If you like electric vehicles, well and good. But see last sentence quoted.
Electric Vehicles: Costly Virtue Signaling Forced on America by Left
Daily Signal | July 14, 2023 | David HarsanyiThe Left likes to treat skeptics of electrical cars as if they were Luddites. Truth is, making an existing product less efficient, but more expensive, doesn’t really meet the definition of innovation.
…
Which is why there is no real “emerging market” for EVs in the United States as much as there’s an industrial policy in place that props up EVs with government purchases, propaganda, state subsidies, cronyism, taxpayer-backed loans, and edicts. The green “revolution” is an elite-driven, top-down technocratic project.
And it’s increasingly clear that the only reason giant rent-seeking carmakers are so heavily invested in EV development is that government is promising to artificially limit the production of gas-powered cars.
…
In today’s real-world economy, Ford projects it’s going to lose $3 billion on electric vehicles in 2023, bringing its EV losses to $5.1 billion over two years. In 2021, Ford reportedly lost $34,000 on every EV it made. This year, it was losing more than $58,000 on every EV. In a normal world, Ford would be dramatically scaling back EV production, not expanding it.
Remember that next time we need to bail out Detroit.
Then again, we’re already bailing them out, I suppose. Last week, the U.S. Energy Department lent Ford—again, a company that loses tens of thousands of dollars on every EV it sells—another $9.2 billion in taxpayer dollars for a South Korean battery project. One imagines no sane bank would do it. The cost of EV batteries has gone up, not down, over the past few years.
Ford says these upfront losses are part of a “start-up mentality.” We’re still pretending EVs are a new idea, rather than an inferior one. But scaremongering about climate and a misplaced romanticizing of “manufacturing” jobs have softened up the public for this kind of waste.
…
Without massive state help, EVs are a niche market for rich virtue-signalers. And, come to think of it, that’s sort of what they are now, even with the help. A recent University of California at Berkeley study found that 90% of tax credits for EVs go to people in the top income strata. Most EVs are bought by high earners who like the look and feel of a Tesla. And that’s fine. I don’t want to stop anyone from owning the car they prefer. I just don’t want to help pay for it.
