Electric Vehicles – EVs – were supposed to be the transportation juggernaut that was going to mean the end of gasoline-powered cars and diesel trucks.  

It has not quite turned out that way.  

The sales of EVs got off to a pretty good start.  But then people began to discover the EVs’ limitations.

Those who prefer the utility of a pickup truck, such as the ubiquitous Ford F-150, discovered a glaring EV flaw:  hook up your boat-trailer to the back of your EV version of the F-150  . . .  and that EV has a range of only fifty miles.

Fifty miles will not even get you from the Golden Strip to your favorite dock on Lake Keowee.  

One report says that although a record number of EVs were sold in fourth-quarter 2023, sales are slowing.  The government’s goal of half of all cars sold by 2030 being EVs is not going to be met.

General Motors and Ford have put off spending billions of dollars on EV production.  Even Tesla is delaying increased production plans.  

Auto executives are publicly acknowledging that EVs are not working.

EVs are heavy

The more a vehicle weighs – any vehicle – the more fuel it takes to propel it down the road.

Gasoline-powered cars have been getting lighter for years, as automakers work to increase gas mileage – to reduce each car’s energy requirements.  

With their heavy batteries, EVs typically weigh 25% more than the worst “gas guzzlers” of the 1980s.  

All that weight takes more energy – reducing the EV’s range – to accelerate and to push up hills, and it needs bigger, more expensive brakes to slow down for curves and stops.

Safety – Not an EV feature

The tires on heavier EVs have traction on par with those of lighter gas-powered vehicles – which means that when you go around a sharp curve too fast in an EV, you stand a greater chance of losing traction and skidding off the road.

Is that what you want for your family?

Similarly, driving in snow and ice is necessarily more dangerous in an EV, because of its greater weight.  Start to slide on ice, and the laws of physics will really ruin your day.

Because EVs are heavier, they require more distance to stop.  That means EVs are more dangerous to pedestrians. 

EVs are gas guzzlers

One source estimated that EVs get the equivalent of about 17 miles per gallon – again, on par with that 1984 “gas guzzler”.

EVs are the “dream machine” of President Biden and others like him.  They are understandably reluctant to bring the true nature of EVs to your awareness.  

Too, it is not the government’s business to tell you what to drive.  President Biden and others like him  are understandably reluctant to hear you asserting your freedom of choice.

EVs are polluters

The batteries in an EV are the best that science has to offer.  They are designed to have the best possible rate of charge, the storage of the most energy, and the longest possible range.

That “best” is really not very good, and those hi-tech batteries require some very hi-tech use of some very rare – which is to say, hard-to-find – chemicals.  Being rare, those chemicals are expensive.

Those chemicals are also extremely hazardous to people, and to pollution of the environment generally.  

EVs are expensive

All those expensive chemicals translate into a higher sticker price for an EV versus a gasoline-powered car.  

Sticker shock is only part of the cost of an EV:  sooner or later, an EV’s batteries must be replaced.  

The cost of replacement batteries approaches the cost of a new car.  

Depreciation in the value of a gasoline-powered car as it ages is bad enough.  Buying a used EV is a very bad idea.  A used EV is going to need new batteries much sooner than is sensible.  

Consequently, trading in your old EV for your next car will be even worse financially than dealing with the typical depreciation on any gasoline-powered car.  

Remember when you were a teenager, buying an old junker because that was all you could afford?  

EVs will never be viable on a young adult’s budget.

EVs are fire hazards

That danger became very clear when a hurricane flooded the streets of Naples, Florida.  Six cars showed what happens when an EV’s batteries are submersed in salty seawater:  they burn for hours, foiling fire departments’ efforts to extinguish the flames.

One car, after finally being extinguished, re-ignited.  Two homes were lost to the resulting fire.

Florida's state fire marshal described the recent fires as “surreal, and frankly scary.”

Fire departments are having to learn whole new techniques and buy expensive special equipment – paid for by your taxes – for EV fires.  

EVs do not work.

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