As spring begins, let us think back to an icy time in January when Tesla owners were stranded because their electric vehicle batteries flatlined in the subzero temps and many charging stations were dead or dying.
“I’ve been here for over five hours at this point, and I still have not gotten to charge my car,” Tesla driver Brandon Welbourne told CBS Chicago. “A charge that should take 45 minutes is taking two hours.”
Let’s go, Brandon!
Spring forward and the enviro-extremist Biden administration is rolling out stringent tailpipe rules that one government watchdog described as an “electrical vehicle mandate in disguise.”
In the name of President Joe Biden’s bogus “climate change” agenda, the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced new automobile emissions standards aimed at reducing “fleetwide average carbon emissions” by 56 percent by 2032. Some call the mandate ambitious, others call it insane. Ultimately, it will force many more unpopular and unreliable EVs out on the highways.
Daren Bakst, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Center on Energy and Environment, said the emissions standard is “one of the most extreme rules ever finalized by a federal agency.”
“The EPA’s rule would restrict the ability of Americans to buy gas-powered vehicles, a chilling abuse of power and a wanton disregard for individual freedom,” Bakst said in a statement. “Unhinged from reality, the EPA is ignoring the fact that consumers don’t want to buy electric vehicles at the level the Biden administration envisions.”
But most Americans don’t want an EV. A Yahoo Finance and Ipsos poll conducted a few months before the EV freeze found that 57 percent of respondents said electric vehicles weren’t on their car-buying shopping list. Only 31 percent of respondents said they were likely to buy an EV.
Automakers have gotten the message. Ford and GM have stopped manufacturing and selling some of their battery-powered vehicles. Rental car company Hertz announced earlier this year plans to sell a third of its EV fleet on shrinking demand. Hertz CEO Stephen Scherr was particularly hurt by his decision to go all-in on EVs. He is no longer with the company.
“Hertz doubled down on EVs in the months after Scherr took over, placing big orders with Polestar, the electric-car maker owned by China’s Geely and Sweden’s Volvo Car, and GM,” Fortune Magazine reported last week. “Hertz announced its EV sell-down plans in January, citing lackluster demand, costly depreciation and expensive repairs. The Estero, Florida-based company took a $245 million charge and reported its biggest quarterly loss since the pandemic.”
Not good.
And for those playing corporate media hypocrisy bingo, Axios reported in January that the CEO of the automaker that owns Chrysler, Dodge, and Jeep told reporters that the automotive industry risked an EV “bloodbath” if a pricing war continued. Unlike former President Donald Trump, Carlos Tavares, head of Stellantis, apparently can use the term “bloodbath” in the same context without corrupt media screaming “insurrection” again.
It makes no difference to Biden and the climate cult that demand for EVs has plummeted or that automakers and sellers are losing their shirts. They’re not concerned with details like reality.
You will buy an EV and like it, the White House’s green team commands.
“U.S. workers will lead the world on autos — making clean cars and trucks, each stamped ‘Made in America,’” Biden said in a statement.
In desperate need of the automaker union vote, particularly in swing state Michigan, Biden’s EPA is allowing a slower phase-in of the rule and plugging more hybrids into the crippling EV transition campaign. Trump leads Biden by 3.2 percentage points in RealClearPolitics’ average of presidential election polls. Biden’s weak showing in a critical swing state he won in 2020 probably has something to do with his unpopular policies in manufacturing-heavy Michigan.
CNN reported that the White House is insisting the new rule “doesn’t favor electric vehicles over other types of vehicles” — as the Biden administration targets EV sales at two-thirds of the auto market within eight years.
Ultimately, the rule trades gasoline for coal. Self-satisfied EV owners, after all, are driving vehicles generally powered by coal and natural gas. You can only get so far on rainbows and sunshine and wind at your local flawed charging station.
Speaking of sunshine, Biden’s press team at The New York Times spent plenty of column space blowing it up their readers’ windmills. In extolling the virtues of the administration’s climate standard, the Times exclaimed:
That would avoid more than seven billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions over the next 30 years, according to the E.P.A. That’s the equivalent of removing a year’s worth of all the greenhouse gases generated by the United States, the country that has historically pumped the most carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The regulation would provide nearly $100 billion in annual net benefits to society, according to the agency, including $13 billion of annual public health benefits thanks to improved air quality.
Why, it sounds too good to be true. Probably because it is.
The Times was forced to acknowledge some inconvenient truths that the left tends to avoid like a MAGA hat.
“The transition to electric vehicles would require enormous changes in manufacturing, infrastructure, technology, labor, global trade and consumer habits,” the publication notes.
And while the U.S. continues to do the heavy lifting on carbon, mega polluters like China will do what they do best.
File all of that under pricey and painful, and the unnecessary kind of pain that only a self-loathing masochist could love.
Now that’s a bloodbath for consumers — and for the environment the climate cult claims it’s laboring to save.
“The Biden Administration is using executive orders to push this EV mandate because he knows Congress won’t pass it and because the American people don’t support it,” Daniel Turner, founder and executive director for Power The Future, said in a statement. “If EVs are as popular as Joe Biden claims, he wouldn’t have to force them through executive fiat or prop them up with taxpayer subsidies. With layoffs of workers, billions in losses, and CEO’s losing their jobs, it’s clear the electric vehicle bloodbath has already begun.”
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
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