November 21, 2023
The Biden administration is pushing for widespread electrification in less than 20 years through government subsidies and coercive regulations as part of its aggressive climate agenda. The truth is that President Joe Biden’s goals are an illusion at the expense of the American people.
While EV proponents try to claim that EVs will soon be cheaper than gasoline vehicles, our new research demonstrates that EVs benefitted from hidden subsidies that total nearly $50,000 per EV.
Who is footing that bill? Gasoline vehicle owners, taxpayers, and utility ratepayers are.
Electric vehicles primarily benefit from regulatory credits and generous fuel economy standards, which average $27,881 per vehicle. EVs have been given an unlawful 6.67 multiplier to their rated fuel economy, so that an EV with a rated fuel economy of 100 miles per gallon is credited as if it is getting 667 miles per gallon. What’s more, the EPA’s proposed fuel economy standards are designed to require that 67% of new passenger cars sold be all-electric by 2032, demonstrating a clear government preference toward EVs without proper consideration of costs and benefits.
For gasoline vehicles, the price you see at the gas pump covers the cost of extracting, refining, and transporting the gasoline, but the same cannot be said for the cost of charging an EV. EVs require new charging infrastructure, and their large power draw increases the strain on electricity infrastructure. As our research highlights, a typical EV charging overnight at home consumes as much power as several homes, and an EV charging at a fast-charging station in 30 minutes consumes as much power as a small to medium-sized grocery store. A few extra EVs in the neighborhoods are manageable, but widespread EV adoption will require significant and expensive grid upgrades.
Adding insult to injury, EV owners alone aren’t shouldering these increased electricity costs, which average $11,833 per vehicle over 10 years. Until a utility starts charging EV owners for the extra infrastructure costs to serve them, those costs are shared among all the utility’s customers. Residential electricity costs across the U.S. have risen 20% over the last three years, and a rapid forced adoption of EVs will only make this problem worse.
Direct federal and state subsidies provide EVs with another $8,984 per vehicle over 10 years, including the widely publicized $7,500 federal tax credit in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act and smaller state subsidies for EVs. All these subsidies, of course, are borne by the American taxpayer.
President Biden’s expensive green pipe dream is not without irony.
While Biden administration claims that these draconian EV mandates are necessary to combat climate change, the widespread adoption of EVs in the developed world would have negligible effects on global emissions and climate. For starters, if EVs are able to displace all the carbon emissions from U.S. passenger cars, that would only cut out 20% of U.S. carbon emissions. Our calculations show that even if the U.S. eliminated all of its carbon emissions by 2050, the effect on global temperatures in 2100 would only be 0.08 degrees Celsius.
But EVs will not even get us that far because they don’t cut carbon emissions much—if at all—compared to gasoline vehicles. As pointed out by Mark Mills in a recent op-ed in Real Clear Energy, it is nearly impossible to measure an individual EV’s emissions. While driving an EV itself does not directly produce emissions, the emissions to generate the electricity used to charge EVs vary widely depending on location.
EV batteries also require fossil fuels to produce, and many components of EV batteries are made in emissions-heavy China. The emissions resulting from mining and processing the materials used in the battery are largely unreported, and the emissions during EV production could potentially be enough to wipe out the emissions saved by not combusting gasoline.
A recent study by Volvo attempts to quantify some of these factors, and the result is not rosy for EVs. The lifetime emissions of the electric version of the Volvo SUV at the center of the study are only a third less than the emissions of the gasoline version, and that is when it is charged on the carbon-light European grid. Different assumptions could lead to an EV emitting more carbon than its gasoline counterpart. The obvious conclusion is that without rapid reductions in carbon emissions from the electric grid, an equally Herculean task to EV mass adoption, EVs will continue to produce significant carbon emissions.
Emissions from gasoline vehicles are projected to decline 20% over the next decade, and hybrids, which nearly double the fuel efficiency of a gasoline vehicle with a battery that is 50-100 times smaller than an EV battery, would actually produce the least amount of lifetime emissions. But the net-zero advocates are needlessly demanding all EVs—or nothing.
EVs would also have little impact on levels of actual pollution in U.S. cities, like soot and smog, because the U.S. is already a world leader in clean air. When the number of passenger cars on the road fell by half during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, there was no measurable impact on air quality in the U.S. Our air pollution levels are so close their natural state that weather has a far greater impact on pollution levels in most U.S. cities than the emissions from our vehicles.
The reality is, EVs are not going away any time soon, but neither are cars in general. Americans are still driving at nearly the same rate they were before the COVID-19 pandemic—more than 3.2 trillion miles total annually. Even the addition of a few hundred million new EVs over the next decade, up from 20 million today, will only account for approximately 10-20% of all passenger vehicles globally.[GU1] [GU2] [3] Currently, 90% of EVs in the U.S. are purchased as a second or third car, usually in addition to a gasoline vehicle. If the U.S. were to adopt the Biden administration’s preferred number EVs, consumers would have to purchase EVs at a scale and velocity 10 times greater and faster than any new model car in history.
Even this isn’t enough to achieve the left’s dystopian net-zero goals. The International Energy Agency forecasts [GU4] the number of global households without a car needs to rise from 45% today to 70% to achieve net-zero by 2050. That’s right—70% of people around the world must not have a car to meet the global elite’s climate goals. Most of the 45% of households who do not own cars are in developing world and crave the kind of personal mobility we enjoy in the U.S. and in Europe, but net-zero will require them to remain confined forever or to rely solely on government-owned transit. Even the developed world will have to cut its driving dramatically. In California, regulators predicted [GU5] that the state’s emissions goals will require Californians to both buy EVs and reduce miles driven by 25%.
Coercing American citizens into buying EVs is simply untenable and is not truly environmentally friendly. As our research shows, EV subsidies and mandates are already costing Americans $22 billion annually, and that amount is set to rise dramatically, with particularly adverse impacts on lower-income Americans. The Biden administration would be wise to end its special treatment of EVs, prioritize the American consumer, and stop driving the U.S. auto industry off a cliff.
Brent Bennett, Ph.D., is the policy director for Life:Powered, an initiative of the Texas Public Policy Foundation to raise America’s energy IQ, and a former battery researcher and engineer.
Andrea Hitt is a communications manager for the Texas Public Policy Foundation and previously served as communications director for Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ).
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
The ultimate goal of Greens is that the general population will not have cars at all. They will have to make do with public transport. Only important people like them should have cars in the future.
https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/13968/we-dont-just-need-electric-cars-we-need-fewer-cars/
Or they can simply die, and reduce their resource use completely. They still act as a cheering section for Paul Ehrlich.
That’s the way it was in China before it opened up, plus they had their bicycles, which were of very poor quality and which the average citizen had to get onto a two year waiting list to purchase.
Biden’s attack on our freedom in this instance is multipronged. Subsidize EVs and public transport, make fuel for ICEs less available/more expensive, reduce the functionality of ICEs, and put ICEs under more government control with incorporation of kill switches, speed governors, etc.
Public transport and non car-centric infrastructure is the future for cities.
That will massively increase quality of life there.
You are correct. Car jackings and the deaths associated with them will be reduced thereby increasing the general quality of life. It will stop cars running amuck and plowing through parades full of children. /S
I can really recommend Cities for People from Gehl on this topic.
Another socialist who wants to force everyone to live as he wants to live. Whoopee.
I wager he expects us to live that way, not himself.
So.. “pretty” ghettos.. where only suckophants like you want to live.
I’ll take a big pass on that, thanks. !
If cars are outlawed, mk, only outlaws will have cars! 😜
I’d love to hear your explanation of how.
By making EVERYONE except the chosen few walk by the homeless encampments and poop on the streets. Much better then driving past those areas, don’t you think?
Solidarity baby! You feel it in the nostrils.
Really? You’d really LOVE to hear that?
It really is amazing how socialists can convince themselves that limiting other people’s choices, will make those others so much happier.
It is more likely that big cities themselves are on the way out, now that technology has eliminated the needs that forced people into them.
Why do people choose not to live there? Why are suburbs and single-family homes so popular?
Obviously capitalism has brainwashed them into thinking they are happier in the suburbs. Once capitalism is eliminated the true socialist mindset will naturally emerge and all the world’s problems will disappear. /s
If your “quality of life” means being stuck in a low-level ghetto…
.. cow-towing to every idiotic government whim…
You go for it. !!
Just don’t expect anyone else to be remotely interested in your FAKE idiotology. !
Like most socialists, his ideal world has you living in the low-level ghetto.
He’s destined for better things.
the ultimate goal, as stated by a former head of the UIPCC, is the destruction of capitalism – and by inference installation of worldwide communism
It’s always somebody else who is supposed to sacrifice. Would you trade cradle to grave guaranteed basic income, food housing etc, for owning nothing? Many people believe that’s Utopia.
“through government subsidies and coercive regulations”
That is the green strategy whatever you happen to be talking about; EVs, energy, transport, housing etc etc.
Until the dawn of the 21st century, ideas and inventions had to work in the marketplace of free enterprise; simple examples could be video – VHS v Betamax, Tape Cartridge v Compact Cassette, but you get the idea, what works best sells and makes a profit.
But profit as a motive has long been taboo and now we have woke capitalism.
“Milton Friedman in a long essay – ‘The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits’ – which was published in the New York Times on 13 September 1970. The target of his ire were capitalist entrepreneurs who declared that their concern was not merely profit, but also the promotion of desirable social ends. These ends included ‘providing employment, eliminating discrimination, avoiding pollution and whatever else may be the catchwords of the contemporary crop of reformers’. Friedman warned that ‘businessmen who talk this way are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades’.”
https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/06/25/the-tyranny-of-woke-capitalism/
Anheuser-Busch helpfully put this notion to the test recently with their [erstwhile] very popular Bud Light beer.
And now its Miller Time etc
“Friedman warned that ‘businessmen who talk this way are unwitting puppets of the intellectual forces that have been undermining the basis of a free society these past decades’.”
So you see that the radical Left has been trying to undermine our free society for a very long time.
Unfortunately, the radical Left has brainwashed a lot of people since the 1970’s and have made a lot of progress in undermining our society and promoting hate for the American experience. The radical Left has taught a lot of Americans to hate the country they live in.
Good comments by your and strativarius.
Biden is a leftist puppet at the top of the corrupted food chain, willing to lie, cheat and steal to get his cut.
Biden doesn’t even know where he is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQRdYnarfMQ
At what stage of dementia does Biden no longer qualifier as a liar? At some point it become delusions and fantasies.
Last I heard, the border was open in both directions.
“..VHS v Betamax…”
Not to mention the Philips 2000 system, which as some wag put it came third in a two-horse race.
It’s also perhaps worth reflecting that it is not necessarily the ‘best’ product that wins these competing product fights – getting in early and grabbing sufficient market share with something that’s ‘good enough’ may win the day. Whatever the outcome it is, as you say, all without government sticking its oar in trying to pick winners.
From what I’ve read in the past, while Betamax was technically superior, the difference wasn’t great and the TVs of that era weren’t good enough that a casual viewer would be able to see the difference.
The other difference was that the run time of a Betamax cassette was not long enough to record all of a standard length movie of the day, while a VHS cassette could.
a Betamax cassette was not long enough to record all of a standard length movie
That matches my memory – and resulted in the studios releasing their movies on VHS which was the death-knell for Betamax.
“… if the U.S. eliminated all of its carbon emissions by 2050, the effect on global temperatures in 2100 would only be 0.08 degrees Celsius..”
But… but.. we’d feel virtuous and I’m sure we’d notice the .08 difference.
This implies that the authors know exactly how much warmth a certain amount of CO2 will add to the atmosphere.
They don’t have this knowledge. They are guessing because nobody has this knowledge. Nobody knows how much warmth a certain amount of CO2 adds to the atmosphere.
Pretending to know is self-delusion at best.
Right- I think it’s unfortunate that critics of the climate lunacy also sometimes pretend that “the science” is whatever- like in this case, claiming “.08” as a result. If a chemist or physicist gave a result from some lab research to several decimal places, I’d consider it to be almost certainly true. We climate critics are not anti science- not deniers of anything. I see a similar stupidity here in Wokeachusetts from the state government. They have an ongoing statistical study of what’s out in the forests. But the sampling is approximately 1 acre for every 6000 acres. Then, they’ll say how much wood is out there to 5-6 decimal places. I keep telling them that such a claim is nuts. They don’t seem interested in my skepticism. 🙂 I bet their estimate is lucky if it’s within 40% of the truth.
Why would they listen to you Joe? You’re not even a lesbian.
Maybe I am. 🙂 Maybe my full name is Josephine. 🙂
Ah, a trans lesbian, are ye? You should apply for a big government job with Maura Healy’s administration. Those are some impressive qualifications for any major role!
You wouldn’t happen to be a muslim communist illegal immigrant native American with a substance abuse disability, would you? I’m not sure ze has that slot filled. Just stay mum about the male uh part. No males allowed. Tuck it mister! Er, Ms! The world has gotten so confusing.
Run the climate models with Net Zero inputs and without and you can see no significant differences.
I’m not saying the models are correct, I’m saying if the models are used as “evidence” then it works both ways.
Such values as quoted are from general circulation models under the “business as usual’ scenario , which is the general justification for doing anything at all relative to “climate”. Most people already know that: The same justification for doing “something” provides the numbers for doing some part of it. That projection is available even to those who believe green house gases have zero effect on temperatures.
“through government subsidies and coercive regulations” #2
“Every way one looks at it, his [Frans Timmermans] resignation from the European Commission and his inability to win power in the Netherlands represent a lucky escape for Europe. ”
…
One of Timmermans’s flagship policies is the EU’s Nature Restoration Law, which formally demands that countries restore, by 2030, at least 30 per cent of poor-condition agricultural land, peatlands, forests, rivers and ‘marine habitats such as seagrasses or sediment bottoms’. That requirement then rises to 90 per cent by 2050.
…
Timmermans hasn’t just confined himself to wreaking havoc in agriculture – he’s also taken aim at the automotive industry. Under him, the European Commission has required that makers of new city buses switch to 100 per cent zero-emissions vehicles by 2030, and that manufacturers of new lorries meet ever more demanding targets. They must now nearly halve their 2019 levels of emissions by 2030, moving up to 65 per cent by 2035 and 90 per cent by 2040.
…
A third and final farrago launched by Timmermans is to swap European gas for renewable energy from Africa. On his watch, the EU stood by while member states banned fracking for shale gas – even though in places like Poland it could have eased Europe’s crippling energy shortages. Timmermans has also done nothing to prevent the collapse of gas production in his native Netherlands
https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/11/24/the-dutch-revolt-against-net-zero/
A lucky escape indeed. Heads, no doubt, exploded in Bruxelles
We’re not Hamas and we don’t want no steenking incendiaries in our basements-
Medical staff told not to charge electric cars due to “fire risk” (msn.com)
Delicious isn’t it how the public circus works. Worksafe have made an edict about lithium battery EV charging to cover their ass so naturally Monash decides they’d better cover theirs and this is the start of it as more and more risk averse managers do likewise. Where will that leave Minister Bowen and the nut-zero dreamers? We know where it leads already with Felicity Ace Fremantle Highway and Luton carpark already not to mention aluminium cladding. Over to you Minister and Co.
It could as easily lead to an edict forbidding any and all anti-charging regulations.
Well the climate changers could do that but sooner or later there’ll be a Grenfell Towers type loss of life event with EV penetration and then they’re really cooked. The alternative is EV death by a thousand charging bans. Decisions…decisions?
It’s curious that every portion of the business community that serves consumers hasn’t vociferously objected to the adoption of EVs and renewable energy. Even the economically ignorant must realize that the transition to these fads will be expensive to everyone but those involved in their promotion. Production of EVs, installation of infrastructure to enable their use, and construction and maintenance of renewable energy will require a financial commitment that will subtract funds from the consumer marketplace. This increased cost will lower sales of every consumer product because the country will actually be poorer than before. Fewer appliances, furniture, toys, restaurant meals, movie tickets, condoms, beer, on-line newspaper subscriptions, dental procedures and haircuts will be purchased. Small businesses already operating on tiny margins will disappear. EVs will be parked in front of abandoned commercial buildings. There is a far greater likelihood of this economic disaster under current government planning than an increase of global temperature making the planet uninhabitable due to fossil fuel use.
The transition is not so much as dirty energy to clean energy as it is regulated industry to full fascism and customer freedom to repression.
“The obvious conclusion is that without rapid reductions in carbon emissions from the electric grid, an equally Herculean task to EV mass adoption, EVs will continue to produce significant carbon emissions.”
Many are asking just where is Hercules when he is needed?
He may have to do his tasks in a different order this time.
His 5th task was cleaning the BS from the Augean stables in a single day.
That is a relatively easy one.
His 2nd task was the slaying of the Lernaean Hydra.
Chop-off one head of the green Hydra and it instantly grows more.
Lithium Crash Deepens with Battery Metal Now Down 78% From Peak due to Lack of EV Demand
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/lithium-crash-deepens-with-battery-metal-now-down-78-from-peak
EXCERPT
The price of battery-grade lithium carbonate has crashed in the last 12 months.
This downward pressure is attributed to oversupplied markets in Asia, primarily because the demand of electric vehicles has significantly decreased, due to: 1) high cost of financing (monthly payments), 2) high cost of insurance (3 to 4 times gasoline), 3) stagnant spendable real incomes, 4) lack of driving range, and 5) charging time drawbacks, especially when going on longer trips; having 2 or 3 passengers; hauling loads; driving uphill; all of which are a lot worse in areas with colder climates.
Also, EVs in urban/suburban areas travel less, say 8000 to 9000 miles/y, so the cost/mile is very high
Also, the upstream CO2 of mining, transport, refining materials and building an EV is so high, the little annual travel does not offset the upstream CO2, which means EVs do not reduce CO2 on a lifetime basis.
Also, the life of an EV battery, after 8 x 9000 =72,000 miles of driving, is about 8 years.
No one with any sense would replace an aged battery in an 8-y-old vehicle, at a total cost of $15,000 to $20,000
Since November 2022, the average price of battery-grade lithium carbonate in China plunged from $84,500 per metric ton to $18,630, or about a 78% decline.
That means fewer EV batteries will be built and fewer EVs will be sold during at least 2024/2025, and likely longer.
Government climate goals will not be achieved unless subsidies are so high, that EVs are for free.
Strange
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/global-ev-sales-stay-strong-china-hits-record-despite-end-subsidies-2023-11-14/
The EV sales, in your URL, are about 2023, but 2024/2025 and longer, the subject of my comment, has Ford, GM, etc., curtailing/not expanding EV manufacturing plants.
Two issues hardly ever seen:
#1: Many people live in multi-story buildings and currently can only charge
an EV off site – wherever that may be. Under-building parking/charging seems to
be a terrible idea. Hundreds of tenants plugging in after work will
produce a need for rebuilding the electric distribution system. Example:
#2: EV batteries will slowly discharge will sitting. With regular auto batteries this
is considered a fault to be fixed. It has been called parasitic drain. With EV autos this
drain is a function that keeps the car properly conditioned. The drain has
been re-branded as “Phantom” or “Vampire”.
A regular auto can sit for weeks and retain all its fuel. An EV will slowly lose its “fuel.”
Akio Toyoda, until recently head of Toyota Motors, said that batteries for 90 of his hybrids can be built with the materials needed for one EV battery. The drive for EVs-or-nothing is simply a manifestation of the technical and scientific ignorance, largely intentional, of the politicians such as Biden. They are the deniers.
The fact of the matter is that atmospheric concentration of CO2 as measured by Mauna Loa observatory increases each and every year while Western efforts to control the increase of atmospheric CO2 increases each and every year as well.
The Regulations are not working. When regulations don’t work, why would anyone think more of the same regulations would work? It’s insanity.
Americans don’t own the rest of the world and are not able to enforce their chosen policies. So continuing to be the poster child of non workable regulating is also insanity.
Keep voting for pie in the sky and see what you get. Remember, people who want to lower your standard of living are not your friends.
I agree with you.
Also, I find the low annual increase of CO2 in 1964 and 1992 of only, 0.3 and 0.5 ppm respectively to be interesting. The average annual increase is around 2 ppm recently and high increase years of 1998, 2015 and 2016, each around 3 ppm to be telling us something also. These suggest a natural driver (ENSO at the very least) is at work to a significant extent.
Just Net-Zero the dirty politics of Joke Biden by 2024. Just stop the hate and extremism of Bidenism worldwide. Remember, CO2 is a major pollutant of Joke but it’s his politics that is deadly.
“widespread EV adoption will require significant and expensive grid upgrades.”
Where I reside in the Adelaide Hills of South Australia there is already a ban on export to the grid from roof-top solar panels as the local grid cannot handle the load with no plans to upgrade.
Governments, both Federal and state are still encouraging roof-top solar
Politician logic at its very best
Let’s start with the electrification of Air Force 1 and 2.
I really wish, the author would get his/her terminology right, and stop using the terms the warmist idiots use like “carbon emissions”, or “carbon pollution”. It is not carbon, it is carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide is NOT a pollutant.