Electric Vehicles Are Not the Future

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by JOHN HINDERAKER

The mania for electric vehicles is a fad that is driven 100% by government regulation. The consumer verdict on EVs has been in for a century. Some of the earliest cars were battery-powered, but they lost out to gasoline-powered cars because gasoline-powered vehicles are better.
 
Those who have been paying attention understand that there is zero chance that our existing motor vehicle fleet will be converted to EVs. Mark Tapscott sums up some of the reasons. I want to focus on just one of his points, the fact that the lithium batteries needed to replace our current vehicle fleet would require ridiculous amounts of mining of minerals, particularly lithium, the price of which is already sky-high. How do liberals intend to accomplish this unprecedented global mining project?
 
Answer: they don’t. Mark quotes from a report by an environmental organization:

This report finds that the United States can achieve zero emissions transportation while limiting the amount of lithium mining necessary by reducing the car dependence of the transportation system, decreasing the size of electric vehicle batteries, and maximizing lithium recycling.
 
Reordering the US transportation system through policy and spending shifts to prioritize public and active transit while reducing car dependency can also ensure transit equity, protect ecosystems, respect Indigenous rights, and meet the demands of global justice.

This is what liberal politicians are not telling you–yet. They don’t really plan to replace your car with an EV, they don’t want to replace it at all. They want you to walk, bicycle, and use public transportation. In other words, they want to destroy the traditional American freedom to, as Mark says, go where we please, when we please. That is a radical and unwelcome change in American life, right up there with eating insects instead of meat.
 
Where I live, we are already seeing this push to take us out of our cars. Highways in the Twin Cities are deliberately under-designed, so that traffic is needlessly congested. Urban planners, not just oblivious but hostile to our basic freedoms, have spent billions of dollars on trains that hardly anyone rides, and have converted traffic lanes to bicycle lanes that are scarcely used–not used at all, this time of year–thus snarling traffic further. Their dream of mass reliance on public transportation is a century out of date; mass transit usage peaked in the Twin Cities in the early 20th Century. But the fun of inconveniencing the rest of us is too good to pass up.
 
It is notable that during the covid shutdowns, automobile traffic, air traffic, and public transportation all cratered for a while. Automobile miles traveled are now back to pre-covid levels, and air travel exceeds those levels. But public transportation has not rebounded. My organization released a report just a week or two ago that documents these trends and some of the reasons for them. It applies to Minnesota but also includes national data. The phenomena are more or less the same everywhere.

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Going totally EV and ending all use of Fossil Fuels is stupid and irresponsible and based upon Junk Science and Politics why else would Biden the Blunder want to force them upon us its all about Globalism and this Global warming/Climate Change Lie

Yeah, it’s notable that the left never really counters the argument that the power grid can’t sustain recharging everyone’s cars and there isn’t enough raw materials to provide for enough electric vehicles for everyone. That doesn’t matter because on an elite few will have personal vehicles.

Who has used public transportation? My last 5 years or so of work I rode the train to work. I did so because I hated the congested traffic going home. To ride the train, though, to get to work at 0530, I had to be at the station at 0420. That’s when the first train left (I had to travel to a distant station because the nearest one didn’t have a train that ran that early). Then, unless I was able to catch a ride with someone I worked with that passed the arrival station, I had to catch a bus that let me out just outside the parking lot gate where I could arrive at work right at 0530.

I also researched the use of mass transit for others I worked with (because I wanted more to use it to get the company to run a shuttle bus to the arrival station) and the line I used was the only one with a schedule that supported getting to work on time.

I also never experienced mass transit during a time of epidemic when the government wisdom promoted useless masks and avoiding crowds. How can the government promote mass transit (and the mass living that supports the viability of mass transit) when they also want to promote the perpetual epidemic conditions?

Using mass transit eats up a LOT more of your free time. It also limits your options (no more stopping off for a few groceries on the way home). If everyone had to use mass transit, that would make the time issue even worse (in the afternoons, the trains were FULL; more people using the system would have required me to wait for a later train). Don’t fool yourself into thinking the recent talk about a 4-day work week is to make YOUR life better; it’s to prop up the capacity of mass transit.

Electric busses wont work in sub zero temperatures will you heat your garage so you can charge your car, how energy efficient is that? Then there is the fire hazard with these batteries, ready for your insurance bill? Snarled traffic because someone didnt plug in their car last night?
15 minute cities they used to be called ghettos, but are really as envisioned concentration camps of total control, facial recognition and social credit scores. The best way to control rationing.
They cant fix the cities now, imagine how you would have to live if they got their dream. It aint utopia, read the book it wasnt either.

Looks like ole Joey didn’t pay enough tribute to someone.
https://www.cfact.org/2023/02/28/greens-try-lawsuits-to-thwart-nevada-lithium-mine/