LF: Schumer’s Electric Escort Service

If you have to pay a girl to go out with you, there’s probably something wrong with you. Especially if you let yourself believe she is going out with you because she likes you.

The same applies to electric cars – which most people, if they’re honest with themselves, only “date” because they’re handed wads of bills as compensation for the EV’s many functional deficits – as well as its much higher expenses.

The compensation is tendered in the form of tax kickbacks (paid for by other taxpayers) and various special privileges, such as “free” (and tax-free) electricity . . . also paid for by others.

That this is absolutely essential – in terms of perpetrating the fiction of EV viability – tells us all we need to know about the viability of EVs.

They aren’t.

We know this because when the bribes are withheld, the EVs stop selling . . . for the same reason the escort isn’t going to show up at your hotel room just because you ask her to.

Something else is required.

If EVs could be sold on the merits, the bribes wouldn’t be essential. And yet, they are.

QED, as the saying goes.

We’re not supposed to notice this. We are supposed to pretend the attraction is real rather than bribed. That there is a “market” for cars that cost 30-50 percent more than their non-electric equivalents, but which only go half as far (maybe, if you take it easy and don’t use the AC or heat too much) and take 5-6 times as long (minimally, if you can umbilical up to a “fast” charger) to get going again.

And which only last half as long – due to the lifespan of their batteries, which is about half that of an engine or transmission.

The “market” for EVs is like the “market” for air travel via DC-3s (15 hours in an unpressurized cabin from NY to LA, with multiple stops for fuel) vs. five hours no-stop via 757.

We live in delusional times.

Or rather, we are expected to be delusional in our thinking – like the liver-spotted old guy with tufts of hair spouting from his ears who lets himself believe the pretty young woman in his hotel room is there because she likes him . . . not because of the wad of $100 bills he just handed her.

Speaking of delusional (and dangerous) hairy-eared old guys . . . and billions.

New York Sen. Chuck Schumer wants to pay people even more of other people’s money (about $400 billion) to “date” electric cars.

His “bold new plan” – announced last week in The New York Times – would increase the existing federal bribe of up to $7,500 used to cajole people into buying EVs to potentially more than $10,000 – the amount of the bribe depending on the range of the EV.

The farther it goes, the more of other people’s money you’d get.

But only if the bribed also give up their ICE car to be destroyed, a la Cash For Clunkers – the infamous Obama-era ‘plan” used to “stimulate” demand for new cars by destroying the supply of used cars.

It’s also similar to another government “plan”- the one that preceded Cash for Clunkers and which triggered the financial meltdown that led to it.

This was the Chimp-era “plan” to “incentivize” homeownership by qualifying everyone not actually homeless for a home loan. Lots of people “bought” homes. Voila – the Ownership Society.

It worked so long as no one had to pay.

When the bills began to come due – and then past due – the whole thing came down like WTC 7 (another government-engineered crash). People lost “their” homes – and of course, could no longer afford to buy new cars by tapping into the equity credit lines they longer had.

And then the government dried up the supply of affordable uses cars by paying people to hand them over to be crushed.

Fast-forward. People increasingly can’t afford homes. And soon, cars.

Because of Schumer’s “plan” . . . only it is the plan.

First, bribe people into electric cars; then make it impossible for them to get out of them by leaving no alternative to them – the supply of affordable ICE cars having been eliminated. Schumer wants to “rapidly phase out gas-powered vehicles” within the next ten years; to destroy 63 million of them over the next ten years.

Once that has been achieved, the bribes used to get people into the EVs will go the way of the nothing-down/no-interest home loan.

With similar and entirely predictable results.

. . .

Got a question about cars, Libertarian politics – or anything else? Click on the “ask Eric” link and send ’em in!

Funny thing is, we've got these really great hybrid cars - the Prius pioneered the way - that get stellar gas mileage with all of the reliability of standard cars, but without any of the inconveniences of electric vehicles.

The purist's pressure for "pure electric" is just that: purist's mania. Hybrids are phenomenal cars. I drove 1400 miles last weekend - to the Midwest and back to Connecticut - in my 12 year old Prius. Making that drive in the Prius was exactly the same as making the drive in any other standard car, except that I only had to fill the thing up four times on the round trip and am still running on the final tank of gas.

Truth is, without having to stop for gas, I found I had to stop ANYWAY, because my bladder endurance was less than the distance that a 10 gallon tank of gas would take me.

Honestly, the hybrid technology has been around for a decade and a half now. My Prius is 12 years old. It's just a car. You just put in gas and drive it. It's comfortable, gets great mileage, and is as reliable as any other Toyota (never has broken down, stranded me, or had a problem, at all).

Instead of aiming at ideological PERFECTION, with massive government subsidies, why don't we content ourselves with going hard over to hybrids as a first measure. They are commercially viable, they run great, there's none of the range issues that EVs have. Why do we have to spend all of this money building inferior products and subsidizing it, to get a marginal perfection.

And that "perfection" isn't perfection. As a national average, a Prius and an all electric vehicle produce the SAME "greenhouse gas emissions" per mile, because while the Prius does burn gasoline, the EV uses electricity which is produced by burning coal in much of the country.

In fact, per this article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/electric- cars-are-not-necessarily-clean/ an all-electric vehicle driven in the Midwest produces 50% MORE greenhouse gas pollution per mile than my Prius, because the electricity source in the Midwest is mostly coal.

The article notes that if China were to go to all electric vehicles, it would be an ecological disaster, because the Chinese generate most of their electricity from burning dirty coal, and the demands of electricity would go up massively, along with pollution.

Truth is, the happy medium, the compromise, the thing that makes sense, is to take the commercially viable and well-established hybrid engines, of which the Prius was the pioneer, and push those. They sell without much in the way of incentives, and they don't have ANY drawbacks, at all. EV's have a lot of drawbacks.

No, I don't work for Toyota, but yeah, I'll vouch for the Prius. It's a comfortable, efficient vehicle. But above all, it's JUST A CAR. You drive it like you drove a Model-T. You get in, push the button and drive. Toyota engineers did all of the thinking, so that the driver does not have to learn a damned thing, or change driving habits, to drive a Hybrid. An EV? Takes a long time to charge. Reduced range. You can get stranded. Why?

Moral: Chuck the EVs and the subsidies. If you've just got to subsidize, subsidize everybody to buy a Hybrid. They will. They won't notice the difference, the air will get cleaner. And you won't even have to pay the subsidy once people have owned a Hybrid - it's JUST a freakin' car, that gets really good gas mileage.