Real reality-based Americans have been watching the increasingly downward spiral of electric vehicles and their associated PR machine with relief and pleasure. The venerable axiom “what cannot go on, won’t” applies. However, one of the fruits by which democrats/Socialists/Communists may be known is also their defining characteristic: they create their own reality and try to force others to live in it. So it is with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is, by the way, gay. You don’t have to ask him; he’ll tell you.  Here’s his current reality: 

“[T]he share of EVs has been dramatically increasing every single year, and that’s continuing. Now, our goal is, by the end of this decade, to be about half-and-half. We think that that can and will happen. But what isn’t guaranteed is, first of all, is that EV revolution going to continue to be made in America? During the Trump administration, China really built a major advantage on EVs. But as somebody who comes from the industrial Midwest, sees how the auto industry creates so much by way of livelihoods where I come from and really around the country, I’m much more excited about the jobs being created on U.S. soil, and that doesn’t just happen. We’ve got to make sure that the U.S. leads the way as this technology changes. I don’t know a lot of people who think that Americans in 2050 are still going to be driving that old technology, that combustion technology that we inherited from the 20th century.”

So much delusion. So much waste.

“Well, no, you’re not going to meet a lot of people who ever go back after they’ve got electric, and I think that really tells you something. That shows you that the lower maintenance, the fact that it costs less to maintain, the fact that they break down [with] less frequency, and the cost savings that you get by not having to buy gas or diesel are I think why you almost never meet somebody who has an EV who says, I want to back to the old technology.”

Image: Jonathunder, wikimedia commons, GNU Free Documentation License

Reality provides a different perspective. Some 4000 dealers recently begged President Biden to end his EV push. They can’t give away the EVs rusting, and sometimes combusting, on their lots. Half of Buick dealers took a buyout rather than sell EVs. About half of Ford dealers refuse to stock EVs. Losing something around $5 billion on EVs in 2023, Ford has backed out of its battery plant deal with China and has halved its future EV production plans. GM, recognizing reality, and like Ford, likely recognizing an impending stockholder revolt, is also substantially cutting back its EV dreams. Electric Bus maker Proterra, a company Joe Biden lauded as the future, went bankrupt in 2022, going the way of Solyndra and many other Obama/Biden green fantasies, taking untold taxpayers billions with them.

China owns EV production, and virtually all of the rare earths and processing necessary to produce EV batteries. New deposits of rare earths have been found in Wyoming, as well as promising projects to process them more cheaply and efficiently, but the Administration is death on any kind of exploitation of America’s natural resources. Expanding anything having to do with EVs directly benefits China and harms the American economy and national security, which is probably largely why the Mummified Meat Puppet Administration is so hot for EVs.

The MMPA allocated $7.5 billion for a plethora of EV chargers across America. As 2023 ends, in a stunning display of federal efficiency and can-do spirit, one has been built—in Ohio.  At that rate, we can expect about 27 by 2050.

The public is waking up to EV reality. Repairs costs are double that for Internal Combustion Engine—ICE—vehicles, and battery replacement runs 1/3 the MSRP of EVs. The current EV average price is $67,000 dollars, far outside the realm of possibility for all but the 7% of Americans who buy EVs for greenie street cred. Even better, insurers are also awakening to reality and dramatically raising rates or refusing to ensure EVs altogether. Experience has proved EVs are not cheaper to operate than ICE vehicles

Unlike in Buttigieg’s reality, in real reality many EV buyers are unloading their EVs at a loss.  Only the wealthy who have all the ICE vehicles they need and buy EVs as toys, are not.  Unsurprisingly, there is virtually no used EV market.  They’re too expensive, and reality-based Americans aren’t going to buy a used EV knowing they’ll have to immediately spend more than $10 thousand for a home charger and tens of thousands for battery replacement sooner rather than later.

Perhaps Pete likes living in his fantasy world. Sane Americans prefer reality, where EVs will not, and cannot, dominate the market.

Mike McDaniel is a classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher.  His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.