It’s pretty clear what is going to happen to new cars now that Joe Biden has been selected president. They will get smaller – and smaller engined. They will also cost more – and more of them will be electric. These developments follow inevitably from Uncle Joe’s pending reversal of the Orange Fail’s policies, including the OF’s efforts to prevent California Governor Gavin Newsome from setting new car “emissions” standards for the rest of the states.
They are actually not “emissions” standards in the sense generally understood – i.e., harmful gasses coming out of the tailpipe. Unless you consider nonreactive carbon dioxide a contributor to smog and breathing problems – in which case you need a refresher course in high school chemistry.
Also high school English.
In any event the insistence on ever-lower “emissions” of C02 will result in all of the things mentioned above coming to fruition as the only way to reduce these “emissions” is to make engines smaller – as has already been occurring – or to not make them at all and make electric motors instead.
That’s what’s coming to showrooms near you – and everyone else – soon. But what about what’s in your garage?
Given how expensive – and unappealing – new cars are going to be become, lots of people are probably going to “cling” to the cars they already have. This presents a problem for a new car industry that is now essentially a government subsidiary that builds cars in response to mandates rather than the market.
This has been true to some extent for a long time, of course – but it has not been wholly the case up to the present and for that reason, the market counterbalanced the mandates.
A good example of this being the number of very profitable trucks and large SUVs sold to counterbalance the losses incurred giving away small-engined, small cars and hybrids – which were mostly made not because the market demand for them was high but because government fuel efficiency mandates were. The 40 MPG small car or hybrid helped “offset” the 25 MPG truck or SUV.
But when the mandates make it impossible to sell trucks and SUVs in volume – because compliance costs make them unaffordable for most – and the only things on offer are small-engined small cars and high-cost electric cars, it’s going to be harder to persuade those who already have a truck or SUV or some other kind of car that isn’t electric to give them up for something less that costs a lot more.
Hence, it is likely that incentives will be applied.
They will be of a piece with those just proposed by the president selected with regard to firearms, among them a $200 “fee” applied to each one as the condition of being allowed to retain possession. If you fail to pay up, you are subject to a Hut! Hut! Hutting! as a criminal and imprisonment for as long as ten years.
Probably, those who “cling” to their not-new cars won’t be arrested. But it is extremely likely they’ll be expected to pay new – and higher – fees as the price of being allowed to retain possession of their politically incorrect vehicles. These fees – and other costs – will be engineered to eliminate the politically incorrect cost-savings of possessing an older and paid-for car vs. a new car, with particular emphasis paid to making it at least as expensive to keep a not-electric car as it would be to buy – or rather, make payments on – an electric car.
This explains why GM and Ford – which had been losing money before the Orange Fail – are all of a sudden making it again via rising stock valuation based on the expected profits to be made forcing Americans to drive electric cars,which they’ve both “invested” in heavily despite the absence of any real market for them.
Biden will mandate a market for them. And impose other mandates, too.
The first step in this Great Leap Forward has already been proposed by the president selected’s incoming leiter of the Department of Transportation, the federal apparat that tells Americans what they’re allowed to drive and under what conditions they’ll be allowed to drive them. Pete Buttigieg – the new leiter of the apparat – wants to raise the federal tax on gasoline, notwithstanding that the cost of the tax on gasoline is already extortionate (at about 50 cents per gallon currently, it amounts to about a 25 percent tax on every gallon of gas sold, making it one of the highest and most regressive taxes we’re forced to pay).
The president selected has also cancelled the Keystone pipeline, reversing another of the Orange Fail’s policies. The pipeline would have conduited oil from Alberta, Canada directly into – and throughout – the United States. Whatever you think about the pipeline’s “environmental impact” there is no question about its impact on the supply of oil – and thereby, on the price of gasoline.
There will be no oil flowing through the cancelled pipeline and that means less oil to refine – and reduced supply of a hot-commodity item usually means you pay more for it.
It is not inconceivable that additional “green” taxes will be applied to gasoline and everything associated with gas – and oil.
Including oil. Engine oil. You pay about $6 a quart today. You could be paying $10 a quart soon.
But the real nudge will probably come in the form of new – and higher – annual permission-to-use-it fees, i.e., vehicle registration renewal, something already in effect in the country that the United States is rapidly becoming – i.e., China. Over there, you’re allowed to use a non-electric car (no one owns anything over there – as here) provided you pay the requisite fee. Which is set such that the not-electric car costs the same as the electric car – and then you pay through both nostrils for the gas it needs. 
It is possible, given the people now in charge of the apparat, that there will be fines applied merely for possessing (and not actually driving) a politically incorrect car – as the president select has just proposed be applied to those who “cling” to their firearms.
This would twist the arm of people who own classic cars especially and they are the most politically incorrect cars of all, being equipped with no emissions controls whatsoever in many cases and also no “safety” equipment, either. The president select owns one such himself – a classic Corvette. But then, he also owns lots of guns – and has lots of guns around for his protection.
He just doesn’t want us to have either thing.
. . . .
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You must have missed this:
NEW – House Speaker Pelosi or her husband Paul, who runs a venture capital firm, bought Tesla call options at a stake price of $500 each for a total of $500,000-$1,000,000 just 4 weeks before Biden pushed a $2 trillion “Green New Deal” yesterday (Yahoo)
https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1354831599284711425
Hi Bardelys,
Yup; I meant to write about this but got sidetracked. It shouldn’t be a great surprise to anyone. The capitol is filled with drooling hyenas.
Just yesterday, by executive order, caving to the woke culture, jo has banned sales of all new vehicles without a battery.
Unbelievable!
Sock puppet Joe’s next two years will not go well. Even his liberal supporters are little more than a heard of cats in a room full of rocking chairs. The howling has already started and will only get louder and more insane.
Keep in mind government runs on process and make busy work for millions of pay check recipients. Not any coherent plan. I bought a used motorcycle awhile back. Turned out to be a mechanical dud not worth keeping on the road. So it got parted out, with the drivetrain and frame ending up in the recycle bin. The state of California refused reality and wanted their annual alms payment for the VIN number. Even though it no longer existed. They refused reality without a junk yard certificate of junking. Fine says I. M. Mouse with an address of Disneyland, CA has been getting the transfer of ownership annual registration (with fines and penalties) bill ever since.
Gun tax? Guns owned and registered by and to whom?
Start thinking creatively, because government can’t. As J. Paul Getty once said : own nothing, control everything.
“This explains why GM and Ford – which had been losing money before the Orange Fail – are all of a sudden making it again via rising stock valuation based on the expected profits to be made forcing Americans to drive electric cars, which they’ve both “invested” in heavily despite the absence of any real market for them.
Biden will mandate a market for them. And impose other mandates, too.”
And THIS is the problem I have with Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians who cling to the fantasy of “Muh free market.” There IS no “free market.” I certainly wish there was, but it’s a fairy tale. Every market is controlled by the government one way or another. People buying auto stocks are really betting on government regulation and/or rent-seeking to create a monopoly or quasi-monopoly that people will be forced to give money to.
The question is not whether there shall be a free market or not. The question is, who will benefit from the rigged market? Me and my fellow working-class American proles? Or globalist elites, oligarchs and money-men?
Also Biden promised to convert all 640000 federal vehicles to electric https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/25/president-joe-biden-commits-to-replacing-entire-federal-fleet-with-electric-vehicles/
“Biden’s call to transform the fleet supports statements he made throughout his campaign. Biden pledged to “use all the levers of the federal government,” including purchasing power, R&D, tax, trade, and investment policies to position the U.S. to be the global leader in the manufacture of electric vehicles and their input materials and parts”
Funny how the largest polluter is the US government, in particular the US military. Yet no mention EVER of cutting their “emissions.
Sorry, I don’t think any of this will work for me.
$200 tax per magazine? Uh huh. That should work out, Mr. Sniffy.
I think secession will be increasingly popular. At some point, you can’t keep telling Americans to bend over and touch their toes. That’s not who we are.
There is a generation of snowflakes that will cowtow but as in nature they are weak and will not be viable in the future.
Normally i would agree with this, but after what i have witnessed going on for the last 10+ months i don’t know anymore.
I agree with Antilles. As long as people have too much to lose, they’ll comply with almost anything.
long live FCA in current form with V8’s!!! Glad I currently own 3 of them.
How much it will cost me to own in the future remains to be seen. In the meantime, I’m in car bliss and enjoying them every day.
If they want to regulate “emissions”, then they need to stop selling beans and mandate Beano for everyone. 😛
This will devastate the poor, as usual, but then again, when did they ever give a shit about the poor?
It’s yet another case of the elites being blind to reality and projecting their own shit on the rest of us. They live in cities on the coasts and have no clue how the rest of us in smaller cities and towns in flyover country live. Nor do they give a shit.
Maybe, besides looking at how the Amish live and emulating them to escape the insanity, we need to look towards illegal aliens and make like them, sharing older cars and splitting the cost up between a few people.
Dodge just acknowledged the writing on the wall. The story even references the truth of the matter and the 800 lb gorilla, gov’t and it’s regs, but puts a happy face on it.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/26/dodge-boss-says-evs-can-save-americas-new-golden-age-of-muscle-cars.html
Sea level rise. CO₂ highest rate ever measured. Warmest year ever.
No mention that up until the fall of the Soviet Union, there was exactly 1 weather station in Siberia. No mention that for most of human existence there was no measurement of the Pacific Ocean temperature. La Nina and El Nino patterns weren’t discovered until the 1990s. And, of course the fact that we have exponentially better instrumentation today compared to what was available 100 years ago is ignored or forgotten.
After the fall of Communism 1.0 there was a lot of talk about “the end of history” amongst the intellectuals. I had no idea what they were talking about. Only now does it become clear. No history means today’s news is always the worst thing ever. And without context worrying about something that might happen according to a P-hacked computer simulation 50 years from now is an actual concern for average people. We’ve been given a taste of what happens when stop the engine that drives the world, and it led to riots and division. A group of LARRPers are compared to the perpetrators of Reichstag fire. And without atonement for your good life your great grandchildren will burn.
I’ve often wondered about that sort of thing myself, RK. I live in a fairly rural area that was virtually uninhabited a hundred years ago. How can anyone say that temperatures have risen by x amount over the last hundred years when nobody was here to know what the temperature was a hundred years ago? Who was out and about getting accurate temperature, humidity, rainfall, snowfall readings on a daily basis in northern New England or Upstate New York or a thousand other desolate places a hundred and fifty years ago? Same thing with sea levels. I doubt that the good folks of Charleston were taking those measurements while the northerners were destroying their city. I can’t accept their assertions of the changes that have occurred over the last however many years when nobody really knew or cared what was what a hundred/hundred fifty years ago.
Hi Eric,
Yep…last year at about this time, I went from polishing my car and motorcycles to polishing my guns. It’s coming.
Keystone pipeline permit cancelation…where is a judge who is going to place an injunction against that ruling? How many judges placed injunctions against Trump for bad reasons…many. This is a constitutional reason specifically Section 9: “no Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.” Cancelling the permit is a violation of both. Can a mayor, whom just got elected, cancel an already granted construction permit for political reasons? So the new mayor doesn’t like the developer who did not contribute to his campaign and in retribution decides to cancel an already granted permit? This is also likely a violation of the commerce clause as well. To get a building permit is difficult. To go thru all the redtape and regulations paying all the permit fees is in exchange allows the permit holder to proceed. Yes, he or she must comply with the terms of the permits and prove thru inspections compliance but to cancel the permit? The workers will suffer. The contractors will make out like a bandit by filing a claim for lost profit which His Fraudulency will have to pay via claims to be filed shortly coming. The Union workers will lose. The unions are in bed with the socialist for other reasons besides keeping their members working.
This is why when anyone complains to me about union job losses or rising prices on gas or other things and i know they voted for this propped up dementia patient because “Trump says mean things” i let them have it. Normally i get the standard line of “but i was told he wasn’t going to do that.” I can’t wait till my diabetic neighbor who voted for the drooling one because of Trump’s mean tweets goes to refil his insulin prescription and sees that prices are back to pre orange levels. He will be the first to complain when this happens. I will remind him that the good news in that is at least there are no more mean tweets and he will just have to suck it up because clueless joe needs to give back to all those pharmaceutical companies that helped him become the president select.
Remind the Biden voters that at least their guy now acts “presidential.” That should make them feel better
blue state new mexico just saw all their oil drilling cancelled on federal land. haha – thats what you get!
Mark,
I heard that mr “i don’t even know what i’m signing” only put a 60 day moratorium on drilling on fed lands. I think this may have been the publicity stunt for the enviro wack job odummyo cortez crowd while in 60 days he quietly lets it expire and back to business as usual with no headlines of course because that would anger the enviro wack jobs. I may be wrong but i did see a report that said it was for 60 days. Not that many companies will want to start production back up again, especially if they realize at any given time the drooling wonder could sign another cancellation.
‘Lots of people are probably going to “cling” to the cars they already have.’ — EP
Oh yeah, a close observer could spot the rifle barrel protruding from a narrow slit in my bunker, vigilantly guarding the precious vintage vehicles in the driveway. [Note to FBI social media monitor: SARCASM, dude!]
Meanwhile, Martin Amis gives us a peek at Joe’s low-key first night in another heavily-armed bunker, the White House:
‘During the hour that remained before his bedtime, the president finished the gull’s eggs and the potted shrimps and the beef sausages and the huge game pie and the second bottle of claret, and then went and rocked on his heels with his back to the room’s only source of heat.
‘Comfortably muttering to himself, Joe rocked and twanged away – the one-bar electric fire, the slimline shirt, the shiny old flares.’
– ‘Inside Story,’ p. 113
Even the racing community is still insisting that the Emperor has such a fine new set of clothes. Here is a release from IMSA regarding the electric Hyundai that will be given a few demo laps at Daytona…
https://www.imsa.com/news/2021/01/22/hyundai-imsa-charged-up-for-veloster-n-etcr-demo/?fbclid=IwAR35nEXxIQAaiyrgNJWK15x-nhvzXDHGqxUkdpRqNWs8jG7qo2tmtcHVwwI
From the 3rd paragraph, “With much of the automotive industry trending toward electrification”. No mention of government mandates, regulations or fatwas just, “trending”. To paraphrase the old quote, There are none so blind as those who will not see…the government gun on the negotiation table.
This is similar language to the “trend” towards globalization. As if it is some unknown all powerful force, an unstoppable force, compelling all in its wake to move in this direction. “The trend towards globalization.” “As the market becomes more global.” “We have to lay off 50,000 people to become more competitive in the global market.”