Not Wanted Here

Drive Time

Stephen Moore has the truth of it:

The American auto companies, which are so often bailed out by U.S. taxpayers, have made a pronouncement that they intend, in the next few years, to stop making and assembling gas-engine cars. You know, the kind of cars that Henry Ford started rolling off the assembly line 100 years ago at the Ford Motor Company in Detroit.

Henceforth, virtually all American-made cars will be electric vehicles. Perhaps the corporate brass in Michigan’s auto executive offices thinks this makes them good global citizens. They are all in on the fight against global warming. They may be making a political bet that the federal government and more states are going to go the way of California and eventually mandate that every car produced must be battery-operated. But there is also a good deal of virtue-signaling going on here by the folks at Ford and General Motors.

It’s a free country, and if they want to start rolling millions of EVs off the assembly lines, so be it.

But it’s one thing to make cars that appeal to members of the Sierra Club and quite another to produce automobiles that the typical buyer wants. And guess what? So far, most people have turned a decisive thumbs-down on EVs. (Incidentally, I’m personally agnostic on electric vehicles. I’ve driven Teslas, and they are wonderful smooth-driving vehicles. But they have problems, too, such as getting stranded with no juice in the middle of nowhere.)

So far, only about 6% of new cars sold are electric vehicles. And polls show that only about half of Americans prefer an EV over a traditional car. Much larger majorities oppose the government telling us what kind of car we can buy. 

No kidding.  And his conclusion is right on:

You would think that U.S. automakers would understand a basic red, white and blue reality, which is that Americans have a special and long-standing love affair with their cars. They aren’t going to trade in their Mustangs, Camaros, Cadillacs and trucks for an EV. For many of us, this would be akin to taking away our firstborn.
…
Sorry, this is 2023, not 1923, when Henry Ford said you could have a Model T in any color you wanted, as long as it was black.

Yeah, fuck Detroit and their “good global citizens” bullshit.  They need to start being good American citizens first, because without American car buyers, they’d be smaller than Dacia.  The last time GM, for example, played footsie with the Euros, the result was the Opel Blitz, which comprised almost all Hitler’s trucks as he pillaged Europe and Russia.

This latest foolishness is on a par — except that it could doom their whole company.

Hey… they’re a private company, sort of, so they can make any decisions they want. But:

Incidentally, as this “woke” green energy fad fades into the sunset, as it almost assuredly will, and the American auto companies see their sales crash, they’d better not come begging for yet another taxpayer bailout.

Yup.  Not one red fucking cent.

Looks like I’ll have to drive my Tiguan — or a second-hand Toyota equivalent — for the rest of my life.  That’s not the worst fate that could befall me.

21 comments

  1. I’m hoping it will blow over. I remember when practically all new TVs were 3D because they thought that’s what people wanted. Of course Kalifornia wasn’t mandating 3D TVs, so we’ll see.

    For now I’ll continue driving my 10+ year old fleet of autos. Rented a car to travel out of state this weekend and it had that auto-start/stop at every traffic light. Had to keep turning that shit off because it was 6 degrees out and I wanted to car to warm up (both the engine and the cabin).

    1. I just rented one in Florida and it shut off at every stop for red light, stop sign or congested traffic, which killed the air conditioning. I never did figure out how to eliminate that. It was a VW, the Krauts are thorough, even when being stupid.

    2. “Henceforth, virtually all American-made cars will be electric vehicles.”
      =======
      Makes no difference the make up as long as they are priced way beyond what I am willing to pay.

      There is not even one brand new vehicle on the market in the US that is worth the selling price to me and it’s been this way for a long time.

  3. I fell into a smokin’ deal on a 2019 Corolla about 18 months ago. At my age, it will probably be the last cat I buy before I pass. No EVs in this old man’s future, unless it’s a wheelchair.

  4. We are going to be forced to use the electric even if we don’t want to just because they think they are our “betters”. I am ready to start stacking bodies.

    Damn nanny state idiots anyway.

  5. Given the two bailouts, they really aren’t “private” companies anymore. They are beholden to their government masters and, as the old saying goes, once you take the king’s shilling, you play the king’s tune. They are going to continue down the EV hellhole knowing full well the public will reject it and the government will bail them out a second, third, even fourth time as needed. The public is not their customers anymore, the feds are.

    What was that one political faction that wanted closer interaction between the govt and industry? Something Italian as I recall. With a sprinkling of German in there. I foresee a small, crappy “people’s EV car” coming up in the near future. Maybe with a catchy name, like Folkswagon?

  7. it would be a horrid thing, just horrid, if these glorified golf carts suddenly caught fire in the parking lots of dealerships. Dreadful.

    JQ

  8. Its an inevitable change. This is a change like LCDs replacing CRTs, or MP3 replacing all physical media. Gas prices will never get lower or the engines get radically more efficient. They’re as good as they are going to get at their end of life cycle. EV’s will keep improving and getting cheaper, they’re in the beginning of their product cycle.

    The big traditional auto makers really suck at making EV’s and it becoming very apparent that their manufacturing prowess has been radically surpassed by Tesla, who builds a car in 1/3 the time with 1/2 the workforce, and at 3 to 4 times the margin per unit. When Sandy Munrow says the big auto makers are probably doomed, something is happening.

    Traditional cars are not going away overnight, its going to take decades, but don’t be surprised when half the new cars sold in 2026 are EV’s, that’s the trend line. In Norway 20% of all vehicles on the road now are EV’s, more than half of all sales are EV’s, and the rest of Europe are following the same trend line.

    I don’t think shaking our buggy whips at the sky is going to make this go away…..

    1. Forrest, the thing people making that argument always miss is that nobody had to mandate petrol engines or ban horses to make that one happen.

      1. I agree, any mandate is stupid on every level. Unfortunately many states are run by idiots like in California and think they can mandate anything without repercussions. Fools and the fools that vote for them, deserve what they’re going to get.

        It will happen because they are cheaper to operate and fun to drive. I live in Minnesota where EVs supposedly don’t work in the cold. I have 2 cousins that have model Y’s, they both love them, best cars they’ve ever owned. One is driving to Florida with his wife this weekend for a month long vacation. He signed up for Full self driving for 2 months so the car can drive them to, and around Florida. I’m looking forward to the report on how successful it was.

        Its a long shot from the flying car I we were promised as kids, but its a move in the right direction.

        1. > One is driving to Florida with his wife this weekend for a month long vacation.

          The 8-Bit Guy did a video a while back in which he took his Chevy Bolt from Fort Worth to Chicago to attend a retrocomputing event. By his estimate, he lost about two hours of driving time each day to charging time. Some of the charging time was used to eat or (if the routing worked out) see some of the local sights, but I suspect a fair bit was spent just waiting to recharge enough for the next leg of the trip. Even if chargers are available at reasonable intervals along your route, you’re probably going to need to add at least an extra day to your travel plans to allow for all the charging time.

  9. I think You’re being overly optimistic.
    Gasoline price is determined by the WORLD market, not WalMart. The idiot in charge turned off the faucet the FIRST day in office and that started the ball rolling to get us to the ‘fuel cost’ mess we enjoy today. As soon as and IF sanity ever returns to our policies, the price of fuel will drop. It’s happened before, I guess you weren’t around in 1978 !
    Batteries are at about the limit of physics NOW. There aren’t going to be any
    10 fold increases in battery storage capacity. The batteries on some of these cars weigh up to 1000 pounds, half a TON, Hauling that much dead weight is wasteful at best and consumes a LOT of energy considering that the weight of the battery fully charged to completely flat doesn’t change – it ALWAYS weights ’bout half a TON.
    What will drive a stake, I hope, through the heart of EVs is the incredible shortfall in the electrical grid / generating capacity and people finding out, the hard way, that you can’t just have someone bring you a few AHs of power in the middle of nowhere, you can’t just charge your vehicle anytime or anywhere you want, ( already happened in Ca. when Grusome ‘asked’ people not to charge their cars during peak load time ! ‘Asked’ this time, next time it will be an
    edict ! ), the range claimed in many cases is a far cry from the REAL range and it gets worse as the temperature drops and/or the battery AGES !
    Automobile manufactures would manufacture great balls of petrified crap if they thought they could make a dollar on it. EV’s are no different. Wait until the products mature a bit and the the advertising is shown to be fantasy instead of fact.
    Unfortunately we live in a country and a world that for the most part is run by people who are so ignorant ( in the truest sense of that word ) when it comes to science and technology that they seem to think that anything is possible and can be done if you just beat on it with a sack of OUR money long enough. It really is magic you know ! Just ask one of them where electricity comes from.

    1. you’re absolutely right. But these imbeciles make wishes where forward thinking should be engaged.

      California has had a war on water and electricity for decades. They don’t build new power plants despite the fact that demand has increased steadily for decades.

      JQ

  11. Take it from a chemistry major – batteries will NEVER come close to the energy density of liquid fossil fuels. Batteries run off a change in electrical state that is controlled via layers and/or membranes, and is dependent on the state of individual particle groups called ions. Liquid fuels can give up energy from every bond between every atom in the molecule, this could be up to 100x more energy than could be available from a battery of equivalent number of particles. As far as I am concerned, FL should outlaw the possibility of the only vehicle in a family being an EV, due to the added concerns from evacuation needs.

    As an aside, Kim – my across-the-street neighbor bought an after-market back up camera from Amazon and installed it on his truck. I seem to remember you wishing your Tiguan had a b-u camera. Might want to check it out, even though it is probably some cheap CCP stuff.

      1. He sure is.
        And if you try to convince these ‘wonder children’ of the ‘error
        of their ways’ they will look at you like a cow looking at a new gate. Totally clueless !

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