Tristan Justice of the Federalist describes Democrats’ “Paris Hilton strategy” for addressing energy issues.
Gas prices reached an all-time peak last week at $4.33 a gallon, according to a AAA tracker, remaining at $4.30 Wednesday. The White House solution? Get an electric car, you poors.
“Clean transportation can provide significant cost savings for the American people,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said at an event alongside the vice president earlier this month touting the administration’s $5 million spend on a nationwide network of charging stations, “so the people from rural, to suburban, to urban communities can all benefit from the gas savings of driving an EV.”
At record-breaking gas prices slapping families with a projected $2,000 in additional transportation costs this year, the switch to an electric vehicle may sound tempting — were it not for the nearly $60,000 price tag. This plus the illogic of destroying U.S. energy independence from the most reliable an inexpensive sources makes Democrats’ lack of concern about gas prices a version of Paris Hilton’s famous Photoshopped T-shirt meme, “Stop being poor.”
According to Kelly Blue Book in December, the average transaction price of an electric vehicle is north of $56,400. That’s $5,000 more than an entry-level luxury car, averaging more than $51,300 in November.
Absent radical changes in the power grid, the emissions savings from a gas-powered vehicle to electric are minimal because its production still relies on the very sources their use aims to eliminate. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), 60 percent of U.S. electricity production is generated by fossil fuels. …
… And forget about manufacturing electric cars without a reliable power grid, its reliability secured by fossil fuels. China, the world’s largest producer of electric cars, gets 58 percent of its power from coal, 20 percent from petroleum and other liquids, and 8 percent from natural gas. Beijing also stands to benefit most from Biden’s pledge to push American auto sales to 50 percent electric because it monopolizes the global market of the rare earth minerals needed to make them.
