Guest Post by Eric Peters
What do you suppose will happen when they build them – but no one comes?
Within the next couple of years, almost every car company will be building – and trying to sell – electric cars.
It won’t be just Tesla’s cars – which cars Tesla is already having trouble trying to sell. Chiefly, because there is a built-in limit to the number of $35,000 and up cars you can sell – regardless of the number you build.
Imagine a real estate developer who only built $350,000 houses – heedless of the ability of people in the area to buy them. The homes are “nice” – they have triple-paned casement windows and granite countertops and three bathrooms.
But no one comes.
Imagine a quadrupling of EV production – and that’s a lowball figure – for a “market” that constitutes at the present moment about 1 percent of the total and which is driven almost entirely by government mandates and propped up by taxpayer-mulcted subsidies and which no one has yet figured out how to earn an honest dollar from.
The government can – and has – decreed the manufacture of all these EVs, chiefly via regulations that only EVs can comply with. These include the overt regs requiring a certain number of “zero emissions” vehicles be made. Since only EVs qualify as “zero emissions” vehicles – even though their emissions aren’t zero just elsewhere – the reg amounts to a de facto EV manufacturing quota.
Another one – less overt but just as de facto – is the federal fuel economy fatwa known as CAFE, which may soon rise to nearly 50 miles-per-gallon on average. Not highway.
Average.
The only way for a car company to get its fleet of vehicles to average anywhere near 50 MPG – and thereby placate Uncle – is to manufacture lots of EVs, which use no gas at all and so up the CAFE average.
But Uncle can’t force people to buy all these EVs.
Soon, he will have to do exactly that. In order to avoid both embarrassment as well as the collapse of the car market itself, which is probably going to happen regardless – and especially if Uncle decrees that people must buy EVs.
Which would amount to the same thing as a decree that everyone must buy a $350,000 home – regardless of their ability to pay for it.
Why not prime rib dinner every night for everyone, too?
So long as people have the alternative to buy a non-EV that costs half as much and goes twice as far and doesn’t take five times as long to recover a partial charge as a non-EV takes to fully refuel, the majority are going to choose that alternative.
This will become embarrassing – as tens of thousands of unsold EVs begin to pile up at dealerships. It will then become costly – to the dealerships – as it becomes necessary to heavily discount these EVs in order to get them off the lot via any means necessary.
This has already happened – not once, but every single time an EV has come to “market” – which is bracketed in quote marks because there isn’t one.
Tesla doesn’t sell electric cars. It sells carbon credits – and gives away EVs at a net loss per.
GM – when it tried to sell EVs (Volt, ELR) couldn’t and had to give them away and then – finally – stop making them altogether. In order to avoid bankrupting itself. 
People – most people – don’t want EVs and aren’t going to buy them – unless they are compelled to.
Just imagine the electric train wreck that’s coming.
This isn’t about “green” – which is about politics. It is about economics. What people are willing to spend their money on – within the context of how much money they have to spend.
AOC, et al may believe in Obamaphones and EVs raining – free – from the heavens – but most people cannot afford to spend $30,000-plus on an electric car, even if they wanted one. And most people don’t want a small, capacity limited and functionally gimped car. Which is what the least expensive electric car – the $30,000 Nissan Leaf – is. This car is fine for short-distance commuting but in that case, it makes a great deal more economic sense to buy a $15,000 non-electric equivalent.
Which most people will do, so long as they can.
Most people also want – and need – something larger and more capable than the Leaf. There are – or soon will be – electric versions of such cars. But they will cost a great deal more than $30,000.
Given the choice between a $45,000 electric crossover SUV and a non-electric crossover of the same general size (and with more range and without needing to be hooked to a “fast” charger for 30-45 minutes to recover a partial charge) that can be bought for $20,000 less, which do you suppose most people will choose?
If they are allowed the choice.
Which is why that choice must be and will be eliminated.
How it will be done remains an unanswered question. Perhaps by outright bans on the manufacture of non-electric cars – as has already occurred in the UK and other European countries. Or by bans on the use of non-electric cars in certain areas – such as downtown areas – which would have the effect of making non-electric cars politically useless and thereby forcing people into EVs in order to be able to get to work.
Non-electric cars already in circulation would also have to be dealt with since they would be the last redoubt. If people are not allowed to buy a new car other than an electric car but were still able to drive their older non-electric car, they will do so.
Therefore, those cars – their owners – will be hit with deliberately punitive “carbon” taxes (this is already occurring in Ireland) in order to force them out of them. These older, non-electric cars will not be technically outlawed – just made all-but-impossible to keep.
All to “stimulate” demand for EVs – for which there isn’t any – because EVs are political cars, the progeny of laws and regulations rather than market demand.
It’s going to be one hell of a mess – and it’s coming, soon.
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Cars are way over priced in 2019……..keeping my 1992 and 1996.
Even the used smart cars are too smart for me.
https://www.carmax.com/car/17171285
Electric cars are not ready for mass market, but they do have their niche, such as the luxury segment.
And yes, even gas cars are way too expensive.
Any updates on your experience, General?
The only reason to buy an electric car is so you can drive solo in the car pool lanes in major metropolitan areas. This was the only reason people bought hybrids, when those were no longer allowed to use the carpool lanes with only one person, their sales nosedived.
People will vote for policies (and candidates who push them) that they think will affect others but not themselves. They won’t tolerate an increase in the gas tax that would cost them $200/year, but they’ll vote for higher CAFE standards that will cost them more than that – and are based on magical thinking. It’s one thing to vote for someone who spouts platitudes about the “climate crisis” (have you noticed that they’ve moved beyond “global warming” and even “climate change” to the “climate crisis”?). It’s another thing to agree to the extreme measures that Peters predicts. Dems pushing this crap could extend the lifespan of the Republican Party by a decade or more – not that that matters in the long run.
I’d only consider buying one if it secretly had the EV driveline excised and replaced with a turbo-diesel driveline.
My Chevy Cruz diesel gets over 50 mph on trips; at 30,000 mikes the tailpipe is still clean..
That wouldn’t help me. I am always going more than 70 mph on the freeways of LA.
Running auto parts as that part time retirement job so I can afford the $2500 a year I’m not saving on medical care thanks to the first black presidents idea of affordable health care and his douche canoe full of followers it is certain that unaffordable electric vehicles will be shoved up average Americans asses along with every other unaffordable scatterbrained do gooder asswipe idea Washington bags of shit can find a way to first profit from and second exempt themselves from . I mention the auto parts job because the repair industry and parts suppliers employ so many people and the inventory at even an average warehouse is staggering with tons of parts for internal combustion engine driven vehicles moving in and out daily . For all that to phase out even over 50 years would leave an economic hole this nation will not recover from .
Like all the other industries we still suffer from the loss of that is unless you are paid by government , in that case you really do not care until some unemployed basturds jacks your ass up with a Louisville slugger so he can eat that night !
Go for it you bunch of short sighted leftist assholes destroy what’s left of any evidence of real working Americans with your subsidized electric car . Remember when that battery leaves you stranded incinerates you , gee that’s to bad !
I thought we were the energy Kings of the world , what happened Mr President ? Gas should be under a buck a gallon !
That was one helluva fine first sentence.
I’m not worrying about getting to the point where we’re forced to get rid of our gasoline burning cars. Everyone will be trying to kill each other before then, mainly in states where the Democrats run everything but where the majority of the rural counties hate them. My questions are 1) how long, and 2) what will be the trigger.
Selling 20-30 million affordable electric cars that would sell is simple & easy: Simply get rid of the parts of the cars that have no value to commuters. Chop 3 seats, a huge trunk, a gigantic steel body, 3 doors, huge wheels, on & on. The resulting vehicle would look like a 400 pound battery with a driver’s seat bolted on top, 4 motorcycle wheels and a light weight roof & door for rain. Split the idea of a daily commute driver from the idea of a family beach trip do-everything SUV. An Electric richshaw, a fast golf cart for one.
Great point EXCEPT . . . gov. mandated crash safety standards. What you describe would drive to the moon at 200 mph, but would shatter on impact with a stray dog. That won’t do, because the .gov says so. That’s why “huge trunk, a gigantic steel body”, etc. Crush zones. Airbags. You get the point.
I think a better alternative would be for the .gov to STOP PRETENDING that there are not other viable alternatives to gas/diesel/cng/propane and to electric cars . . . or, at least, different ways of configuring these “fuels” to make a much-more efficient engine without the drawbacks of EVs.
But, THEY know these technologies exsit and choose not to use them because the CAFE standards and crash standards and the push for EV are not their misguided way of helping anyone but their disguised way of controlling EVERYONE.
I can’t find the documentary BUT at least here is the trailer to a VERY eye-opening topic:
My friend bought an electric car, leaf i think. He bought it for the work commute four years ago. Garage queen. It sucks so he never drives it. Has less than 1000 miles for sure.
Why does it suck? For a daily commute of up to 40 miles, especially in stop-and-go congestion at rush hour, it should be good. Yeah, for anything else, the electric car is about worthless.