gunpoint.”

That was probably literally true in the case of the Yugo. But it is essentially the situation with EVs today. Consumers aren’t banging on dealership doors demanding EVs. Ford reported last week that its e-car division is losing billions of dollars a year.

Car companies are pouring money into electric cars only because the government is holding a gun to their heads, saying build EVs or die.

About the same time the Yugo came out, the first Hyundai arrived in America. My husband and I bought the first Hyundai that arrived in New England. Hyundai was made in a free country under the free market; Yugo was made in a communist country where free enterprise was not the way things were done. Hyundai is still going strong. My husband actually drives a Hyundai today. Where is the Yugo?

Green Technology vs. Cold Weather

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On Sunday, Pamela Geller posted an article at The Geller Report about the problem New York City is having plowing the snow from the recent snowstorm. Traditionally, garbage trucks with snow plows are used for snow removal in New York City.

The article reports:

Don’t count on seeing electric garbage trucks plowing snow from city streets any time soon.

The city Department of Sanitation’s goals to become carbon neutral are clashing with the limits of electric-powered vehicles.

The department aims to switch all 6,000 vehicles in its fleet from gas to electric as part of the state’s goal to reduce emissions by 2040. But city officials say they haven’t found electric garbage trucks that are powerful enough to plow snow.

The department has ordered seven electric rear loader garbage trucks, custom-made by Mack and costing more than $523,000 each, with delivery slated for the spring. Used for curbside trash collection, the department’s current rear loader truck fleet runs on diesel and is outfitted with plows to clear streets during snow season.

But officials say previous electric trucks tested by sanitation have not lasted longer than four hours plowing snow before running out of power, and the new electric trucks will be used for trash collection but not plowing snow.

The technology used in electric cars needs to be modified to deal with cold weather. Tesla does have a heater that can be installed in their cars to increase their range in cold weather. However, not everyone can afford either the Tesla or the heater. At some point in the future, electric cars may be a viable option to the internal combustion engine, but that time is not now.

 

Things We All Need To Know

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On Tuesday, PJ Media posted an article containing information about electric cars that somehow isn’t being mentioned in the new articles touting the new vehicles.

Here is the list (please follow the link to the article to read the details):

1. EVs are powered by fossil fuels.

2. The batteries of EVs rely on cobalt.

3. A study released earlier this year by an environmental group showed that nearly one-third of San Francisco’s electric charging stations were non-functioning.

4. Supporters of the California law admit there will be a 40% increase in demand for electricity, adding further strain to the grid and requiring increased costs for power and infrastructure.

5. According to one researcher, the strain of adding an EV is similar to adding “1 or 2 air conditioners” to your home, except an EV requires power year-round.

6. Today, 20 million American families, or one in six, have fallen behind on their electric bills, the highest amount ever.

7. Utility companies will need to add $5,800 in upgrades for every new EV for the next eight years in order to compensate for the demand for power.

8. The average price for an electric vehicle is currently $66,000, up more than 13% in just the last year, costing an average of $18,000 more than the average combustible engine.

9. A 2022 study found that the majority of EV charging occurs at home, leaving those who live in multi-family dwellings (apartments) at a real disadvantage for charging.

10. The same study also noted that many drivers charge their EVs overnight when solar power is less available on the grid.

On Tuesday, The Blaze reported the following:

A Florida man went viral after he posted a car dealership quote showing it would cost nearly $30,000 to replace the battery in his electric vehicle.

Rob O’Donnell posted the quote, obtained from Roger Dean Chevrolet in Cape Coral, on Twitter last week. The quote includes the cost of the battery (nearly $27,000), the cost of labor ($1,200), and taxes for the repair (more than $1,700).

In total, it would cost O’Donnell $29,842.15 to replace the battery in his 2012 Chevrolet Volt. The car itself is worth far less.

I think Americans need to consider all of the above before they rush out to buy an electric car.

Something To Consider When Buying An Electric Car

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On Saturday, Real Clear Science posted an article about one of the problems with electric cars.

The article notes:

I want an electric car. They’re quicker than combustion vehicles, quieter, simpler, cheaper to own over the life of the vehicle, better for the environment, and have that undeniable cool factor. Yet despite my yearning, I still haven’t made the leap (even though my 2013 Kia Rio with manual roll-up windows is ripe for an upgrade). That’s because, living in the seasonally frigid northern U.S., I know there’s a common use-case where pretty much all ‘affordable’ EVs are woefully inept: long-distance winter highway driving.

Here in the Upper Midwest, our interstates are fast and our winters are cold. Speeds north of 70 miles per hour combined with near-zero (F) temperatures wreak havoc on an electric vehicle’s range. While a typical internal combustion engine (ICE) car might suffer only a 10-15% reduction in highway driving range under these conditions, a typical EV currently on the market will have its range dip 30-50 percent! Elevated power output from the motor coupled with electric heating for the cabin increase energy draw from a cold – and thus reduced-capacity – lithium battery. This means that a 274-mile rated Kia EV6 might mange just 160 miles of range in bone-chilling cold, a 278-mile rated Mustang Mach-E might get 180, and a Tesla Model Y could optimistically go about 200. If you’re thinking about a winter road trip, maybe to visit relatives for Christmas or Thanksgiving, in a shorter-range EV like a Kona, Bolt, Leaf, or Niro, forget about it.

Compounding the problem of drastically reduced driving range is the generally inept charging infrastructure along highways in the Upper Midwest. DC fast chargers are few and far between and when you get to one there’s a decent chance it won’t be working. Even if you do find a charger in good operational order, fast charging in cold temperatures can take twice as long at freezing (32°F) and three times longer closer to zero compared to when temperatures are in the seventies. The reason? According to the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, “cold temperatures impact the electrochemical reactions within the cell, and onboard battery management systems limit the charging rate to avoid damage to the battery.” For most EVs, this delay translates to about an hour and a half or even a two-hour ‘fill-up’ to 80% battery capacity. Yikes.

This sounds like a nightmare. Although the government would like all of us to drive electric cars, it simply is not practical. Most of us don’t have the time to spend hours charging a battery or the money to install a reasonable charger in our homes. There are also serious questions as to whether or not the electrical grid could handle a nation of electric cars. Until the free market takes over and the necessary research is done to make electric cars practical, widespread ownership of electric cars in America is a pipe dream.

Somehow Those Who Want All Of Us To Drive Electric Cars Don’t Mention This Part Of The Story

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On June 3rd, The Wall Street Journal posted an article by Rachel Wolfe about a drive from New Orleans to Chicago and back in an electric car.

The article reports:

I thought it would be fun.

That’s what I told my friend Mack when I asked her to drive with me from New Orleans to Chicago and back in an electric car.

I’d made long road trips before, surviving popped tires, blown headlights and shredded wheel-well liners in my 2008 Volkswagen Jetta. I figured driving the brand-new Kia EV6 I’d rented would be a piece of cake.

If, that is, the public-charging infrastructure cooperated. We wouldn’t be the first to test it. Sales of pure and hybrid plug-ins doubled in the U.S. last year to 656,866—over 4% of the total market, according to database EV-volumes. More than half of car buyers say they want their next car to be an EV, according to recent Ernst & Young Global Ltd. data.

Oh—and we aimed to make the 2,000-mile trip in just under four days so Mack could make her Thursday-afternoon shift as a restaurant server.

The article continues with an account of the planning that went into this trip:

Given our battery range of up to 310 miles, I plotted a meticulous route, splitting our days into four chunks of roughly 7½-hours each. We’d need to charge once or twice each day and plug in near our hotel overnight.

The PlugShare app—a user-generated map of public chargers—showed thousands of charging options between New Orleans and Chicago. But most were classified as Level 2, requiring around 8 hours for a full charge.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. We are being sold a bill of goods on electric cars. Has anyone considered the load on the electric grid if everyone actually bought an electric car? There is already talk of rolling brownouts this summer because the electric grid is overloaded in some places. What impact will thousands of electric cars have on an already overloaded power grid?

The article concludes:

At our hotel, we decide 4 hours of sleep is better than none, and set our alarms for 4 a.m.

We figure 11 hours should be plenty for a trip that would normally take half as long. That is, if absolutely everything goes right.

Miraculously, it does. At the McDonald’s where we stop for our first charge at 6 a.m., the charger zaps to life. The body shop and parts department director at Rogers-Dabbs Chevrolet in Brandon, Miss., comes out to unlock the charger for us with a keycard at 10 a.m. We’re thrilled we waited for business hours, realizing we can only charge while he’s there.

We pull into New Orleans 30 minutes before Mack’s shift starts—exhausted and grumpy.

The following week, I fill up my Jetta at a local Shell station. Gas is up to $4.08 a gallon.

I inhale deeply. Fumes never smelled so sweet.

Be careful what you wish for.

A Different Take On Electric Cars

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On Tuesday, The Western Journal posted an article about some recent changes in electric cars to increase their range.

The article reports:

(Here at The Western Journal, we’re making sure consumers know that electric cars don’t just run on rainbows and dreams; there are serious environmental tradeoffs politicians and environmentalists haven’t fully publicized, or even considered, as they push these vehicles relentlessly on American car-buyers. We’ll keep bringing America the truth the establishment media won’t. You can help us by subscribing.)

According to a piece published Monday by the EV-centric outlet Green Car Reports, a British-based independent emissions testing firm found that particulate matter emissions from tires are 1,850 times greater under normal driving conditions than from a tailpipe of a gas-powered car.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s website, particulate emissions are “microscopic solids or liquid droplets that are so small that they can be inhaled and cause serious health problems.” It notes the particles “are also the main cause of reduced visibility (haze) in parts of the United States, including many of our treasured national parks and wilderness areas.”

The EPA defines particle pollution as “inhalable particles,” which are under 10 microns in diameter, and “fine inhalable particles,” 2.5 microns and smaller.

The firm that conducted the study, Emissions Analytics, had previously found in 2020 that particulate emissions from tires could be 1,000 times greater than those from tailpipes. That test was designed to capture worst-case emissions under legal driving, according to the report. But when researchers replicated the test “across a wider range of driving conditions,” they found the number was even higher.

As the cars are becoming more efficient and larger batteries added however, the tire emissions increase.

The article notes:

Furthermore, they found that adding half a metric ton (1,100 pounds) “of battery weight can result in tire emissions that are almost 400 more times greater than real-world tailpipe emissions, everything else being equal.”

The article concludes:

And then there’s the environmental damage caused by mining the minerals needed to build EV components. Or the fact that China controls most of the supply-chain access to said minerals. Or that EVs are considerably more expensive than gas-powered vehicles.

Pick your poison. Heaven knows there are plenty of them. We’ve found a new one in electric vehicles. It’s time the progressive left at least admits the truth: There is no such thing as a free lunch.

We are in search of the perpetual motion machine. At some point we may actually come close, but the laws of physics are definitely working against us.

Are Electric Cars Really Green?

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I am not a scientist, and I don’t claim to be one. However, I do possess a certain amount of common sense. That common sense makes me wonder if the fact that an electric car uses electricity that has to be generated from somewhere else negates the ‘green’ quality of the electric car. Doesn’t it make more sense to use a combustible fuel that directly powers the car without a middle man than to use fuel that has to be generated somewhere else? And what are the sources of the electricity for electric cars? Again, I don’t claim to be a scientist. However, I am not the only one wondering if electric cars are really green.

On Wednesday, The Federalist posted an article about electric cars.

The article reports:

Instead of investing in American energy, Democrats are actively suppressing the American energy industry and then telling Americans to spend their savings on overpriced electric cars to solve their problems. But the left isn’t being honest about the environmental and financial costs of those trendy electric vehicles.

…To advance their climate agenda and deflect backlash about rising gas prices, Democrats are telling Americans that driving electric cars is for the greater good of the environment, fully knowing the charging stations for these cars are not fossil fuel free. 

In reality, one of Tesla’s Supercharger stations was reported to get 13 percent of their energy from natural gas and 27 percent from coal. Power plants burn coal to generate electricity to power electric cars and emit a higher fossil fuel footprint than the left would care to admit. 

While these vehicles may be falsely advertised, many who invest in these overpriced cars are able to avoid paying the currently outrageous gas prices. Still, Americans’ growing reliance on electric cars and the batteries they require will increase our dependence on countries such as China for materials. 

“Chinese companies, particularly CATL, have secured vast supplies of the raw materials that go inside the batteries,” The New York Times reported in December. “That dominance has stirred fears in Washington that Detroit could someday be rendered obsolete, and that Beijing could control American driving in the 21st century the way that oil-producing nations sometimes could in the 20th.” 

By increasing our use of electric cars, the United States will require more lithium batteries and will further rely on China to sustain our supply. While the current energy crisis could be an opportunity for America to increase our energy independence, the current administration refuses to take advantage. 

Americans buying electric cars is not a winning strategy for America.

Have The People In Congress Ever Studied Economics?

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On Sunday, BizPacReview posted an article about a recent statement by Massachusetts Congressman Ed Markey. I lived in Massachusetts for a long time, and I am sorry to say that what the Congressman said is not unusual for a Massachusetts Democrat.

The article reports:

Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat, has claimed that, despite an abundance of evidence showing that “clean” energy is currently neither as reliable nor as efficient as traditional energy, America should invest in it right now instead of the latter.

He made this bold but dubious assertion while delivering a speech this weekend at the Democrat National Committee’s winter meeting.

“Republicans and their oil-soaked cronies … want to feed the American people one of the biggest lies of all – that drilling for more oil and more gas is the path to energy independence,” he said during his speech.

“Republicans say that they have an all-of-the-above plan, but it’s really an oil-above-all plan. The GOP always has stood for the gas and oil party. And its argument of drilling equals energy independence is leakier than an old oil tanker.”

I beg to differ, but America achieved energy independence under President Trump. We were also in a position to send fuel to Europe to lessen their dependency upon Russia. Had we continued on that path, the combination of the lower cost of energy and Europe’s not feeding the Russian treasury, we would not be currently funding Russia’s attack on Ukraine.

The article concudes:

The evidence consists of data and polls showing that prices were on the rise long before Russia invaded Ukraine.

Republicans are not alone in their push for more oil/gas investment. Even Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur renowned for his successful development and promotion of “clean”/”green” technology and solutions, has argued that oil and gas investments are mandatory at this juncture in time.

Everyone, it would appear, recognizes this point except for Democrats, who keep doubling down on “clean” energy, even as the American people double down on their complete disgust with what they say are controlling party’s skewed priorities.

If you actually believe that green energy will provide for our energy needs, please read this article at The Daily Caller. Until we have the technology for green energy (which is most likely to be brought about by a return to a free market economy), clean fossil fuel is possible and efficient.

I long for the return of $2 a gallon gas–I can easily ignore any mean tweets that appear.

The Real Numbers On Electric Cars

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On Wednesday, The Western Journal posted an article about the actual cost of purchasing, driving, and maintaining an electric car.

The article notes:

As the average cost per gallon of gas has soared past $4.20, and with no end in sight, many of our leaders — including Joe Biden — are pushing EVs as a cost-effective replacement for gas-powered cars.

As Fox Business recently noted, a one-to-one comparison of the cost of charging an EV versus filling a regular auto with gas showed that EV charging appeared cheaper. But many other factors need to be included in the math to make a true analysis — factors that many EV advocates are desperate to ignore.

“According to the EPA, the national average for a kilowatt-hour of electricity is 13 cents, including at homes where most electric car owners charge their vehicles with 240-volt Level 2 chargers that typically take eight hours or more to fill them up,” Fox reported on Wednesday. “Many of these are also available in public settings like office and shopping center parking lots, where they are known as destination chargers.”

The article also points out:

But charging your EV comes with its own set of pricey problems. As noted above, costs are rising per kilowatt-hour when using public stations, and using a home charger offers the biggest savings. However, owners also have to shell out between $700 and $2,000 to install a Level 2 home charging unit, Carvana reported. This might tend to make the first year’s savings for not buying gasoline a wash.

Worse, if you want to install a Level 3 charger in your home, you’ll be hit with costs of up to $50,000 or more — including upgrading the electrical system in your house to power the thing.

The article also notes:

Also, a major source of expense for EVs is battery pack replacement. Depending on the car, battery packs can last between 5 and 20 years, but the replacement costs might make keeping the car prohibitive. Some experts say that the average battery life is eight years or 100,000 miles, and depending on the model, battery packs cost between $5,000 and $20,000 to replace — not including labor.

This high cost is also a warning to anyone buying a used EV. After all, if you buy a 10-year-old EV that still has its original battery, you might be forced to fork out another $10,000 to replace a dead battery pack shortly after putting as much as $25,000 to purchase the used vehicle. This is a cost that few average Americans can afford.

Another issue is a geopolitical concern.

Many of the rare earth minerals — such as lithium — and the manufactured batteries and parts are made in China, and the costs for these materials are also skyrocketing.

Indeed, in December it was found that the cost of lithium had surged more than 250 percent over the year. Not only are these materials rising in expense, but we are enriching China in the process.

Meanwhile, where is the electricity to power these electric vehicles coming from? If 20 percent of Americans owned electric cars, could the power grid handle the load?

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It provides much food for thought.

Getting Rewarded For Your Political Support

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Traditionally the unions have supported the Democrat party. Periodically they are rewarded for their support. Yesterday Red State posted an article that illustrates how that system works.

The article reports:

In yet another example that powerful teachers unions and labor unions enjoy joint custody of Joe Biden and the Democrat Party, the ridiculously named socialist monstrosity “Build Back Better” Act contains a provision that provides a tax credit of up to $12,500 to purchasers of electric vehicles — other than Teslas.

Why not Teslas? Three words: United Autoworkers Union.

That’s right, America, as reported by CBS News, only electric vehicles made in unionized U.S. factories qualify for the full $12,500. However, if Tesla it must be, your tax credit would be capped at $7,500.

The article lists the criteria for the tax credit (note that it is a tax credit–not a refund–the government doesn’t want you to keep too much of your own money):

  • A credit of up to $7,500 for an electric or plug-in hybrid vehicle, defined as a car with a battery capacity of at least 40 kilowatt-hours and a gas tank, if any, under 2.5 gallons.
  • An additional $500 credit for a car with a battery pack made in the U.S.
  • An additional $4,500 credit for cars assembled at a unionized U.S. plant. (Currently, only plants owned by GM, Ford, and Stellantis qualify [formerly, Fiat-Chrysler].)

The information above comes from CBS News.

The article continues:

In addition, to qualify for tax credits under Biden’s BBB (Build Back Broke), electric vehicles must fall under a price limit. Vans, sports utility vehicles, and pickup trucks need to be under $80,000 to be eligible for the credit; for all other cars, the price limit is $55,000.

The article concludes:

The worst part about the Democrat Party in situations like this — blatant pandering to labor unions — is the complete disingenuousness of the whole thing. We know — and they know we know — that “climate change,” “green energy,” and fossil fuels have less to do with this provision, along with taxpayer relief and “good-paying jobs,” and more to do with delivering to the UAW exactly what it expects.

Doubt it? One look at the Democrat coddling of teachers’ unions should eliminate any doubt.

I guess the unions are simply getting what they have paid for.

Considering All Aspects Of Electric Cars

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Zero Hedge posted an article today about one of the negative aspects of switching to electric cars.

The article reports:

Last month, a massive fire broke out at a German bus depot, destroying 20 electric buses. First responders weren’t prepared nor properly trained in extinguishing lithium-ion fires. The fire prompted one German official to question the zero-emissions vehicles as the “spontaneously” combustion of the batteries “is completely unaddressed,” according to RT News. 

“The risk of these fires, including in other locations such as bicycle basements or large apartment blocks, is completely unaddressed,” Heinrich Duepmann of Germany’s Electricity Consumer Protection Association told RT. “Also, insurance companies are not yet tackling the issue.”

Duepmann said the fires are “not regulated,” and fire barriers between electric busses and ones that run on diesel will be constructed to reduce the risk. 

The article notes an incident in Baltimore, Maryland, last month when after an automobile crash involving a Tesla, it took firefighters more than two hours to put out the fire that ensued.

The article concludes:

Baltimore County Volunteer Firefighters Association was so fed up with the incident because they’re not equipped nor have the proper training to handle such fires. They tweeted, “Let’s hope @elonmusk can work with the fire service and together we can develop a better response.” 

But it’s not just Baltimore firefighters who are not adequately trained in battling lithium-ion fires as more and more electric vehicles enter the roadways. There are firehouses across the country that are not prepared.

The only weapon that firehouses have is water and to let the fire burn out, but that could take hours. 

A few months ago, 20 tons of water were used to extinguish a Tesla fire in Taiwan. For some context, it only takes 3 tons of water to put out a gasoline car fire. A Texas fire chief told The Independent that a Tesla fire needed 40 times more water to control the blaze in a separate incident.

What becomes evident is first responders aren’t prepared for the brave new world of green transportation and the occasional battery fire. This has been proven around the globe as electric car companies, such as Tesla and VW, among others, should brief local governments on how to tackle lithium-ion fires. 

We may eventually get to a point where green energy makes sense, but we are not there yet.

What The Mainstream Media Isn’t Telling You About Electric Cars

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The Biden administration is attempting to shift America from gasoline-powered cars to electric-powered cars. However, there are a lot of things that they are not telling Americans about what is involved in that shift. We were given a clue recently when California, which has a lot of electric cars, asked the owners of those cars not to charge their vehicles because of power shortages. There are some valid questions as to whether or not the American power grid has the ability to support the widespread use of electric cars. It is also interesting that just as America became capable of being energy independent (we enjoyed energy independence under the Trump administration) because of natural gas and petroleum resources, the Biden administration decided not to use those domestic resources and is instead proposing something that would put America at the mercy of foreign supply chains.

Lets look at some of the environmental facts regarding electric vehicles. First of all, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the typical electric car contains six times more minerals than a gas-powered car.

In May 2021, the IEA reported the following:

The special report, The Role of Critical Minerals in Clean Energy Transitions, is the most comprehensive global study to date on the central importance of minerals such as copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt and rare earth elements in a secure and rapid transformation of the global energy sector. Building on the IEA’s longstanding leadership role in energy security, the report recommends six key areas of action for policy makers to ensure that critical minerals enable an accelerated transition to clean energy rather than becoming a bottleneck.

“Today, the data shows a looming mismatch between the world’s strengthened climate ambitions and the availability of critical minerals that are essential to realising those ambitions,” said Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the IEA. “The challenges are not insurmountable, but governments must give clear signals about how they plan to turn their climate pledges into action. By acting now and acting together, they can significantly reduce the risks of price volatility and supply disruptions.”

“Left unaddressed, these potential vulnerabilities could make global progress towards a clean energy future slower and more costly – and therefore hamper international efforts to tackle climate change,” Dr Birol said. “This is what energy security looks like in the 21st century, and the IEA is fully committed to helping governments ensure that these hazards don’t derail the global drive to accelerate energy transitions.”

Keep in mind that the IEA is one of the groups supporting getting away from fossil fuels. Somehow getting away from fossil fuels was not a worldwide goal until it was discovered that America had a lifetime supply of fossil fuels.

So lets look at some of the minerals involved. Although America has large lithium reserves, we only have one lithium mine. Mining lithium is energy-intensive and polluting.

In 2018 Fair Planet noted:

Behind a burgeoning demand for cobalt, a key component in Lithium-ion batteries used in electronic gadgets and vehicles, is the heartrending story of tens of thousands of children, some as young as seven, involved in back breaking and hazardous mining of the precious commodity in the Democratic Republic of Congo while earning a paltry one dollar a day.

Yet this represents a small fraction of a practice now entrenched world over with studies estimating that up to one million children are working in mines globally.

From the gold fields of Tanzania, Mali and Ghana to diamonds in the Central Africa Republic, these young ones will work for up to 24 hours a day digging deep pits to reach the minerals, breaking stones, and carrying heavy loads while being exposed to some of the most harmful toxins like mercury which they use to process the minerals.

There’s more. Nickel mining in Indonesia is a major source of pollution. Coal produces a large portion of the electricity used around the world (particularly in China). More electricity will be needed to power the electric cars the environmentalists are encouraging all of us to buy. Lithium-ion batteries need to be recycled properly–if not properly recycled, they can cause fires.

The bottom line is simple–we don’t know as much about electric cars as we should before we encourage the replacement of gasoline engines. Moving to electric cars may actually cause more harm to the environment than gasoline-powered cars.

 

One Of The Problems With Green Energy

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On Wednesday, Yahoo News reported that one in five owners of electric cars have replaced their electric cars with traditional gasoline-powered cars.

The article reports:

In roughly three minutes, you can fill the gas tank of a Ford Mustang and have enough range to go about 300 miles with its V8 engine.

But on a recent 200-mile trip from Boston to New York in the Mustang’s electric Mach-E variant, Axios’ Dan Primack said he felt “panic” as his battery level dipped below 23% while searching for a compatible charger to complete his trip.

“I was assured that this might be one of the country’s easiest EV routes,” Primack wrote. “Those assurances were misplaced.”

For Bloomberg automotive analyst Kevin Tynan, an hour plugged into his household outlet gave the Mach-E just three miles of range.

“Overnight, we’re looking at 36 miles of range,” he told Insider. “Before I gave it back to Ford, because I wanted to give it back full, I drove it to the office and plugged in at the charger we have there.”

Standard home outlets generally deliver 120 volts, powering what electric vehicle aficionados call “Level 1” charging, while the higher-powered specialty connections at 240 volts are known as “Level 2.” By comparison, Tesla’s “Superchargers,” which can fully charge its cars in a little over an hour, run on 480 volts.

The article notes:

Of those who switched, over 70% lacked access to Level 2 charging at home, and slightly fewer than that lacked Level 2 connections at their workplace.

“If you don’t have a Level 2, it’s almost impossible,” said Tynan, who has tested a wide range of makes and models of PEVs over the years for his research.

Even with the faster charging, a Chevy Bolt he tested still needed nearly six hours to top its range back up to 300 miles from nearly empty – something that takes him just minutes at the pump with his family SUV.

EVs have come a long way in recent years in terms of range, safety, comfort, and tech features, but Hardman and Tal note that very little has changed in terms of how they are recharged.

The researchers warned that this trend could make it harder to achieve electric vehicle sales targets in California and other countries, and the growth of the market overall.

There are also questions as to whether or not the electrical grid could handle everyone driving electric cars. There is also the matter of where the electricity comes from–coal-generated, natural gas, solar, etc. Electric cars may or may not be a good idea, but it is an idea that will not come into fruition until the government gets out of the way.

They Are Coming After My Whopper Again

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On Saturday The Western Journal posted a commentary about President Biden’s energy proposals. I am not exactly sure who is running the country right now, but in my mind they have absolutely crossed the Rubicon with this proposal.

The article reports:

President Joe Biden kicked off his virtual Earth Day climate summit on Thursday by announcing his administration’s very ambitious plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 and enable the U.S. to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

Sacrifice on the part of every American will be necessary in order to achieve these goals. It will change our diets, force us to purchase electric cars and dictate the way we heat our homes.

The Daily Mail published a report on what adjustments will be required of us.

…The plan “would require Americans to only consume about four pounds of red meat per year, or 0.18 ounces per day” which “equates to consuming roughly one average sized burger per month.”

…Electric cars account for approximately two percent of annual new car purchases in the U.S., according to the report. Biden’s plan reportedly calls for that figure to rise to 65 percent by 2030. Additionally, “10 percent of new truck sales would need to be electric.”

The Mail estimated the average price of a new electric car at $55,000.

…The Mail pointed out that “[n]early 25 percent of homes would need to be heated by electricity, rather than natural gas or oil, to help reach Biden’s emissions goal by 2030. The average cost to install an electric heat pump, which an all-in-one heating and cooling unit, is about $5,613, according to figures home HomeAdvisor.”

Some things to note here. Where does the electricity to heat the homes come from? Has anyone considered the labor conditions and environmental impact in mining the lithium needed for the batteries to run electric cars? Also, seriously, what impact on the American economy would cutting red meat consumption to 4 pounds a year per American? How would that impact the cattle industry, the farmers, etc.?

In November 2020, The Institute for Energy Research reported the following:

During the Obama-Biden administration, hydraulic fracturing was accused of causing a number of environmental problems—faucets on fire, contamination of drinking water, etc.—but the administration’s own Environmental Protection Agency could not validate those accusations.  Now Biden is planning to transition the transportation sector to electric vehicles that are powered by lithium batteries and require other critical metals where China dominates the market. Mining and processing of lithium, however, turns out to be far more environmentally harmful than what turned out to be the unfounded issues with fracking.

In May 2016, dead fish were found in the waters of the Liqi River, where a toxic chemical leaked from the Ganzizhou Rongda Lithium mine. Cow and yak carcasses were also found floating downstream, dead from drinking contaminated water. It was the third incident in seven years due to a sharp increase in mining activity, including operations run by China’s BYD, one of the world’ biggest supplier of lithium-ion batteries. After the second incident in 2013, officials closed the mine, but fish started dying again when it reopened in April 2016.

…Environmentalists expressed unfounded concerns about fracking, but they need to be worried about replacing fossil fuels in the transportation and electric generating sector with electric vehicles and renewable energy where lithium, cobalt and other critical metals are needed to produce these technologies. Mining, processing, and disposing of these metals can contaminate the drinking water, land and environment if done improperly as seen from several examples. And, since China dominates the global market, it just switches what once was U.S. reliance on the Middle East to U.S. reliance on the People’s Republic.

We might want to rethink this.

 

Has Anyone Actually Thought This Through?

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On January 30, 2021, a website called Deseret News posted an article about the ‘solar waste’ involved in green energy.

The article notes:

Although countries are feverishly looking to install wind and solar farms to wean themselves off carbon-based, or so-called “dirty” energy, few countries, operators and the industry itself have yet to fully tackle the long-term consequences of how to dispose of these systems, which have their own environmental hazards like toxic metals, oil, fiberglass and other material.

A briefing paper released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency predicts these startling global numbers for countries by 2050 just for solar waste:

    • United States, 10 million tons.
    • Germany, 3 million tons.
    • China, 20 million tons.
    • Japan, 7.5 million tons.
    • India, 7.5 million tons.

Solar arrays have a life cycle of about 30 years, but the rapid adoption of solar in the United States and elsewhere has the problem of disposal creeping up in the rearview mirror — faster rather than later.

The article also notes the problem with wind power:

Wind power also is taking off as a clean energy resource, but the EPA notes that windmills are the least energy producing and most physically difficult renewable energy waste stream to address.

The sheer size of the windmills and the difficulty of disposing of them at recycling stations led the agency to conclude that each new wind farm is a “towering promise of future wreckage.”

While there is a market for second-hand windmills in Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America, the tactic of shifting used windmill components to other countries simply delays the waste disposal problem and puts it on the shoulders of countries less equipped to deal with the challenge, it noted.

Like coal mining or other natural resource extraction, certain entities in Utah and elsewhere have addressed the afterlife issues of wind and solar farms by requiring environmental remediation or the posting of a reclamation bond to ensure proper cleanup and disposal.

The article concludes:

There is some innovation playing out, however, with Japan’s Nissan repurposing batteries to power streetlights. In the United States, General Motors is backing up its data center in Michigan with used Chevy Volt batteries.

The EPA notes, however, that these sort of “adaptive reuses” still only delay the time for final disposal of the batteries and the need to deal with materials in the batteries that can cause fires or leach hazardous chemicals.

On the wind power front, GE announced last year it had reached a multiyear agreement with Veolia North America to launch the United States’ first wind blade recycling program, according to an article in Utility Dive.

Nearly 90 % of the blade material, consisting of fiberglass, would be repurposed for cement production, cutting carbon dioxide emissions from that source by 27%.

With the release of its paper, the EPA is calling on researchers, states, industry and other federal agencies to ensure green waste is sustainable from end to end and that gaps in renewable energy waste management are addressed.

“While consumers may purchase renewable energy or renewable energy-based products with good intentions, that does not prevent the unintended adverse environmental consequences of these products,” it said.

It seems that we have not yet solved the problems of green energy. Those problems will be solved in the future, but as of yet green energy is not quite ready for prime time.

Policies Proposed By The Biden Campaign

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Issues & Insights posted an article today about one of the proposals of the Biden campaign. All of us understand that politicians often do not keep their campaign promises, but in this case that might actually be a good thing.

The article reports:

Joe Biden’s $2 trillion climate change plan, released this week, was described by one liberal outlet as “the Green New Deal, minus the crazy.” We beg to differ. Just look at Biden’s plan to eliminate the internal combustion engine.

Biden says that on his first day in office, he will develop “rigorous new fuel economy standards aimed at ensuring 100% of new sales for light- and medium-duty vehicles will be zero emissions.”

…Aside from fuel economy mandates, Biden also wants to extend and expand the EV tax credit, pump federal money into charging stations, and create a new “cash for clunkers” program for those who trade in a gasoline-powered car for a plug-in.

The cost of all this? Who knows. Aside from the $2 trillion price tag that Biden put on his entire Green New Deal plan, he hasn’t broken down his EV mandate scheme. But Sen. Chuck Schumer has already proposed a cash-for-clunkers plan, which would cost $454 billion over a decade.

The article continues:

And for all this, the electric car mandate will have a negligible impact on CO2 emissions and zero impact on the climate.

For one thing, the CO2 advantage of electric cars is vastly oversold. These are not “zero emissions” vehicles. They simply change the source of the emissions from the car to power plants — most of them powered by coal and natural gas.

A study by the University of Michigan’s Transportation Research Institute found that when you factor in CO2 emissions from electricity production, the average plug-in produces as much CO2 over its lifetime as a gas-powered car that gets 55 miles per gallon.

The CO2 advantage of electric cars diminishes even more when you consider the entire lifecycle of the vehicle, including the environmental impact of mining required to manufacture the batteries. A study by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that CO2 emissions from manufacturing electric cars was 68% higher than gas-powered cars.

We already did cash-for-clunkers in 2009. The cars turned in had to be disabled or scrapped. The ultimate result of the program was that it artificially inflated the cost of used cars, hurting the people who couldn’t afford to buy new cars.

Wikipedia (not always a reliable source, but in this case cited sources) reported:

The Economists’ Voice reported in 2009 that for each vehicle trade, the program had a net cost of approximately $2,000, with total costs outweighing all benefits by $1.4 billion. Edmunds reported that Cash for Clunkers cost US taxpayers $24,000 per vehicle sold, that nearly 690,000 vehicles were sold, and that only 125,000 of vehicle sales were incremental. Edmunds CEO concluded that without Cash for Clunkers, auto sales would have been even better.

I think we need to learn from our mistakes.

Is This A Winning Issue?

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Andrew Yang is running for President in the Democrat primary. He is currently polling at about 3 percent. He has some interesting ideas on changing the American culture.

Hot Air posted an article today about some of those ideas.

The article reports:

MSNBC held their latest “climate crisis” event for 2020 Democratic hopefuls yesterday and when Andrew Yang took the stage he brought up one possibility that all the candidates should weigh in on. When asked by the host what the world would look like in 2050 after the everyone began dealing with climate change and carbon emissions, he suggested that the end of private car ownership was probably on the horizon.

…Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang said the United States may have to eliminate private car ownership to combat climate change during MSNBC’s climate forum at Georgetown University Thursday morning.

He told MSNBC host Ali Velshi that “we might not own our own cars” by 2050 to wean the United States economy off of fossil fuels, describing private car ownership as “really inefficient and bad for the environment.” Privately owned cars would be replaced by a “constant roving fleet of electric cars.”

Somehow I don’t see this happening.

The article concludes:

There are two sides to this proposal, consisting of the practical and the political. Being as we are in the midst of a presidential race, the political may be more important in the short term. The fact is that the Democrats seem to keep coming up with ideas that may look good on paper at liberal cocktail parties but are not at all popular with the voters at large. Eliminating private car ownership is just such a proposal.

People love their cars. Nearly everyone realizes that they are expensive luxuries and account for too much pollution, but we still live in a car culture. It’s a status symbol and a totem of our freedom of movement. No matter how well-intentioned you may be, if you come along and say the government needs to take away all your cars, the public is going to be up on their hind legs. This is the way you lose elections.

On the practical side, I will grudgingly admit that Yang is probably at least partially correct about this. If he was saying there would be nothing but mass transit, that would be nuts. Mass transit simply isn’t practical for most of the country unless you live in a densely populated urban area. But he’s also picturing fleets of electric, driverless vehicles that anyone can summon when they need to go somewhere. Uber and Lyft are working on just such a plan right now and sooner or later it may become our new reality.

But having said that, electric vehicles still need to be powered. Until you answer the question of where you’re going to come up with all of the electricity needed to replace the power currently being generated by gasoline, you’re not going to be doing much for the climate. As I mentioned yesterday when talking about efforts in California to eliminate natural gas usage, the state derives roughly half of their electricity from natural gas plants. If all of the cars are suddenly running on electricity, they’re going to be burning a massively larger amount of natural gas to meet the demand.

Yet again, we’re seeing the Church of Climate Change forcing Democrats to toss out expensive, impractical ideas that most people will rebel against. And they can’t seem to help themselves.

There is a lot more to the relationship between Americans and their cars than transportation. Somehow I can’t see taking away our private cars as a winning idea. We also need to consider that American carbon emissions are only a part of the world’s carbon emissions. We are a small percentage of carbon pollution. Unless the countries that are not concerned about the environment cut their emissions, nothing we do will have much of an impact. Keep in mind that China and India, the world;s biggest polluters, we essentially exempt from the climate treaty for a number of years. Maybe the treaty wasn’t really about climate.

This Isn’t Good News For Those Pushing Electric Cars

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Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article yesterday about emissions testing done on the Tesla Model 3.

The article reports:

A Tesla Model 3 is touted as a zero-emissions car by government regulators, but it actually results in more carbon dioxide than a comparable diesel-powered car, according to a recent study.

When the CO2 emissions from battery production is included, electric cars, like Teslas, are “in the best case, slightly higher than those of a diesel engine, and are otherwise much higher,” reads a release from the German think tank IFO.

…Driving a Tesla Model 3 in Germany, for example, is responsible for 156 to 181 grams of CO2 per kilometer, compared to just 141 grams per kilometer for a diesel-powered Mercedes C220d — that includes emissions from producing diesel fuel.

IFO looked at electric car production in Germany, which is heavily reliant on coal power. Electric car emissions in other countries depend on their energy mix, but Germany is the world’s third-largest electric car maker.

…Federal subsidies for Teslas are set to be phased out since the company, founded by Elon Musk, hit the 200,000-vehicle production cap. However, Congress is debating whether or not to extend electric car subsidies.

It’s not just battery production, but charging vehicles that emit lots of CO2. Germany gets 35 percent of its electricity from coal-fired power plants, so charging a Tesla in, say, Bavaria results in 83 grams of CO2 per kilometer driven.

The article concludes:

IFO isn’t the first research group to conclude electric cars might not reduce carbon dioxide emissions as promised.

A study released in 2018 also found driving electric cars might come with higher emissions than diesel vehicles, largely because of lithium-ion battery production.

Likewise, a Manhattan Institute study from 2018 also found putting more electric cars on the road would likely increase emissions compared to internal combustion engine vehicles.

We may eventually have a clean form of energy powering our cars. However, it is a pretty safe bet that the invention of that clean form of energy will come through the free market–not through government subsidies. Any time the government interferes in the free market, they slow down innovation. If the people who have the knowledge and curiosity to invent the next generation of cars are allowed to reap the rewards of their inventions, we will see those inventions. If the free market is allowed to flourish, innovation will follow.