I & I Editorial BoardWhen Stellantis last week announced it was writing down $26 billion, the CEO of the car company that now owns Chrysler, Antonio Filosa, said it was “part of a decisive process we started in 2025 to once again make our customers and their preferences our guiding star.”
Which begs the question: What was Stellantis’ guiding star before if not its own customers?
For that matter, who or what has been guiding General Motors (which announced a $7.6 billion writedown last month), Ford ($19.5 billion), and other automakers that’ve written down a total of $140 billion in just the past three years?
Anyone who has followed the auto industry over the past decade knows the answer. All of these losses are the result of automakers chasing the phantom known as “zero emission” cars.
Remember that until just recently, we were treated to a constant barrage of stories about how EV sales were skyrocketing, and car companies were winning plaudits for going green.
Just five years ago, GM promised to go all-electric by 2035, and just two years ago, its chief executive, Mary Barra, said “we believe in an all-electric future.” Honda, Volvo, Ford, and others laid out plans to be 100% “zero emission” within two decades.
It was all supported by Big Environment, which brayed that EVs were the only way to save the planet from “climate change.”
But none of it worked out as planned.
And keep in mind that the $140 billion in combined auto industry losses is just the tip of the iceberg. Those are just the costs incurred by shareholders and employees of these companies.
Taxpayers have forked over hundreds of billions in federal and state tax dollars in subsidies that were designed to “kick start” the EV car market. They paid thousands toward the cost of each EV sold. They paid companies to build battery factories. They paid for charging stations.
Fuel economy standards imposed another hidden subsidy for EVs. The only way automakers could meet increasingly stringent federal fuel economy standards, commonly known as CAFE standards, was to sell more EVs. For each EV sold, they’d get an oversized credit toward the miles-per-gallon average of all cars sold in any given year.
If they still couldn’t hit those CAFE standards, they’d buy “credits” from companies such as Tesla, which banked more than $11 billion selling its fuel-economy credits.
When the Texas Public Policy Foundation ran the numbers in 2021, it found “nearly $22 billion in federal and state subsidies and regulatory credits” that year alone.
Those families trying to buy a decent car were the ones who ultimately paid all these costs.
Joe Biden’s criminally misnamed “Inflation Reduction Act” included more than $1 trillion in additional subsidies. Biden dumped $7.5 billion into the production of charging stations, which resulted in fewer than 400 charging ports being built.
There is some welcome news here. What the experience with the EV debacle shows is that consumers are still in the driver’s seat – no pun intended.
No matter how much environmentalists shrieked, no matter how much regulators bullied, no matter how much money politicians threw at EVs, they couldn’t overcome the will of car buyers, who want the kind of affordable, reliable transportation that gas-powered cars provide.
And, thankfully, the Trump administration has been pulling the wiring out of the various federal EV subsidy schemes.
Even so, there must be a reckoning. There needs to be an effort to tally all the wasteful spending imposed by the EV mania. Because, when all is said and done, it could prove to be the most expensive boondoggle in human history.
And then all the politicians, industry “experts,” regulators, environmentalists, and everyone else who had a hand in selling EV snake oil should be held to account for these costs.
That’s especially true of automakers who, rather than standing up for their consumers, eagerly bent the knee to the Climate Industrial Complex.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
As Ronald Reagan once sarcastically said, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.” Yeah, sure!
The very fact that car companies had to buy credits to achieve CAFE standards just shows that the CAFE standards (promulgated by the Government) was unattainable in serving consumers-so the Government replaced what consumers wanted with the credits.
Sort of like the Mafia insisting that “We have a deal that you can’t refuse.”
Thus, not only were CAFE standards legislated but credits were bought and sold when the CAFE standards couldn’t be met by the car manufacturers.
What political shenanigans and legislated con games. What environmental claptrap was practiced against us!
You would think that this substitution of the free market by government legislation would be called for what it was: The fascistic and communistic takeover of the marketplace by the Government.
Think of the infrastructure, the aid to Veterans, rebuilding the Social Security fund and reducing the deficit even a tiny bit that could have happened. Politicians care not a whit what they spend. They think it’s their money. But this number pales compared to the over $1 trillion wasted during the Viet Nam war. It will never end.
Not certain where the 400 chargers installed number came from. We were told only 8 were actually installed.
From an engineering standpoint there were some great gains in the technology but a total disregard for the overall systemic impact. Tesla motors and control systems showed us the most efficient energy transfer from vehicle to pavement ever seen, for example. The problems were still getting enough energy into the vehicle in a practical way and disregarding the obvious losses in multiple stages of energy conversion, generation and energy delivery. Chasing the Quixotic “zero emissions” cost us dearly in embodied energy, lack of infrastructure and just plain common sense. Still, for a lucky few, we have our Tesla plugged into our solar array and enjoy the rocket like acceleration.
For the rest of us, I filled my car up in less than 2 minutes at the gas station, started up my car, drove off and fed the plants, which I will eat later today. Sacrificing 2 seconds of speed to get to 60 miles an hour is not much to give up for me.
i plugged my car in at home after i got home from work, i didn’t have to go wait in line to pump gas, or go out of my way to get to the gas station. There are two sides to every story and each side is going to cherry coat their story. both have their benefits, why does it always have to be the one or the other mentality?
To answer the question, not quite. There was that Tower of Babel thing.
Battery cars are not all that different from gas cars. People like these things:
– Fuel cost of about $1 per gallon equivalent when charging at home at my 15 cents per kWh rate, $4 per gallon away from home
– Quick acceleration
– Smooth, quiet ride
– Good sound system, GPS, and cupholders like other cars
– Range is about what gas cars get. In neither do drivers use the entire range without stopping for a break.
In any case, the split of new car sales is now about 80% gasoline cars, 15% hybrid gas/electric to get the high torque of an electric motor, and 5% battery cars. The national fleet is shrinking in percentage gas cars and growing in percentage battery cars.
I can fill my car’s gas tank in less than 10 minutes. Convenient of you to leave that out because it is possibly the biggest reason most people won’t buy an electric car. I’ve also never paid $4 a gallon for gas.
Hey, what about corn for ethanol taking up 30 million acres in the U.S. with an energy return on energy invested around 1, and maybe less than 1. That’s a pretty big boondoggle. Then there’s the argument that EVs will win out over ICE because they’re just superior, and that superiority will be more and more evident as time passes.
Oh, yes they are. EVs are the product of a cult of Climate-deceiving liberal fools who actually think humans can effect the climate of a planet God only knows how many millions/billions of years old in the 200 years of modern(to us) time we’ve been here by deploying a product actually hundreds of times more harmful to the Earth and more costly than fossil fuels, of which we have an abundance of. The actual goal, truth be known was money into liberal politicians/cronies pockets at the expense of low IQ liberals.
Try to find a new SUV with a V6 engine and without those turbos that drastically reduce the life of the engine and/or cost big $$$ to repair.
Unlike when Adoph ordered Ferdinand to build the ” Peoples Car” or the much beloved Volkswagen, our fascist governments ordering up the EV revolution wasn’t so successful after all. Can’t blame companies for falling in line with orders, even bone headed ones.
EV is viable. The biggest problem in the whole thing was government. They had to meddle in the free market, and of course skim what corrupt dollars they could in the process and you seen what happened.
Sell them without subsidies, if people WANT them they can get them, but should never EVER be told they MUST buy them. I want one, ill buy it, i want gas ill buy gas, that is how it should have gone down.
The losses were from the corruption and theft of tax dollars, not inherently the cars themselves. GM wrote down billions, but conveniently did not tell you how many billions they got in grants to do the ev thing, hint, it was a lot more than they wrote down, so, no they didn’t lose, they still got paid, handsomely too.
We received this comment via email from a reader who agreed to let us post it.
“It is simple.
If climate change, or the term de jour, is real, then we all die. About 80 – 90% of man’s energy is derived from fire, combustion of carbon in air. And, without energy, modern life, 8 plus billion people, is impossible. Humans will go the way of the dinosaur, with a few unpleasant stops on the way. E.g., I want to live and to heck with you.
I pray daily that fire, fission and fusion only be used to heat a baby bottle. Our “leaders” should lead, follow or get out of the way.
I am tired of repeating this obvious point.
R.L. Hails Sr. P. e. (Ret.)”
Yes. Battery-powered and steam-powered vehicles competed and lost at the end of the 19th century.
Well stated. Mostly, the drive for electric-powered vehicles was driven by rabid climate extremists. Trying to tell us that burning gasoline amounts to a sin against humanity. Once I saw a stat: Ford estimated that, for every all-electric truck they sold, approximately $10,000.00 in sunk costs went with it and could not be recovered by the selling price. That is a fast way to bankruptcy!
written by an editorial board?
hmm. am I wrong to say ‘to beg a question is to evade it’-? today knuckleheads all think it means ‘to beg for it to be asked.’
entire editorial boards!
Mary Barra should ride around in an electric clown car.
Biden and his EV mandates and trying to end the use of Fossil Fuels based upon Politics and Junk Science
“should be held to account for these costs.”
What does that mean in practical terms?
It is ridiculous to blame the car companies for the failure of EVs when when the government forced them to start building EVs and in turn to try and force us to buy them by reducing our choices. The blame for this catastrophe goes to the government alone. No one forced them to listen to the eco-luddites.
It’s even worse. China flooded the market with EVs and then sold the credits to US car makers. We taxpayers ended up financing a lucrative Chinese business model.