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Even Massive Government Handouts Cannot Fix the Reality of “Science Fair Project” Vehicles
re: Electric Vehicles: a Multi-Pronged Menace with Few if any Benefits?
I’ll grant that EVs, whether or not they are environmentally speaking actually a faint tinge of green or sludge-brown (surely the latter), do have their uses for some small-world situations, eg the person whose life is 99% within a ~100-mile radius and no cold winters and heavily subsidized at every step of the chain.
But in the real world, even massive government handouts cannot fix the reality of “science fair project” vehicles... what could possibly go wrong?
See also: Electric Transmission Buildout Could Cost Americans Trillions Of Dollars
Hertz CEO Out As Firm Seeks Traction After Big EV Bet Goes Bust
2024-03-16. Emphasis added.
CEO Stephen Scherr's barely two-year ride with Hertz came to a screeching halt on Friday. In his wake, he leaves a company still working to recover from a big bet on electric vehicles gone bad. It will do so under new CEO Gil West, whose previous posts include executive roles at Delta Air Lines and the Cruise unit of General Motors.
...In December 2023, Hertz emphatically demonstrated that its massive EV push just wasn't working out, throwing 20,000 EVs into the used-car market to start a systematic liquidation planned to extend through 2024. "The company expects to reinvest a portion of the proceeds from the sale of EVs into the purchase of internal combustion engine vehicles to meet customer demand," Hertz said at the time, adding, "The company expects this action to better balance supply against expected demand of EVs."
[WIND: eg few people want the hassles of an EV for rental]The resale of fleet cars is a key driver of rental car companies' profitability. On that front, Tesla threw a wrench in Hertz's financials by aggressively slashing prices across its product line, crushing the resale values of not only Teslas, but the entire EV market. Top-selling EV's saw their secondary-market prices plunge by almost a third in 2023.
Poor resale value isn't the only EV liability biting Hertz -- the company also pointed to the high cost of collision repairs. “For context, collision and damage repairs on an EV can often run about twice that associated with a comparable combustion engine vehicle,” Scherr noted in an October third-quarter conference call.
...most rental car customers don't want their first EV experiment to come on a business or vacation trip, where they may be in an unfamiliar area and unenthused about spending 20 minutes at a recharging station on the way...
...
WIND: you have to be either rich or financially illiterate to buy an EV. Though maybe a few people get lucky in a few areas—doubtful once the real costs of ownership are added-up over years. Of real costs in lifestyle: EVs are massively less useful and vastly more expensive. A science fair project disguised as a car.
2024-04-25: Hertz Increases The Number Of Electric Cars It Wants To Get Rid Off To 30,000 From 20,000
EV purchases are funded via money the government takes from us by force (aka taxes) and then handed-out like Halloween candy treats to wealthy EV buyers as subsidies. While most of America struggles to put food onto the table and pay rent. Nothing more regressive could be possible.
For those living a second-hand psychological life*, EVs are a godsend: just-right virtue signaling. Hence my wealthy neighbors all have one (or two), and especially the mommy brigade driving $100K Rivians 3/4 mile to school rather than walking the best tree-lined trails you’ll find anywhere. That’s f*cked up. These are people looking to minimize their footprints—by driving!
With an EV, you cannot escape the ultra-high insurance costs, a regressive tax that brutalizes those who can least afford it (including non-EV drivers!). Or the astronomical repair costs. Or the fact that most EVs will never get to even the claimed environmental break-even point (which is propaganda bullshit based on fake models). Or that they are mostly charged by burning fossil fuels. We have the most self-destructive situation imaginable with EVs.
Or the $trillions we will all pay to transmit power from boondoggles resulting in widescale glass and metal and fiberglass environmental deserts spanning vast areas of formerly rich and beautiful land. Literally bulldozing fields of flowers for this 'green' menace. Someone will get rich off it, but you and I will never benefit. It’s the communist manifesto in green guise: we and our children have to suffer and endure, so that our grandchildren will benefit—and they will be told the same thing. Except that millions of acres of formerly pristine land will be nothing but shards of glass and rusting metal. What a nasty legacy.
Anyone who thinks an EV is a value for the buyer is ignorant of the far greater utility and low pricing of ICE vehicles (and at discounted prices!). We have 4 of them for the 5 of us adults, one going on 150K miles—inexpensive to operate and they just work day after day, hot or cold, power outage or not. Sipping gas, and causing 1/2 to 1/3 the road damage of an EV and far less cardiovascular-damaging particulate pollution than an EV.
No EV with its outrageous up-front environmental burden could possibly compete with the environmental friendliness of our 150K mile sedan as it heads towards 200K miles with nary a problem. Its amortized environmental cost is extremely low. In other words, it is ultra 'green'. And there is every reason to assume that the other 3 such vehicles will also hit that mileage range. ICE vehicles, the right ones are an environmental boon.
Nothing in the history of humanity has been so damaging to our future as the lost opportunity cost of pouring trillions into science fair projects, of which EVs are only a part. It degrades all aspects of life for everyone, sucks-dry the public fisc (to be paid for by our children!), corrupts the political process, misdirects capital to the toilet bowl, damages companies (and therefore jobs), and most of all: it destroys vast areas of land/environment. The latter I see more and more of, and it is stomach churning to watch so much being destroyed and turned into glass and metal desert.
* A life that consists primarily of valuing oneself based on the approbation of others.
