The inevitable, planet-saving, path to universal electric vehicle (EV) ownership is becoming increasingly cratered. Some 4000 dealers recently begged President Biden to stop pushing EVs. They can’t give them away.  About half of all Ford Dealers refuse to stock them, and more than 50% of Buick dealers recently went out of business rather than sell them.  Ford has largely bet its EV future on the F-150 Lightning pickup. It’s a sucker’s bet. Ford recently announced it was cutting its EV production plans in half. Articles like Motor Trend’s “Our Last Ford F-150 Lightning EV Pickup Road Trip Was A Nightmare” explains why:

I've learned quite a few things driving MotorTrend's owned 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning Lariat extended range pickup for the past year. For starters, my ABCs: Always Be Charging. If there's an open plug nearby, our Lightning is hooked to it so as to not waste the downtime. Lesson two: As my colleagues running our 2023 F-150 Lightning XLT in Detroit have learned, speed matters, and 70 mph is the frustratingly low sweet spot between maximum speed and range. And lastly, the 20 minutes or so spent route planning via the FordPass app and third-party sources like PlugShare can save at least twice that time on a road trip. Unfortunately, that last one went out the window when my wife and I got the call Labor Day afternoon about a family emergency nearly 600 miles away. Without hesitation, we grabbed our suitcases, stuffed them with clothes, and piled into the Lightning. That's where things almost immediately went awry.

Image: French Fire Truck. Wikimedia Commons.org. Public Domain.

What went awry is range anxiety is real. The onboard range estimator was wildly optimistic, and chargers the software picked out didn’t work:

We pulled off I-5 with 37 miles of range and a 14 percent charge, navigated through the 98 Tesla Supercharger stalls, dodged the holiday crowds stopping for dinner, and found the distinctive green glow of Harris Ranch's six Electrify America towers. Two were occupied by charging vehicles, one was completely offline with its screen dark, and one showed a "Charger Unavailable!" message, but the final two appeared to be online. We plugged into the first open tower, yet despite futzing with the connector a few minutes, the charging session wouldn't start. I reached over to grab the cable from the adjacent charger to try that. No dice.

It got worse:

So we waited. The unsympathetic i4 owner got on the charger about 20 minutes later, and a long line of other EVs piled up behind me. We waited some more. The 350-kW tower that was working, it seems, just barely met that definition. Nearly two agonizing hours later, I was finally able to get our Ford plugged in and charging at the absurdly low rate of just 33 kW. It was now almost 8 p.m., and our midnight arrival now looked more like 2 a.m.

It took the author an hour to get to 182 miles of range before he gave up. Despite a hellish trip, the author remains something of an EV cheerleader:

We'll eventually get to the point where traveling with an EV is as easy as it is with a gas-powered vehicle, but trips like this are reminders that huge growing pains remain, largely with the state of the infrastructure still incapable of supporting the growing EV marketplace.

Actually, we won’t get to that point. The government allocated $7.5 billion for EV charging stations, and managed to build one—in Ohio. That’s a pricy charger, even for government work. Federal subsidies expire after a few years, leaving private owners with unprofitable chargers. 

It’s a doom loop: there’s little demand for EVs, which average $67,000 each, and Bidenomics has driven interest rates to unaffordable heights. Limited EV range demands millions of chargers, but because there are so few EVs there’s no profit in chargers. Finally responding to market forces rather than government coercion, manufacturers have chopped EV production and investment in Chinese battery plants. Only Americans in the top 7% in income can afford EVs, and they already have all they want. As if that weren’t enough, EVs have an alarming tendency to spontaneously burst into unquenchable flames. Fire Departments just keep their surroundings from igniting as EVs melt into the pavement. Two of the three major manufacturers have recently had EV-related fires.  

Combine all of this with the reality EVs aren’t better for the environment than conventional vehicles, a reality increasingly surfacing in the media, and the doom loop is complete.

 EVs aren’t ready for prime time. Absent unimaginable leaps in technology, they never will be, though that won’t stop the Mummified Meat Puppet Administration from trying to shove them down American’s throats and bank accounts.

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, 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.