Biden wants you immobile

Steve Prestegard

March 27

Like many Americans, I have all manner of problems with the Biden administration's ongoing attempt to coerce us into electric vehicles over the next decade. I object to the federal government presuming that its role in our lives includes telling us what we may drive; I am unpersuaded that the law the White House is using accords Washington, D.C., the power to remake the car industry; and I am bothered by the false assumption that, because upper-middle-class people seem to like Teslas, the average citizen is yearning for his Ford Explorer or Toyota Corolla to be converted into a glorified golf cart. But, in addition to all of these more reasoned explanations for my opposition, I have another: I like cars.=

Does that seem irrelevant to this debate? If it does, it shouldn't. This is a free country, and one of the good things about free countries is that the people who live in them are allowed to decide how they want to live without apologizing for it. America is a complicated place, and it can be hard to put one's finger on exactly what makes America so American, but, for me at least, one of the things that springs to mind when I try is that it is full of gasoline-powered cars. It is true that, if those cars went away, America would not instantly perish, but that is also true of baseball and jazz and hamburgers and the Rocky Mountains and rollercoasters and the Statue of Liberty, and that it is true is not an argument in favor of rapidly phasing those things out either. Properly understood, conservatism consists of a great deal more than reaction, but, within reason, there is a place for reaction within it. I like America, and because I like America, I do not wish to see America as it is currently constituted go away. Petrol engines are part of America. I wish to keep them.

I do not believe that I am alone in this. Indeed, it is telling that, during his chat with Robert Hur, the primary architect of our glorious EV future, President Joe Biden, wanted so badly to talk about his 1967 Corvette Stingray that he resorted to making engine noises in the interview room. The setting aside, most of us understand this instinct. Automobiles make noises, and those noises are pleasing to us. At the most elementary level, they provide feedback that makes us feel at one with the vehicle; at a more exotic level, they help us to appreciate the engineering brilliance that has gone into the ride. Think about how many movies we make about high-end cars — Ferrari, Days of Thunder, Talladega Nights — and how instrumental the sounds are to their success. There is something visceral and appealing and real about gasoline engines that excites onlookers. When playing pretend, little kids say "vroom-vroom," rising up through each note and then dropping down as they feign the changing of gears. Moving at high speed in the manner that we now do is unnatural, and the roar of the car keeps us aware of that. To take it away is to sterilize that experience in a way that consumers tend not to like.

For some, however, that sterilization seems to be the point. I am by no means a Luddite or a technophobe — in fact, the opposite — but I am also not blind, and I have detected in the leading advocates of mandatory electrification a profound hostility toward cars and toward the people who like them. Nobody involved in this project much cares that a great culture will be lost if the EV brigade gets its way, because nobody involved in this project values that culture in the slightest. For some, it is an indulgence that pales in comparison to the importance of fighting climate change. For others, it represents antediluvian resistance to the necessary commodification of travel. Look at a 1965 Ford Mustang, and then look at the aesthetic abortion that is the EV that is now called the "Ford Mustang," and you will see what I mean. One of them is a work of love; the other is an anodyne computer with wheels. If our self-appointed arbiters of taste get their own way, that shift will be universal.

When pressed, the Biden administration insists that it is not banning petroleum cars. But this — in the long run — is a lie. The most recent federal edict demands that, by 2032, 69 percent of all new cars must be either entirely electric or plug-in hybrids or similarly green, but, of course, there is nothing special about that number. That a 31 percent market share would help to destroy the petroleum-car industry is both obvious and deliberate, but, even if it were not, the next stage would involve the raising of that threshold to 75, and then 85, and then 95, and then . . . kaput. Contrary to the bleating of the slippery-slope skeptics, "We already do X" is one of the most powerful rhetorical devices in modern political life. If Biden's rules go into effect, the march toward prohibition will be ineluctable, and everyone involved with their promulgation knows it. In resisting, there will be time for objections that are practical and objections that are legal and objections that are rooted in a deep-seated discomfort with the micromanagement of private life, but, before we get to that, I wanted to speak up for an underappreciated virtue in the realm of regulatory policy: fun. I like gasoline-powered cars, and you'll take my ability to buy them at will from my cold, oil-stained hands.

Rich Lowry adds:

One of Joe Biden's notable digressions when getting deposed by Special Counsel Robert Hur was about driving his beloved 1967 Corvette Stingray convertible.

Which wasn't surprising — the president genuinely loves his car. And why not? It's a thing of beauty and, for its time, it was a splendid feat of engineering.

A paradox of the Biden administration is that the old-school car enthusiast is — in the name of the future and of saving the planet — waging a war on the internal-combustion-engine cars that he so admires and that have helped define American life over the past 100 years.

The internal-combustion-engine automobile ranks as one of the modern world's most transformative innovations. Prior to the advent of trains, travel by land was an absolute misery, even for the wealthy and privileged. Then, the car, in effect, took the train and put it in the hands of individuals.

It was a revolutionary leap ahead for personal freedom and mobility. It changed where we live (catalyzing the growth of the suburbs) and how we work (making it easier to commute). It obviously made it possible to go more places and gave rise to new types of businesses catering to a newly footloose population, including motels and fast-food restaurants. It knit the country together via a road network that facilitated untold economic activity and created the auto-manufacturing industry, as well as industries providing parts and fuel for cars.

To an unusual extent, people feel bonded to their cars. There are car enthusiasts, but not enthusiasts for other 20th-century implements that changed our way of life. No one speaks wistfully of the refrigerator they owned 40 years ago, or reads fan magazines devoted to plumbing. Even for consumers who aren't devotees of cars, what to buy is an intensely personal choice; this is a why there is a dizzying array of brands offering an immense range of choices.

The Biden administration push to get people into electrical vehicles is running directly into the chief advantage of internal-combustion-engine cars, which is the sheer convenience.

One area of resistance to electric vehicles is "range anxiety," or the fear that an electric vehicle will run out of its charge. That's often exaggerated; electric cars have acquired more range now, and most people aren't driving 300 miles in a single trip. Nevertheless, there are reasonable concerns about the ability to find a charging station and how long it will take to recharge the vehicle compared to filling up at a gas station.

Gas stations already exist (about 145,000 of them with a million gas pumps), and no one had to subsidize their creation. They are convenient, cost-effective, and make economic sense.

Making charging stations available on a comparable scale will present formidable obstacles. As Mark Mills of the National Center for Energy Analytics points out in a paper on electric cars, transporting the large amounts of energy at the necessary scale using electric energy via wires and transformers is much more expensive than doing it with oil via pipelines and tanks. Installing the super-chargers necessary to make charging somewhat rapid — but still slower than gassing up — will require "a grid power demand comparable to a small town or steel mill."

This isn't to say electric cars aren't attractive to some consumers, especially those with their own garages for overnight charging and with the resources to spend on a fun, interesting second or third car. Tesla has made major inroads in the upscale category. Good for them. More choice is better.

An all-electric-car future is very far off, though, and internal-combustion-engine automobiles aren't embarrassing artifacts of the past. Their cost, convenience, reliability, and size — more than half of automobiles sold in the U.S. are SUVs — make them hugely appealing. They are also getting constant upgrades. According to Mills, since 1975, "the average automobile today has 100 more horsepower, weighs 1,000 pounds more, and has doubled in fuel efficiency."

Joe Biden's Corvette is now an antique, but the basic technology is as important, and incredibly user-friendly, as ever.