Government forces automobile companies to sell electric cars - and then forces all taxpayers to subsidize the purchases. With mandates and subsidies, there is no free market and that means companies primarily want to make the cars that will generate the most profit, which means the most expensive. The opposite of capitalism.

It is why, like with solar panels, the market is moribund where no corporate welfare exists. If you aren't already rich, you can't get one, and if you are rich you also own regular cars - and a new study shows that you end up driving those more and the electric cars less, which means you aren't even lowering emissions as much as hopeful EPA claims during the Obama administration suggested.

That hasn't stopped government from persisting. A program born under the bloated Cash For Clunkers program - which added $25,000 of government debt for each automobile sold and primarily led to cars being replaced that were going to be replaced anyway -  the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has never left us despite being our told electric cars are wildly popular.




If they are popular, you don't need a mandate and welfare for the sector. And if they are popular, driving miles would not plummet after purchase. Which is what happens with electric cars - nearly 4,500 miles less. Gasoline-powered cars are the same while electric cars drop to 70 percent. So not only is the earth being ruined for the materials to make them, they are not being driven enough to generate emissions benefits.

I liken them to the espresso machine craze of the COVID-19 pandemic. Lots of people bought them, so lots of new models came into existence, and accessories like acupuncture needles for coffee grinds (no, really) but now there is a glut in the aftermarket. In California, people bought them when the Governor declared you could buy a pot brownie before getting a tattoo but not get a haircut - or a coffee inside Starbucks. Without the social aspect, people decided to make coffee at home.

Then reality set in. They weren't saving any money and mostly got terrible coffee. Most people go back to their Keurig or pourover or drip process. That is the peril of electric cars. People are driving those less even though people don't drive less, and they make excuses - not enough convenient charging stations - but those mask the reality that they're not as convenient as the sales brochure claimed. No one is going to build charging stations on their own dime to support an entire industry propped up by government, any more than composting companies in California rushed to build new processing plants for food waste just because the Governor mandated it. They're all waiting for government to pay them.

People who drive a lot of miles, and presumably are killing Gaia, don't want them. If they are just shopping trip rides for rich people, why make everyone in America subsidize them?