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The Hertz Meltdown Reveals the Scale of the EV Debacle
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re: Even Massive Government Handouts Cannot Fix the Reality of “Science Fair Project” Vehicles
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Do EV buyers understand any of this?
2024-04-25: Hertz Increases The Number Of Electric Cars It Wants To Get Rid Off To 30,000 From 20,000
The Hertz Meltdown Reveals the Scale of the EV Debacle
2024-03-21, by Jeffrey E Tucker
The Biden administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has revealed its ambition: to phase out gas-powered cars in favor of electric vehicles (EVs). Incredibly, this announcement comes as we are flooded with overwhelming evidence that EVs are a market loser.
Indeed, the artificial boom and then meltdown of the EV market is a modern industrial calamity. It was created by government, social media, wild disease frenzy, far-flung thinking, and the irrational chasing of utopia, followed by a rude awakening by facts and reality.
...The key issues with EVs are as follows.
- The cost upfront is much higher.
- Financing charges are higher.
- They depreciate at a higher rate than internal combustion cars.
- The insurance is more expensive, by at least 25 percent [WIND: and jacks-up rates for non-EV drivers too!]
- Repairs are much more expensive, if you can get them done at all, and take longer.
- Tires are more expensive and don’t last as long because the car is so heavy.
- Refueling is not easy and missteps here can have nightmarish consequences.
- They are more likely to catch fire.
- Any motor vehicle accident that impacts the battery can lead to repairs higher than the value of the car, that is totaled with so much as a scratch.
To top it all over, there is no longer any financial advantage to the driver. It now costs slightly more to charge under many conditions than to refuel with gasoline.
... fine for urban commutes with home chargers and not much else.
...truly terrible rentals...spending part of your vacation figuring out where to find a charger.... Not all are superchargers, and if it is a regular charger, you are looking at an overnight wait...
...Did Hertz think of any of this before they spent $250M on a fleet? Nope. They were just doing the fashionable thing.
...wear and tear on roads is much worse due to the sheer weight of the cars, which is 25 percent higher than gas cars on average. Many parking garages would have to be rebuilt with new reinforcements...
...there is the strain on the grid. There is no way the industry could handle the demand. Brownouts and travel restrictions would be essential.
...There is another problem: surveillance. The car can be tracked anywhere and shut off at a moment’s notice. This is obviously a great thing if the government desires a social-credit system of citizens control.
...
WIND: EVs are science fair projecst whose opportunity cost and environmental damage is cataclysmic versus putting that money into energy security including nuclear power and geothermal for a future that will not harm people and will instead greatly increase prosperity and quality of leaf: cheap and abundant energy. We have perhaps 50 years to get that done, using “fossil fuels” to get there.
