Guest Post by Eric Peters
It’s apparently not enough to pay people to buy EVs – using other people’s money. EVs must be given additional artificial advantages – so that they may “compete” even more unfairly with non-electric cars.
Because, of course, they can’t compete on the merits.
The state of Colorado – which is becoming very much like the state of California, due to all the Californians who’ve fled California but brought California ideas with them to places like Colorado – is pushing to grant EVs an exemption from state law requiring new cars be sold through new car dealerships.
Such laws have been in force for decades and are favored by new car dealers – who don’t want to have to compete directly with the manufacturers, including the brands they sell themselves. A Ford dealership, for example, doesn’t want you to be able to buy a new Ford from Ford.
These must-buy-at-a-dealer laws are obnoxious, but granting an exemption just for electric cars is even more so.
If the exemption is granted, it would give EV manufacturers like Tesla an enormous advantage over other car manufacturers – who would still be required by law to sell their cars through a dealer network, with all the costs that involves.
Which would make it harder for them to sell non-electric cars.
Clearly – if you believe in the idea of a free market – every car maker ought to be free to sell its cars however it likes. Or rather, however buyers like. If people are willing to purchase directly from a manufacturer – and by doing so, pay less for it – why should they be prohibited by law from making the transaction?
The argument is that people need the assistance of dealership sales staff to help them figure out what to buy, to deal with the transaction itself – and to “prep” the car prior to delivery (i.e., remove the plastic from the seats and so on).
But people are allowed – loathsome term but an accurate term – to buy practically everything else online, from electronics to food to furniture.
Why should cars be any different?
Well, because of state laws – like the one which is still in force in Colorado – which forbid new cars to be sold this way.
Unless they’re electric cars.
Interestingly, the proposed exemption would include electric cars manufactured by car companies that also build non-electric cars – a legislative nudge clearly meant to “encourage” them to build more electric cars since they’d be able to sell them directly, too.
Which will also nudge these manufacturers in the direction of closing their dealerships and – eventually – selling only EVs.
Consider it the Harrison Begeroning of non-electric cars. Like the eponymous character in Kurt Vonnegut’s short story, non-electric cars are too good. Electric cars can’t compete with them on any level except virtue-signaling and brief bursts of speed – paid for by long waits to recharge. They are very difficult to sell on a level playing field.
So the field must be tilted – in the direction of the EV.
First, by regulations that serve as de facto EV manufacturing requirements. The big one being “fleet average” miles-per-gallon minimums that force a car company that builds popular models like trucks and SUVs that don’t meet the minimums to build EVs – which use no gas – to up their “fleet average” numbers, in order to avoid fines for not meeting the MPG minimums.
Second by outright EV manufacturing quotas – a legal requirement that a certain percentage of every car company’s model lineup be electric or else they’re not allowed (that word, again) to sell any cars at all.
California has just such a requirement.
Third, pay people to buy electric cars – using other people’s money.
But even that hasn’t been enough – because electric cars are still not good enough to overcome what’s bad enough about them. In Colorado, only 25,000 EVs are put-putting (and waiting). This is less than 1 percent of all the cars registered in the state.
Enter the new exemption.
“I really feel like we needed to have parity for all EV manufacturers,” says Colorado State Senator Chris Hansen, one of the exemption’s main advocates.
He means an advantage for all EVs – at the expense of all non-EVs, which will cost comparatively more under this scheme because what you pay for one at the dealership will necessarily – by law – include the cost of the dealership. The building, the staff – the taxes – recouped in part by what the dealer earns by selling the cars.
Direct-selling of EVs eliminates all those costs, artificially reducing the cost of the EV – at the expense of non-EVs, which become more expensive to sell, in order to make up for the money not being made selling EVs through the dealership.
It’s just another means by which people who don’t want an electric car are being forced to pay for someone else’s electric car.
With the end goal being that you won’t be able to buy anything other than an electric car – directly or otherwise.
It is my sincere desire to provide readers of this site with the best unbiased information available, and a forum where it can be discussed openly, as our Founders intended. But it is not easy nor inexpensive to do so, especially when those who wish to prevent us from making the truth known, attack us without mercy on all fronts on a daily basis. So each time you visit the site, I would ask that you consider the value that you receive and have received from The Burning Platform and the community of which you are a vital part. I can't do it all alone, and I need your help and support to keep it alive. Please consider contributing an amount commensurate to the value that you receive from this site and community, or even by becoming a sustaining supporter through periodic contributions. [Burning Platform LLC - PO Box 1520 Kulpsville, PA 19443] or Paypal
-----------------------------------------------------
To donate via Stripe, click here.
-----------------------------------------------------
Use promo code ILMF2, and save up to 66% on all MyPillow purchases. (The Burning Platform benefits when you use this promo code.)
This whole push to EV’s is predicated on belief in “Globull Warming” or as recently spun, “Climate Change”. Fact is, no one has proven we Humans have made much of an impact overall. CO2 has been high before the industrial revolution. We actually know so little about how Earth works (didn’t get the manual), it’s entirely possible Earth LIKES what we inject into the biosphere. That might be why we’ve been allowed by it to explosively grow and prosper.
But on the subject of vehicles, my choice is Plug-In Hybrids. No gas use in EV mode after a fresh recharge, and a boost to gas mileage afterward from regenerative braking. Plus the brake pads can last 100k if you drive it moderately. I wouldn’t buy a straight EV like a Tesla because it’s too restrictive and costs too much to purchase. Plus that particular car brand has a very limited support network. I’ve heard tell of people waiting six months for service while their “new” car is a brick.
The sale of the original vehicle is primarily to get it into the market so it can begin to consume parts. The parts business is where the margins are.
If China is offline, can Tesla make the batteries it needs for its vehicles?
Great point! Also, I’d like an article that talks about the cost to replace the power batteries when they wear out, I guess people never think about that enormous cost and how that will make used ones a few years old plummet in value once this is recogniszed by the average sheeple.
I was once proud of being a Coloradan. I will never forget backpacking in the San Juans, the Holy Cross Wilderness Area and Rocky Mountain National Park, catching Brookies in Routt National Forest and the old Gregorio’s on 38th, Elitches, and breakfast at Sunrise Sunset. Riding my Eddy Merckx from my home in Wheat Ridge, down 44th to Golden, past the brewery, up Lookout Mountain, through Bergen Park, up over Squaw Pass and then up Mount Evans and then back home. Gun shows. Air shows. Car shows. Dog shows. And yesterday’s 5 inches of snow gone by noon today. But, after what the totalitarians have done to that state, I will never set foot in her again. The place is disgusting to me now.