are rapidly approaching the end of their “shelf life.”
Again, I think that if I live in a clime like San Diego and I drive 30 miles a day, mainly commuting to work and back, charge overnight at home, I have an ICE car for roadtrips, and have a coercive state government (<cough>California<cough), an EV can make good sense. And I hold to that position.
But if I am a construction boss on an oilfield in South Dakota? Not so much… In that case, I need my truck to handle cold weather. I need my truck to do “trucky” things and have a range that goes beyond a few miles!
Who could have guessed that paying $55,000 (and that’s with EV subsidies) for a stripped-down, base-level truck that overheats when you tow things and can’t drive over 300 miles on a single charge wouldn’t appeal to the average F-150 buyer? Certainly, people who use their trucks for work have found little to no use for such a pointless monstrosity.
… So again, it’s worth asking whether EVs have any redeeming qualities in their current iteration. They aren’t renewable, relying on toxic chemicals mined by literal child slaves in Africa that eventually require replacement. They are less capable than your average gas-powered vehicle. They typically cost more new but don’t hold their value because the batteries are so expensive to replace, meaning buyers get hit coming and going. The list goes on.
Aren’t they saving the planet, though? I’d suggest not given they still rely on power largely created by fossil fuels anyway. So what’s the point? All EVs are doing is empowering China, which produces 70 percent of the world’s EVs and controls most of the mining of the materials needed to build them. How many billions of dollars are American companies going to continue to throw away pursuing this government-pushed pipedream? The answer is likely quite a few billion more. Eventually, the market always wins, though.
In college, the Mendelian Spousal Unit (MSU) had a geology professor who on the side often evaluated land for housing developments. His saying was, “Nature ALWAYS re-establishes the slope.” Regardless of berms or retaining walls, nature will always re-establish the slope, eventually.
So does the market…