Automotive
‘Save Our Cars’ Is A Winning Campaign Message In An Age Of EV Mandates
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By KEVIN MOONEY
Automobile consumers who treasure the open roads during the summertime could upend the presidential campaign and U.S. Senate races in surprising places if public opposition to electric-vehicle mandates and other regulations continues to rise.
That is what some recent polls suggest and it certainly helps to explain why the Biden administration is poised to artificially reduce fuel prices by selling one million barrels of gasoline from an energy reserve in New England timed with the summer driving season and in anticipation of the November elections.
Since the East Coast consumed in excess of three million barrels a day of gasoline last June, it is not evident that having an additional one million barrels on the market will make an appreciable difference.
Moreover, there is an argument to be made that by tapping into the reserve Team Biden is leaving the region open to cyberattacks that would disrupt energy supplies. (Recall, that is precisely what happened throughout the southeast in 2021 when a ransomware attack hit the Colonial Pipeline.)
But even in the absence of any cyber drama, the cumulative effect of President Joe Biden’s anti-energy agenda is already registering with consumers who benefit from affordable, reliable energy. This is particularly true where conventional, gas-powered cars are concerned.
On holiday weekends, cars erase differences, bring families together and improve the quality of life. The American Automobile Association (AAA) predicts almost 50 million people will travel 50 miles or more from their homes to celebrate Independence Day over the weekend of June 30 to July 4.
This would represent an increase of 3.7% from 2021 bringing travel volumes to where they were prior to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019. This increase will be particularly acute with AAA expecting 42 million Americans to hit the roads this coming Independence Day.
But what about those EV mandates?
President Biden and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fellow Democrat, remain undeterred by the paucity of charging stations, the limited range of EV’s, their exorbitant costs, and the vulnerability of foreign supply chains leading back to China as they press ahead with new regulatory initiatives. Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency finalized a tailpipe emissions rule in March aimed at coercing automakers into selling more EVs while the California Air Resources Board is pressing ahead with a “zero emissions” rule the board approved last year to meet Newsom’s stated climate goals.
California is clearly working hand in glove with the Biden administration to achieve zero emissions goals for vehicles by 2035. This effort will most certainly limit consumer choice and raise costs.
Despite all the subsidies and regulatory schemes developed to favor EV’s, they represent only about 1% of the 290 million vehicles in the U.S. today. Meanwhile EV costs continue to soar.
Recent studies also show that EVs, on average, are more expensive to own and operate than their gas-powered counterparts. So how should consumers respond to the regulatory onslaught?
Enter the “Save Our Cars Coalition,” which includes 31 national and state organizations devoted to preserving the ability of consumers to select the vehicles most suitable to their needs.
Tom Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research, a coalition member that favors free market energy policies, views cars as an integral component of American life. The Biden-Newsom regulations amount to what Pyle describes as “an assault on American freedom.”
“In a nation as expansive as the United States, cars are not merely vehicles, they are integral to the American way of life,” Pyle says. “They play a pivotal role in our daily lives, especially in suburban and rural settings. This modern-day prohibition would outlaw a product and a value–in this case, gasoline-powered cars and trucks that have created personal mobility on an unprecedented scale – that it cannot persuade people to forego themselves.”
The coalition is perfectly positioned to make EV mandates a campaign issue in areas where the affordability of cars capable of traversing long distances without frequent stops is very much on the minds of voters. State officials who continue to double-down on California-type regulations will only serve to bolster the coalition’s arguments.
By contrast, states that break free from California’s emissions standards could become surprisingly competitive in the presidential race. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, recently announced that he would end California’s EV mandate in his state by the end of this year. Although Virginia hasn’t backed a Republican for president since George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004, polls show Biden and Donald Trump are in a dead heat. The former, and perhaps future Republican president, is on record opposing Biden’s EV mandates.
By contrast, Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, a Democrat elected in 2017 and re-elected in 2021, is moving full speed ahead with a California-type mandate requiring all new car sales to be electric by 2035. Polls show Murphy’s Jersey constituents are not keen on the policy change. In fact, more than half of state residents say they are not inclined to buy an electric car even with the mandates.
New Jersey has not voted for a Republican presidential candidate since George Bush Sr. won the state in 1988. But fresh polls show Biden leading Trump by just seven points in the Garden State. It is worth noting that New Jersey has a large block of unaffiliated voters that can be pliable in tight races such as the most recent gubernatorial campaign.
Murphy almost lost his re-election bid to Republican Jack Ciattarelli, a former assemblyman and businessman, who came within a few percentage points of pulling off an upset. Trump’s campaign rally in Wildwood, N.J., that attracted more than 100,000 people could also serve as a barometer for a potentially close election. A beach resort community, Wildwood is practically inaccessible without the kind of vehicles Biden and Newsom are attempting to ban.
The big prize though may be Pennsylvania where Trump is leading Biden in recent polls. There is also a competitive U.S. Senate race in that state between Sen. Robert Casey Jr., the Democratic incumbent, and Dave McCormick, the Republican challenger.
Polls show Casey is only ahead by six points. So far, Casey has been ducking and avoiding any questions about his position on EV mandates. With Trump already leading, and McCormick gaining in the Keystone State, anyone running on a platform of “Save Our Cars” could have a field day.
Kevin Mooney is the Senior Investigative Reporter at the Commonwealth Foundation’s free-market think tank and writes for several national publications. Twitter: @KevinMooneyDC
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
The future direction of federal energy policy related to the transportation sector is a key question that will be determined in one way or another by the outcome of the presidential election. What remains unclear is the extent of change that a Trump presidency would bring.
Given that Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk is a major supporter of former President Donald Trump, it seems unlikely a Trump White House would move to try to end the EV subsidies and tax breaks included in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). Those provisions, of course, constitute the “carrot” end of the Biden-Harris carrot-and-stick suite of policies designed to promote the expansion of EVs in the U.S. market.
The “stick” side of that approach comes in the form of stricter tailpipe emissions rules and higher fleet auto-mileage requirements imposed on domestic carmakers. While a Harris administration would likely seek to impose even more federal pressure through such command-and-control regulatory measures, a Trump administration would likely be more inclined to ease them.
But doing that is difficult and time-consuming and much would depend on the political will of those Trump appoints to lead the relevant agencies and departments.
Those and other coercive EV-related policies imposed during the Biden-Harris years have been designed to move the U.S. auto industry directionally to meet the administration’s stated goal of having EVs make up a third of the U.S. light duty fleet by 2030. The suite of policies does not constitute a hard mandate per se but is designed to produce a similar pre-conceived outcome.
It is the sort of heavy-handed federal effort to control markets that Trump has spoken out against throughout his first term in office and his pursuit of a second term.
A new report released this week by big energy data and analytics firm Enverus seems likely to influence prospective Trump officials to take a more favorable view of the potential for EVs to grow as a part of the domestic transportation fleet. Perhaps the most surprising bit of news in the study, conducted by Enverus subsidiary Enverus Intelligence Research (EIR), is a projection that EVs are poised to be lower-priced than their equivalent gas-powered models as soon as next year, due to falling battery costs.
“Battery costs have fallen rapidly, with 2024 cell costs dipping below $100/kWh. We predict from [2025] forward EVs will be more affordable than their traditional, internal combustible engine counterparts,” Carson Kearl, analyst at EIR, says in the release. Kearl further says that EIR expects the number of EVs on the road in the US to “exceed 40 million (20%) by 2035 and 80 million (40%) by 2040.”
The falling battery costs have been driven by a collapse in lithium prices. Somewhat ironically, that price collapse has in turn been driven by the failure of EV expansion to meet the unrealistic goal-setting mainly by western governments, including the United States. Those same cause-and-effect dynamics would most likely mean that prices for lithium, batteries and EVs would rise again if the rapid market penetration projected by EIR were to come to fruition.
In the U.S. market, the one and only certainty of all of this is that something is going to have to change, and soon. On Monday, Ford Motor Company reported it lost another $1.2 billion in its Ford Model e EV division in the 3rd quarter, bringing its accumulated loss for the first 9 months of 2024 to $3.7 billion.
Energy analyst and writer Robert Bryce points out in his Substack newsletter that that Model e loss is equivalent to the $3.7 billion profit Ford has reported this year in its Ford Blue division, which makes the company’s light duty internal combustion cars and trucks.
While Tesla is doing fine, with recovering profits and a rising stock price amid the successful launch of its CyberTruck and other new products, other pure-play EV makers in the United States are struggling to survive. Ford’s integrated peers GM and Stellantis have also struggled with the transition to more EV model-heavy fleets.
None of this is sustainable, and a recalibration of policy is in order. Next Tuesday’s election will determine which path the redirection of policy takes.
David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Author: Kris Sims
The Trudeau government’s ban on new gas and diesel vehicles is a nonstarter for three powerful reasons.
First, Canadians want to drive gas-powered minivans and diesel pickups.
Second, Canada does not have the electrical power to fuel these battery-powered cars.
Third, Canadians do not have the money to build the power-generating stations that would be needed to power these government-mandated vehicles.
Let’s start on the showroom floor.
The Trudeau government is banning the sale of new gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles by 2035.
In about 10 years’ time, Canadians will not be allowed to buy a new vehicle powered by an internal combustion engine because the government will forbid it.
Canadians disagree with this.
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation released Leger polling showing 59 per cent of Canadians oppose the federal government’s ban on new gas and diesel vehicles.
Among those who are decided on the issue, 67 per cent of Canadians, and majorities in every demographic, oppose the Trudeau government’s ban.
Now let’s look under the hood.
Canada does not have the electricity to charge these battery-powered cars. The government hasn’t presented any plan to pay for the power plants, transmission lines and charging stations for these government-mandated vehicles.
That leaves a big question: How much will this cost taxpayers?
Canada’s vehicle transition could cost up to $300 billion by 2040 to expand the electrical grid, according to a report for Natural Resources Canada.
Let’s look at why this will cost so much.
The average Canadian household uses about 10,861 kWh in electricity per year. The average electric car uses about 4,500 kWh of energy per year.
The average household’s electricity use would jump by about 40 per cent if they bought one EV and charged it at home.
Canada is home to 24 million cars and light trucks that run on gasoline and diesel, according to Statistics Canada.
If all those vehicles were powered by electricity and batteries, that fleet would use about 108 million mWh of power every year.
For context, one large CANDU nuclear reactor at the Darlington nuclear plant in Ontario generates about 7,750,000 mWh of power per year.
Canada would require about 14 of these reactors to power all of those electric cars.
Building a large nuclear reactor costs about $12.5 billion.
That’s a price tag of about $175 billion just for all the power plants. The Natural Resources report estimates the transition to electric vehicles could cost up to $300 billion in total, when new charging stations and power lines are included.
Who would be paying that tab? Normal Canadians through higher taxes and power bills.
Canadians cannot afford the cost of these mandatory electric vehicles because they’re broke.
Canadians are broke largely because of high taxes and high inflation, both driven by the Trudeau government’s wasteful spending.
About half of Canadians say they are within $200 of not being able to make the minimum payments on their bills each month. That’s also known as barely scraping by.
Food banks are facing record demand, with a sharp increase in working families needing help. That means parents who are holding down jobs are still depending on donated jars of peanut butter to feed their kids.
Rubbing salt into the wound, the federal government also put taxpayers on the hook for about $30 billion to multinational corporations like Honda, Volkswagen, Stellantis and Northvolt to build EV battery factories.
The roadside sobriety test is complete, and the Trudeau government is blowing a fail on this policy.
Canadians are opposed to the Trudeau government banning the sale of new gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles.
Canada does not have the electricity to charge these battery-powered cars.
Canadians don’t have the money to build the new power plants, transmission lines and charging stations these vehicles would demand.
It’s time to tow this ban on new gas and diesel vehicles to the scrapyard.
Franco Terrazzano is the Federal Director and Kris Sims is the Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
10 reasons Donald Trump is headed for a landslide victory over Kamala Harris
Multi-million dollar drug seizure in southwest Edmonton
Ottawa’s plan to decarbonize Canada’s electricity by 2035 not feasible and would require equivalent of 23 Site C hydroelectric dams
Release the names! Foreign interference scandal reaching boiling point in shocking press conference
-
C2C Journal23 hours agoMischief Trial of the Century: Inside the Crown’s Bogus, Punitive and Occasionally Hilarious Case Against the Freedom Convoy’s Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, Part I
-
Bruce Dowbiggin2 days agoWhy Canada’s Elites Are Captives To The Kamala Narrative
-
Business1 day agoPremiers fight to lower gas taxes as Trudeau hikes pump costs
-
Agriculture1 day agoSweeping ‘pandemic prevention’ bill would give Trudeau government ability to regulate meat production
-
Alberta2 days agoAlberta Bill of Rights Amendment, Bill 24 – Stronger protections for personal rights
-
Economy2 days agoGas prices plummet in BC thanks to TMX pipeline expansion
-
Economy2 days agoOne Solution to Canada’s Housing Crisis: Move. Toronto loses nearly half million people to more affordable locations
-
Business2 days agoTrudeau government spends millions producing podcasts