10 Reasons Not To Own An EV

I & I Editorial Board, 9/26/23

From California to New York to Washington, Democrats are using the coercive force of government to herd Americans into electric vehicles. Here are 10 reasons why we should resist both this egregious abuse of power as well as the social pressure that demands we all go electric:

The mandates are an egregious abuse of power. Where do government officials, both elected and unelected, derive the authority to tell Americans what vehicles they cannot own and what vehicles they must own? There is none. Yes, there are laws intended to keep dangerous cars and trucks off the streets for safety reasons. But no automobile is a threat just because it burns gasoline or diesel. Dare we say that those who buy an EV are complicit in securing for the state a power it was never intended to have?

The mandates are an egregious abuse of power Part ll. The federal government oversteps its constitutional limits when it tells manufacturers that two-thirds of the vehicles they build must be electrified.

EVs are not zero-emission vehicles. As one of our contributors wrote in a well-researched, heavily sourced piece, life-cycle assessments show that the “manufacturing, charging, operating, and disposing of electric vehicles produces more of every major category of pollutants than conventional cars.”

The EV manufacturing chain is an environmental malignancy. That same writer, James D. Agresti, president of Just Facts, has also noted “the ‘environmental implications’ of mining lithium to make batteries for electric cars ‘would directly counter the intent’ of ‘incentivizing electric vehicle adoption.’” He further makes the case by citing a Brookings Institution study, which “found that ‘continued reliance on China’ will ‘increase the risk that sourcing of critical minerals will cause or contribute to serious social or environmental harms.’”

EVs are fire hazards. All automobiles catch fire, but EVs burn hotter, longer, and take far more water to extinguish than a conventional car that’s burning. Firefighters use about 500 gallons of water to put out regular car fires. EV fires can require from 6,000 gallons to 20,000 gallons to get the job done. Oh, yes, the smoke from an EV fire is particularly toxic, not terribly dissimilar to that of Zyklon B.

EVs are destructive. Because their batteries are so heavy, EVs weigh more than conventional automobiles of similar size. This means they accelerate the damage to road surfaces. The excess weight also increases the pressure on tires and brakes, which in breaking down produce unhealthy particulate matter. Furthermore, their weight problem may overwhelm parking garages and cause them to collapse.

Slaves helped build that EV. The mining operations in developing countries that produce the raw materials needed for EV batteries “exploit child labor,” says author and energy analyst Ronald Stein, “and are responsible for the most egregious human rights violations of vulnerable minority populations.” Conditions have grown so dire that Washington “is cracking down on” EV components that have “links to Chinese Uyghur slave labor.”

Exorbitant insurance premiums. Because they can be totaled by a minor fender bender, and the concern over fires is growing, insuring already-costly EVs can be painfully expensive. When Nerd Wallet compared rates, it found the “national median rate for a 2023 Tesla Model 3 was $2,574 per year for full coverage insurance … almost 45% higher than the national median cost of car insurance.”

Crashing the grid. What happens when tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of EVs are charging on a system powered by renewable energy sources that cannot meet the increased demand? We become California, where, only days after the state Air Resources Board approved the governor’s unilaterally issued EV mandate last year, the grid operator asked the few EV owners (not even a million) to forgo charging their cars between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. due to anticipated “supply deficiencies.” Or, worse, we become Venezuela, where blackouts are common.

Looking shallow. EVs provide almost unmatched opportunities for virtue signaling, and that is of course why a lot of people choose to buy them. It’s quite a spectacle of vacuity.

There are no solutions, economist Thomas Sowell tells us, only trade-offs, and the deal we’re being forced by government to make is a poor one.

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