History may someday record today as the beginning of the end of the internal combustion engine – and of individual liberty in the U.S.
According to news reports, the EPA is scheduled to release proposed auto emissions standards today on new car sales so stringent that the only way for automakers to meet them would be to shift two-thirds of their fleet to electric.
But wait. How can a regulatory agency do that? Consumers aren’t demanding electric cars. Lawmakers didn’t vote to force them on the public. The Environmental Protection Agency knows better, though, and, unless it’s neutered, plans to force EVs on you – for your own good.
As the Washington Post helpfully explains, “while the rule changes wouldn’t order or require auto companies to sell a certain number of electric vehicles, it would set emissions limits so tightly the only way to comply would be to sell large percentages of EVs.”
To be clear, we are not talking about air pollution. We are talking about emissions of carbon dioxide, which is not a pollutant but which the EPA has assumed the power to regulate.
The stated goal is to have up to 67% of new cars sold by 2032 be fully electric. (Today, EVs make up a tiny 6% of auto sales.)
The EPA’s latest salvo has put the auto industry in a bind. Having leaped into bed with environmental radicals and the Biden administration in years past, it now finds itself at the mercy of the federal government when it comes to what cars it will be allowed to sell.
The Washington Post notes that “The most aggressive options in the EPA’s proposal are so stringent that many automakers, especially those slowest to adopt electric cars and trucks, will see it as more aggressive than what they can realistically meet.”
We hate to say we told you so, but we told you so. Back in 2011, when we were with the now-defunct IBD editorials page. That year, automakers lined up to support the Obama administration’s ridiculously strict 54.5 miles per gallon fuel-economy standard, which was also designed to force-feed electric cars into the market. Instead of fighting, automakers bent the knee.
“Whatever their reason for caving in to White House demands,” we observed at the time, “the fact is that carmakers have just handed over their businesses lock, wheel, and engine to the dictates of government bureaucrats and global warming enthusiasts.”
Today, we will make another prediction.
That is: The EPA’s move will set off an intra-industry battle, with companies that have already sold their corporate souls to the climate change crowd “heroically” fighting for stricter EV mandates, while those that want to sell cars consumers demand will plead for regulatory leniency and get branded as heretics.
We also predict that none of these automakers will have the stones to argue that this entire socialistic campaign is horribly misguided. That it is a vast overreach of government power. That it is an affront to our basic liberties. That it will cost consumers a fortune. That it will be massively disruptive. And that, even if the EPA gets its way, it will achieve nothing climate-wise.
And that no matter how many concessions automakers make, climate hysterics will never be satisfied … until private ownership of cars is completely outlawed.
Can the EPA be stopped? Yes, but only if consumers rise up and demand an end to this regulatory dictatorship.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
The government dictating how a business is to run its business is not so much ‘socialism’, its more fascism.
It is corporate Socialism, so it is absolutely and precisely Fascism.
However, I can’t see it happening.
IT IS unfortunate that the American people have become a nation of sheep being herded into a corral of sameness by the administrative border collie(rules and regulations) into what type of washer/dryer, cold wash, longer electric drying time,what type of car you drive(EV only,like Hitler’s VW),type of stove(electric,not gas),what heats your home(electric/wood,not oil, gas),what to eat bugs,not meat,what schools teach our children,sex, not reading,writing,arithmetic. When are Americans, land of the brave, home of the free going to rebel against this dictatorial government?
The myriad of moving parts all noisily beating and wearing themselves to pieces clattering and vibrating while searching for the correct gear or spooling up the turbo in the narrow power band of an ICE engine pails next to the elegance of the instant and broad torque of an EV power train unless you are fond of noise, vibration, hesitation, shifting, braking and paying at the pump. ~2000 moving (and degrading) parts in the power train of an ICE engine versus 20 in an electric power train. No fluids or belts to get low or refresh except windshield wiper juice.
I cringe every time these days when I am forced for some odd reason to resorting to one of my old legacy ICE vehicles instead of my much preferred Tesla M3lr, but do not get me wrong, I am well aware that the privilege of driving an EV is something the vast majority of people cannot enjoy because of the technology required to produce them with grotesque open mining for the raw materials, often with slave and child labor. It is anything but sustainable without even getting into power generation/transmission requirements, at least until Graphene batteries become viable.
Interesting facts re common lithium battery packs of an EV —
“A typical EV battery weighs one thousand pounds. It contains twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminium, steel, and plastic. Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells.
“It should concern you that all those toxic components come from mining. For instance, to manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth’s crust for just one battery… Both human rights abuses and environmental degradation are directly connected to the mining for the exotic minerals and metals that are required to manufacture wind turbines, solar panels, and EV batteries.”
I drive a Tesla M3lr every day and consider it, as I said, a privilege to do so because EVs are not a sustainable possibility for the masses, the reasons for such skepticism illustrated above, yet my car is orders of magnitude more drivable and fun than all my many previous rides — very, very quick and deadly silent at the same time. The harvesting of raw minerals for batteries, even before addressing problems in adding power generation and transmission of it, is a rapacious endeavor at moving half a million pounds of the Earth’s crust for each average present technology battery.
However, the concept that everyone should or can be forced by an army of Command & Control Government Freaks to drive EVs or the ludicrous hydrogen-fueled dream cars is preposterous.
Big Brothers Watching you Drive to make sure you only go to places Big Brother approves of