Making “Investments” in EVs

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The verbiage is interesting. As the country relies ever more on force to coerce, it resorts to soft language to hide what is going on.

For example, this news story about what the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers – which is the lobby for the car industry – is up to. The Alliance published an open letter to nine governors of states it wants to emulate California’s policy of coercively – legislatively – force-feeding electric cars down the throats of a largely uninterested and unwilling buying public.

It’s not put that way in the letter, of course. Nor the news articles about it – the journalists who write them having learned to parrot the oleaginous verbiage of coercion, whether consciously or not.

The open letter – and the news stories – talk about “encouraging the governors to follow California’s lead” and the need to “commit resources” and make “investments” in electric cars – because of course the free market isn’t interested in committing its resources or making such investments. So what is actually meant by the verbiage is that the car industry – speaking as one through its lobbying arm – wants to see laws and regulations like those in force in California imposed by force (how else are laws ad regulations imposed?)  in other states.

The reasoning is perfectly understandable.

California is the only electric car “market” – and it is only a “market” because California has artificially created one, via the force and coercion of the California General Assembly and regulatory apparat, including the infamous California Air Resources Board. They have issued various fatwas mandating that electric cars be manufactured and “sold” – even if at a loss. The car companies have thus been forced to commit lots of their resources toward the making of electric cars (or the buying of offsetting “credits” from that electric car carny, Elon Musk) even if they can’t make any money making them.

Understandably, they would like a return on their “investment” – by force, if necessary. And it is necessary.Without force, there is no market for electric cars.

The car companies should have stood up to the thuggery and argued – publicly, loudly – that they can’t make money on electric cars and so would prefer not to “invest” in them – and then force you to make up for that “investment.”

Instead, they have become like the man who, having been mugged, decides to wait in the alley for the next man to come along – in order to mug him in turn and so recoup what he has lost.

Ergo, the car companies want the “market” (at gunpoint) for electric cars expanded beyond just California – hoping that perhaps more fatwas and “investments” will “jump start” this perpetually (and likely eternally) fizzling make-work project – and put the money back in their pockets, regardless of whose pockets have to be picked to make that happen.

Some of these states have already “joined hands” with the car industry to waste more coerced resources – the money obtained, as always, by force from the taxpayers of those states – to erect such atrocities as “high-speed charging stations” (which aren’t anything of the sort; best case is 30-45 minutes per car, to recover about 80 percent charge; but I suppose that is “high speed” relative to the 6-12 hours it takes to recharge at home). New York has “committed” $4.2 million (of other people’s money) toward this quixotic . .. charge.

No one ever asks why state government don’t need to “invest” in gas stations. They appear organically – without coercion.

Hmmmm. . .

One also wonders how these charging stations – and the electric cars themselves – will do when it gets cold outside, as it sometimes does in New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, which are among the Nine being importuned by the Alliance. It is one thing to sip a latte outside a Starbucks in San Diego, a comfortable 75 degrees and sunny outside. How about Albany in January?

Most people who invest their money in a car – or anything else involving a significant sum of money – tend to ask such questions and when the answers do not appeal, tend to spend their money on some other thing.

Hence the need to “encourage” a different kind of “investment.” Including – in addition to the “high-speed” charging stations – “more fleet purchases” by state governments of electric cars, for the bureaucrats and apparatchiks to putter around in – except of course, electric cars don’t putter.

They merely cost.

Not the apparatchiks, of course. They will merely drive them. We will pay for them to drive them. The electric cars – and the salaries of the apparatchiks, too.

Such a deal!

The open letter closes by urging “action now” to “help reach the ZEV target” of 80 different models of electric cars on the market by 2021. This is an ambitious “goal” given that as of this year – which is less than three years shy of 2021 – ZEVs constitute just over 1 percent of all new cars on the market.

The real market.

That would be the one which does not require fatwas to “stimulate” “investment.” No “encouragement” necessary. People freely buy the other 98.9 percent.

One might be tempted to ask why.

. . .

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4 COMMENTS

  1. Wow. What country is this?

    Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of Liberty.

    You know that you live in the Twilight Zone when Americans support tyranny.

    Who wants to live in a prison?

    The elites love socialism because they want the 99% weakened and dead.

    The police state doesn’t protect you. Tyranny helps the elites meet their private prison quotas.

    The elites want you to lose your free speech rights and gun rights so you can’t resist.

    The elites want you to lose your 4th amendment rights so they can wiretap and frisk you and take your property through asset forfeiture.

    The elites want you lose your right to a trial so they can torture and kill you.

    Taxation is theft. Quit if you don’t like low pay and don’t buy dangerous food if you don’t like it.

    You don’t have to buy from anyone. You don’t have to work at any particular job. You don’t have to participate in any given relationship. You can choose.

    The big difference between private business and tyranny is that you can boycott the free market, but the government forces you at gunpoint to do something or not do something.

    The USSR failed.

    The elites control Hollywood, the media, Wall Street, and the government.

    Almost nothing major happens in the US without the approval of the elites.

    Debt benefits the elites.

    Nanny state laws help our overlords meet their private private quotas.

    There are wars because the 1% owns the defense companies and they want more refugees to reduce wages.

    There are food stamps because the 1% owns the food corporations and makes money from the bank fees.

    The ruling class supports Obamacare and mandatory liability insurance laws because they make money from insurance premiums.

    The elites support illegal immigration because they want to divide the population.

    The 1% supports homosexuality because immorality weakens the US.

    When was the last time you saw a movie about the Bill of Rights, freedom, or family values?

    Why are immorality, blacks, and illegal immigrants praised, but morality and white men are ridiculed?

    http://miami.cbslocal.com/2015/07/15/emotional-caitlyn-jenner-accepts-ashe-courage-award-at-espys/

    What if the reason the 99% are not in concentration camps now is because the US Ponzi economy has not collapsed yet and Americans still have guns?

    Why is anyone who supports immorality, war, debt, welfare, tyranny, and illegal immigrants is labeled normal, but anyone who supports morals, peace, a balanced budget, personal responsibility, freedom, and reduced immigration is called a spammer, troll, shill, bot, racist, junkie, retard, or nutjob and is censored, banned, gets an IRS audit, is arrested, or killed?

    http://www.nj.com/jjournal-news/index.ssf/2015/12/2_secaucus_men_arrested_for_ha.html

    The elites don’t care if the US collapses because they live in gated compounds with security guards on private islands, go to private schools, and have private jets to fly them to private airports.

    Freedom is not your enemy. Tyranny is the enemy.

    Wake up.

    Think.

    Pass the word.

    http://www.badharvest.net/forum/viewforum.php?id=2

    • Preach it, Free Speech!

      I’ve dedicated whatever’s left of my life to this cause, as naive as that may be. I don’t give a damn. I will fight until the last shell – like the Bismarck…

  2. Did you catch Putin slapping down EV’s this week in his national interview? He said that all EV’s run on coal and coal is dirty so they aren’t subsidized in the Homeland.

  3. the book lays out a plan for the U.S. to achieve the following by 2050: cars completely powered by hydrogen fuel cells, electricity, and biofuels; 84 percent of trucks and airplanes running on biomass fuels; 80 percent of the nation’s electricity produced by renewable power; $5 trillion in savings; and an economy that has grown by 158 percent.

    https://e360.yale.edu/features/amory_lovins_clean_energy_guru_presents_his_master_plan

    I need to read this book just because I’m fairly certain it’s in the library of anyone in politics. Ideally, I’d love to pop in for a visit to the Aspen HQ of the Rocky Mountain Institute but I doubt I’d get past the gate.

    Mr Lovins is one of the delusional fools who think they have a way to make all this efficiency happen. By force if necessary (guess what, it’s necessary). I don’t think that people (who aren’t gear heads) are so enamored with gasoline in their daily drivers, it’s just that they can’t afford to own multiple single-task vehicles, each with monthly payments, insurance and Uncle fees. Sure, it’s cheap to charge it up compared to gasoline, but gas is already the cheap part of car ownership. So you bet we want long range and fast charging. Because unlike the folks who hang out with Amory Lovins in the enclave we don’t take the private jet to get away to the weekend “cabin” with a 3 car garage and a housekeeper who makes sure they’re all fueled up and ready when we arrive.

    The final solution of course is elimination if you don’t get on board. It won’t be enough to send us out to the reservation, this is a global problem after all. It’s for the good of everyone, so you get in line OR ELSE. “You first” you demand, and they point out how they paid off someone for dubious carbon credits, a penance given freely to Gaia for past and future sins. No one really ever says what those credits are actually used for, but hot damn they’re going to the promised land!

    I was thinking about what it would take to get everyone who commutes in a car on a train or “light rail” system. With today’s tech that’s about the only real way to run transportation on electricity. I can imagine watching as people cram themselves into the cars like in Japan, but without the civility. Because instead of planning enough seats for peak, which is expensive and inefficient, Uncle’s bean counters will build for 70-80% of “normal” capacity. We see that sort of planning today in highways, where rush hour is horrible because the road wasn’t designed for that much traffic. Except that unlike the Japanese, we tend to resist being shoved into each other and like our personal space. So that’s right out. At least until Uncle decrees limits to personal space.

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