JUST WHEN I WAS ABOUT TO LEAVE FOR THE SHOWROOM:  I was going to buy an Energizer Bunnymobile.  From Fox

A new report published by the Manhattan Institute threw cold water on the purported climate and cost benefits of electric vehicles (EVs) widely touted by lawmakers and automakers.

Overall, the rapid electrification of the U.S. transportation sector would increase consumer costs, make the electric grid more vulnerable to blackouts, threaten national security and may not even lead to fewer greenhouse gas emissions, according to the paper titled "Electric Vehicles for Everyone? The Impossible Dream" and authored by Manhattan Institute senior fellow Mark Mills.

"I think it's morally consequential. It's geopolitically consequential and socially, economically consequential," Mills told Fox News Digital in an interview. "The subsidies and the mandates run the risk of causing maybe the biggest misallocation of capital in modern times in the industrial markets. Hundreds of billions of dollars are going to be spent chasing these mandates, requirements." 

"And it won't, as the report shows, it won't achieve the goals intended and the attempt to do so will have enormous economic and social costs because the underlying premises are either incorrect, too poorly understood or too difficult to quantify in order to take the actions that are being taken," he continued.

Mills said the government push to aggressively electrify the transportation sector over the coming years is based on the premises that it will both help the environment by lowering economy-wide carbon emissions and help save consumers money through lower fueling costs while keeping car prices co-equal with current prices.

However, Mills's report highlights that emissions and costs are subject to a wide range of conditions. 

"It depends on when and where you charge the vehicle," he told Fox News Digital. "Then you have to add to that, the emissions that occur before you get the vehicle in your driveway for the first time because all vehicles entail CO2 emissions associated with the energy you use to build the vehicle. Your use of materials and machines to build everything." 

COMMENT:  Read the whole thing.  There are more and more doubts about electric cars being raised every day.  But they are trendy, and trendy is what gets sold...at least for a time.  Let a parent try to rush a sick kid to the hospital after forgetting to charge the electric car, and watch "trendy" go down the economic drain.

July 18,  2023