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[Pre-order a copy of Daniel Greenfield’s first book, Domestic Enemies, by clicking here. Orders will begin shipping on April 30th.]
The electric streets of La La Land are full of Teslas, Rivians, Mercedes EQS’ and even pricier offerings from the rare earth mines of China. Here a Tesla Cybertruck, looking like a ramp some sportier vehicle will jump, passes Bentleys, canary yellow Lamborghinis and ice blue McLarens.
In the posher parts of California, from Beverly Hills to the Bay Area, the green revolution has come. The ubiquitous EVs charging in the driveways of seven figure mansions are shadowed by solar panels on the roof and sit side by side with signs declaring, “Hate has no home here.”
Neither does affordability.
The vast majority of electric cars, approaching 1 million, can be found in California. Compare that to the paltry 5,000 EVs in Arkansas or even the under 50,000 in a sizable wealthy blue state like Massachusetts. The entire industry of sleek shiny cars that run on batteries only exists because California taxed other car buyers to subsidize Tesla and its emerging counterparts.
California’s heavy subsidies and mild weather, its wealthy cities and conspicuously virtue signaling elites, made EVs possible, and made it impossible for them to evolve outside its warm leftist ecosystem. The vast majority of Californians (like most Americans) can’t afford, can’t use and won’t drive electric cars, but like so much else, the Newsom elites don’t tend to notice.
Electric car owners in California live in “communities with mostly white and Asian, college-educated and high-income residents” who are mostly “concentrated in Silicon Valley cities and affluent coastal areas of Los Angeles and Orange counties.” That’s why most electric cars are luxury SUVs marketed to very exclusive groups in very exclusive areas.
Outside of these enclaves, there isn’t much of an EV industry and there never will be one. Electric cars are not an emerging product, but a niche one as subsidized toys for the rich.
That’s a problem because the Biden administration, like a lot of Democrat states, is moving to ban cars by 2035. It’s one thing for California’s elites to once again disregard over 90% of the state on the assumption that a one-party system and aggressive ballot harvesting can overcome most obstacles, but the car bans have also extended to Maryland (46,060 EVs with 0.91%), Massachusetts (49,440 EVs and 0.91%), Connecticut (22,030 EVs and 0.75%), Oregon (46,980 EVs and 1.24%) and New York (84,670 EVs and 0.75%) among other blue states.
How do you get from those numbers to total adoption in a little over a decade? You don’t.
The assumption that most car owners would drink the Electric Vehicle Kool Aid and jump on board ignored the basic realities of energy, engineering and economics. There isn’t enough power, materials or money to make 2035 anything other than a political four-car pileup.
GM and Ford have lost billions trying to push electric cars. GM promised to sell 1 million EVs by 2025. In the first quarter of 20244, it sold 16,425 EVs. A year from now, it will need to have sold 250,000 of them. How is GM planning to get from 16,425 to 250,000 EVs sold? GM is bragging about the Cadillac LYRIQ. Last December, GM shut down production of the Chevy Bolt which ran to $26,000 and, unlike the LYRIQ, was too affordable and therefore not actually profitable.
GM is hoping that the Cadillac LYRIQ will tap into the same luxury EV market that Tesla, Mercedes and every EV SUV is already aimed at, but as usual it may be too late to the party Even liberal millionaires who care so much about the planet that they fly private jets to Tahiti to reconnect with nature at their second or third homes only need so many green cars.
Or as Edmunds’ Director of Insights Ivan Drury put it, most of those concerned about internal-combustion engines’ impact on the planet already bought electric vehicles.
The latest Gallup poll shows that the number of electric car owners slowly grew, but that those people are wealthy and most already have their cars. 7% of Americans now own an EV, only 9% would consider buying and 48% or half the country would not buy.
Who are these electric refusniks who won’t drink the electric kool-aid? The working class.
14% of EV owners are upper income while only 2% are working class. 61% of working class Americans won’t buy an electric car.
Lefties who can see income inequality and disproportionate impact everywhere carefully refuse to see it in their policies which would bar the majority of the country and most minorities from car ownership. A 2020 survey found that 87% of EV owners are white. In a 2023 survey, black people were the most likely of any group to say that they would not get an EV.
After decades of lecturing everyone about systemic racism, capitalism and the evils of white men, a group of rich white people have decided to make it impossible for minorities and the poor to buy new cars. But what’s a little systemic racism when it means enriching China to save the planet from the threat of cars whose components can actually be made in America?
While Secretary of Transportation in Absentia Pete Buttigieg scolds the “racist highways”, his administration is pulling off the single great example of disproportionate impact in generations. The average price of an EV is $53,469 and the average black household income is $41,500 while the average white household income is $68,000. You can still get a perfectly good family car for only $20,000, but good luck finding an EV that isn’t actively on fire in that price range.
A policy of no cars for the working class or minorities may be a little bit awkward, but in the electric kool-aid world, much like the Mercedes EQS and the Chevy Bolt, not all people or cars are created equal, and not all people should be allowed to own cars. Most actually shouldn’t.
Environmentalism ushers in a neo-feudalism in which things have to be taken away from us to save the planet. And the people most likely to feel the loss are those at the bottom.
Hike the price of cars by $15,000 and the ones most likely to notice are those for whom that isn’t a monthly paycheck, but much of their annual income. Raise the price of airline tickets to compensate for carbon footprints and it’s the poor who won’t be able to visit grandma. Nickel and dime everything from supermarket bags to soda bottles and it’s a regressive green tax.
Much of the green nickel and diming is invisible. Prices just go up a little bit on everything. But lefties have put the working class on a collision course with mobility, employment and independence. A car ban is not like a lightbulb ban or even a gas stove ban.
Americans used to love cars because they were freedom on wheels. Decades of regulations and cheap imports from Asia have turned the driving experience for most Americans into a series of warning beeps, government tracking devices, and warnings not to do this and that, while slowly inching along in one of several semi-identical white, black or dark black boxes.
And now even that is on the verge of disappearing.
A car ban means most Americans will not be able to own, they will lease. American car ownership, like free speech and every other form of freedom, will become a distant memory.
Unless the drivers of America outrun the EV banners of the Biden administration leaving them behind like Sheriff Buford T. Justice or Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane eating their non-green dust.
Like all emerging technologies (like, say, cell phones, which also run on batteries, and were also mostly owned by rich coastal elites at first) electric cars will drop in price and gradually gain wider adoption. Why you would rail against it so adamantly and with such predictable recurrence remains a mystery to all right-thinking people.
If indeed “electric cars will drop in price and gradually gain wider adoption”, then you don’t need to ban people from buying actual cars.
The fact is your extremist movement has chosen to ban cars exactly at a time when the EV dream is imploding.
“Why you would rail against it so adamantly and with such predictable recurrence remains a mystery to all right-thinking people.”
I like freedom and I hate tyranny. Especially the tyranny of “right-thinking people”.
“right-thinking people”. That’s a good one. In science, one has to look at things from all kinds of different angles.
“Right-thinking people” invariably means people of the left. Talk about false advertising!
Know where you can find $20,000 or less electric vehicles from? China. But of course we’re not going to mention China because that’s not American. Please. This is about America’s not affording electric cars and then you made it a black thing. His title didn’t say Americans couldn’t afford cars or can’t buy cars. It’s them blacks. Shame!
Didn’t Orwell write a story about the dangers of “right-think”?
Comparing cell phones to electric vehicles …
… is like comparing hot air balloons to lead balloons.
Exposing your ignorance for all to see is why free speech is so effective.
Frontpage Magazine, the Freedom Center, many of their contributors …
… and a humble retired engineer like me …
Are all censored by the powers that be.
Because nonsense about EVs cannot stand up to the truth or facts.
The EV revolution is not up against the speed of computation and the bandwidth of satellites and cell phone towers …
… it is up against thermodynamics, chemistry, the availability of 500 tons of ore to process for every battery (just the average Tesla battery), mountains of coal to make all the crap …
… and landfills to accept all these materials just 6-10 years after they are made.
If any techno-magic exists to fix this latest commie fantasy …
… why not wait for it to appear …
… and then you can call us all Luddites.
But no … commies always want to force their dangerous fantasies on the rest of us.
But…but…think of all those third-world children who would be out of work if we stopped mining the rare-earths? /s
Electric motors and rechargeable batteries are new technologies?
Cell phones don’t translate well into automobiles, dummy, especially for anyone who claims to be concerned about the planet. “Right thinking people,” lol.
Thank you for your comment.
It is conspicuously apparent to me from polls I take of students that they do not understand trade-offs. When I ask them “should we do everything we can to reduce our carbon footprint?,” usually every student answers “yes.” When I then point out things they could easily do, such as car pool, take fewer showers, go to the library to read and study, et cetera, and subsequently ask “how many of you will now do these things?,” rarely does even a single hand go up.
You used electricity in making your post. I ask rhetorically: “why don’t you lead by example and not make unnecessary use of the computer?”
Thank you again for your post. I do enjoy teaching that “luxuries become necessities.” I also enjoy teaching how highly profitable industries attract competition which ends up benefitting consumers.
Trade offs are meant for other people. Virtue signaling is a way to evade those trade offs, showing off their self-sacrifice, without paying the actual price.
Luxuries become necessities… like Electricity?
We just lost power for 4 days due to a spring storm in the Northeast.
There is NOTHING but hard labor without Electricity to run pumps, light and heat houses, cook food, cool/freeze food and generally be comfortable. You know, MODERN CIVILIZATION.
My sister was talked into buying a hybrid. With a high payment, insurance and gas (essential to its operation) its broken her budget. The battery is defective, so they sent her a $250 check to “help pay for gas until it can be repaired.” It does not run well in the cold state of Maine, and chargingaat home is expensive. (We’re already FORCED INTO SUBSIDIZING the green new deal by paying higher electricity rates, when Mainers pay 27% MORE for power than the rest of America!
It leads me to conclude that the entire green agenda thing is a scam meant to financially bankrupt the middle and lower class: A stated Cause of the Marxists currently ruling.
EVERYTHING THAT ADVANCES CIVILIZATION HINGES on AFFORDABLE ELECTRICITY!!
Yeah, those EVs will drop in price on the 12th of Never. And the batteries will pile up in land fills. And those charging stations will proliferate.
Meanwhile the major car companies are pulling back on production. But you, because you just so smart, go right ahead and buy one, @ $60,000 a pop. Because you are a right thinking person. Or is it a leftist thinking person.
Except that nobody is “banning actual cars.” EVs are actual cars, doofus.
The EVs will drop in price on the Greek kalends.
“Right thinking people” conjures images of minds becoming drab and detached from thought, free will, and choice by government propaganda aimed at control.
wow, since when did “right-thinking” become a synonym for “dumbass-limey wanker”?
Right-thinking people are no different from left-thinking people. What they both lack people lack in their thinking is objectivity. As such, their is inherently irrational, illogical and anything but objective.
Both are often blind to objective facts if those facts do not fall within the spectrum of their narrow perception of reality. Liberals are far worse than conservatives but they’re both guilty of that mindset which in the long run, serves no useful purpose other than benefit the ruling elites.
Aaahhh!! @*#&$^% editing butchered my commentary!!
Because all Americans should have equal opportunities without it becoming.a hardship in choosing a.car over feeding your family. Biden needs to go. Vote for anybody else at this point. Get rid of this administration in November. Please.
it’s fun to see a mental midget like you get COMPLETELY humiliated by Danial Greenfield (although it’s not a fair fight, peabrain).
A typical liberal Democrat and KKK wannabe nothings changed its still the Racists Democ-Rat party its always been and always will be since Obamas Hope & Change was as empty and meaningless as Build Back Better
So You and the DEMOCRATS are Going AGAINST THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION and Like Dementia Patient Joe Biden did ON HIS FIRST DAY IN OFFICE IN 20020, YOUR GOING TO THROW THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION OUT OF THE WHITEHOUSE OVAL OFFICE WINDOW!!! JUST TO FORCE THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AND BIDEN’S ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS/ALIENS TO BUY SOMETHING THAT THEY DON’T WANT AND MOSTLY CAN NOT AFFORD!!!
THAT’S ALWAYS BEEN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY MEMBERS WAY AS FAR BACK AS I CAN REMEMBER… I STARTED KINDERGARTEN IN MORRILTON, AR. IN 1964…
JOE BIDEN IS ABOUT THE SAME AGE AS MY MOTHER….
Two days ago, in a Principles of Econ class I teach, I covered the economists’ case for subsidies because of “positive externalities,” and taxes for negative externalities. In today’s class I plan on using this excellent essay and another by Don Boudreaux. Professor Boudreaux’s essay presents an argument for subsidizing activities that contribute to global warming because of the benefits, e.g. fewer people freezing to death, e.g. increased sea trade routes due to ice melting. To be clear, Boudreaux is specifically not advocating for such subsidies or taxes, but instead to making an important point about trade-offs. More people need to understand trade-offs.
Yale University Climatologist William Nordhaus notes that the worst case scenario rise of global temperature by 2100 (7.4 F) will result in a 4% decline of global GDP if “nothing is done”.
In the US, if we try to achieve 95% of “net zero emissions”, as Biden’s handlers want, it was estimated it would cost $11,000 per person per year.
Bjorn Lomberg, PhD, visiting fellow at the Hoover Institute, makes an interesting point on predictions from the UN, the OECD, and World Bank that note that the average person will be 450% richer in 2100 than they are today. So the worse case climate scenario will result in the average person only being 446% richer.
Excellent statistics and analysis. Thanks Daniel!
EV phobia? Get over it. Crickets and worms made a marvelous souffle. It’s the global warming special, coming soon to the walk-through window at a McDonald’s near you.
In my town in England we have the first ever net zero DRIVE Thru McDonald’s!!
How do they do that? Are only EV’s allowed to “Drive Thru”? Good thing they don’t serve charcoal cooked burgers.
And watch out for the milk shakes. I read years ago that some of these places don’t use any dairy in their shakes. In fact, I was told if you pour one of those “shakes” on a hot sidewalk it will turn into a Frisbee.
like so much else, the Newsom elites don’t tend to notice
like so much else, the Newsom elites don’t INtend to notice
there, fixed it for you =)
When thos batteries wear out it cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 28,000 to replace them.
So many comments here show the majority here have no clue as to why the engineering of EV’s make them impractical, even Elon Musk admitted EV’s are short 15 minute hop vehicles at best, and never intended for long duration driving.
First, all LiOn batteries are poorly manufactured Chinese made, and final assembly ‘might’ be done in the US or somewhere else. The reliability and consistency are non-existent and safety is another issue altogether.
Real engineers know exactly what I refer to. Hybrids are and will be the best use of EV tech and cars. Anything else is doomed to fail (and burn up).
I need to buy a steering wheel lock, I imagine car theft will become a big deal.
it is quite irrational to comment on sociology points of view about EV cars before dissecting the technical and economic issues.
what about the lot of dirty energy necessary to make li-ion battery /w, the work of children in Co mines, the methods to generate energy in order to charge, a comparison between LCC (Life Cycle Cost) of alternative technologies ? and a real technical design review in front of the consumers?
Since Biden has banned blacks from owning cars I guess there will be fewer drive by shootings.