The sales of electric vehicles are not just flat, they are in decline. Last year I wrote an informational article titled “25 Red Flags Before Buying a Green EV” for the Independent Sentinel, another conservative news source. I did not write this article because I am against the father of modern day electric vehicles, Elon Musk, or against electric vehicles in general. To the contrary, Elon Musk is one of my most admired people of our time and electric vehicles are the best option for urban residents of America that travel less than 300 miles per day. What I am against are deceptions and hoaxes now so commonplace these days.
I wrote that “25 Red Flags” article to educate people about things they may not know about EVs before purchasing them and thus suffering buyer’s remorse thereafter.
I am writing this one to expose new information that has come to light with math (facts and figures) most every American can understand.
The only two things I have against the Green New Deal push and president Joe Biden’s executive order mandates are these;
People who buy EVs have a large portion of their vehicle paid for by American taxpayer dollars, front end and back end, by government subsidies and tax breaks. In other words, the true cost of the sticker price of an EV is not this summer’s national average of $55,000 but much more than that. Thanks goes to the American taxpayer for picking up part of the tab in subsidies for building the vehicle by the factory and the purchaser buying the vehicle in tax credits.
The second issue is the recently exposed hoax that the vehicle is “green” and driving one helps save the planet. The fact of the matter is that when you factor in the carbon footprint of the heavy machinery used to excavate (strip mine) the minerals for the batteries for these vehicles, they are anything but green. Some pundits argue EVs are less green than gasoline powered vehicles to the point you would have to drive an EV 100,000 miles just to get back to the same carbon footprint of an internal combustion engine vehicle the day it rolled off the assembly line!
AOC and Joe Biden should be ashamed for the Snake Oil Sales people they are!
These same pundits critical of EVs also point out the land ruined by strip mining these minerals will never be repairable. The minerals for EV batteries include lithium, cobalt, nickel, manganese, aluminum, and graphite just to make the batteries. The minerals to make the electricity to power the vehicle are mostly coal or uranium which also must be mined.
According the U.S. Energy Information Administration (https://www.eia.gov) in 2022 America had:
“About 60% of this electricity generation was from fossil fuels—coal, natural gas, petroleum, and other gases. About 18% was from nuclear energy, and about 21% was from renewable energy sources.”
Another negative issue of what this new thrust of the Green New Deal offers is the demand on our power grid which many of our Washington, D.C. never seemed to consider. According to Shipley Energy out of York Pennsylvania (www.shipleyenergy.com):
“Nationwide, the average cost of electricity is $0.12 per kWh. At that rate, someone who drives their EV 15,000 miles in a year will pay approximately $540 per year, or $45 per month, to power it. That results in substantial savings, as someone driving a gas-powered car over the same yearly distance will pay approximately $1,400 in fuel costs.”
Sounds good, right? Sounds doable!
Not if you consider these statistics from EnergyBot (https://www.energybot.com):
“The average electricity bill in the United States is $117 per month. But what you actually pay varies greatly depending on where you live. Hawaii has the highest average electric bill with a grand average of $162 per month.”
That means your electric vehicle is going to add between 38 to 27 percent to your electric bill which means that the American power grid will have to increase capacity by those same percentages. Even worse, unlike fossil fuels, electricity cannot be stored. Once it is generated, it has to go somewhere… either used by consumers or gone to waste.
A newly released video report offered what this means to the average American consumer in more readily understood terms:
Unveiling the Hidden Costs: Why Electric Vehicles Cost is $17 per Gallon
Part of the video description for this video offers:
“UNMASKING THE TRUE COSTS OF ELECTRIC VEHICLES. Is this true? Fueling Electric Vehicles Costs $17 per Gallon. Experts discuss how they resulted in this numbers and what is happening with electric vehicles and what you need to know.
Fueling an electric vehicle costs $17.33 per gallon, Jason Issac and Lauren Fix discuss the American Energy Institute most recent report on the true cost of an electric cars to all Americans.
The cost of producing electric vehicles (EVs) is far higher than the prices they are being sold for. Nearly $22 billion in federal and state subsidies and regulatory credits suppressed the retail price of EVs in 2021 by an average of almost $50,000.”
The biggest problem I have with the New Green Deal is the true meaning of the thrust. The idea that the politicians on Capitol Hill are concerned about carbon footprints seems to be rapidly discredited by concern for the green of their personal stock portfolios.
“Facebook posts stated on January 31, 2021 in a Facebook post: Says Nancy Pelosi bought $1.25 million in Tesla stock the day before Joe Biden signed an order “for all federal vehicles” to be electric.”
I wrote this article to highlight some of the deceptions about EVs the public is now becoming aware of now negatively impacting EV sales.
My next article will offer how the automobile industry will move to save themselves from the impending doom of remaining on their present course where the bridge of the New Green Deal seems to be about to go out.
Copyright © 2023 by Mark S. Schwendau
