As I was riding in the back seat of a Rivian R1S for my tour of the Rivian manufacturing plant in Normal, Illinois, a monolithic windmill appeared on the horizon. The 2.8-megawatt wind turbine stood 500 feet tall, looming ominously over the former Mitsubishi plant in rural Illinois, and it wasn’t moving. An enormous, motionless wind turbine at a manufacturing plant for a startup that’s received billions of dollars in government subsidies and private equity investments struck me as a perfect picture of the electric vehicle movement.

A group of fellow automotive journalists and I arrived at the plant and were instantly welcomed by the latest example of the “pride” flag in the lobby, showing that Rivian is a faithful servant of the church of Environmental, Social, and Corporate Governance (ESG). Rivian has received huge investments from Amazon, Soros Management Fund, BlackRock, Fidelity, and T. Row Price.

The factory I toured builds the R1S SUV, R1T pickup truck, and EDV Amazon delivery van, all of which are electric. Part of the tour was a brief driving course that included an oval track and a small off-road course. The R1T models I drove performed admirably on and off the pavement, but like every EV I drive, they increased my skepticism of the widely touted claim that 50 percent of all new vehicle sales in the U.S. will be electric by 2030.

We hear this claim from enthusiastic car manufacturers, green advocacy groups, and even the White House.1 In 2022, electric cars made up 5.8 percent of new car sales in the U.S. Indeed, EV sales are growing (that number was 3.2 percent in 2021),2 but is 50 percent in 2030 a realistic dream?

After a few years of impressive growth in EV sales, we’re already starting to see signs of demand coming to a plateau. According to Cox Automotive data from the summer of 2023, car dealerships across the U.S. have an average 92-day supply of EV inventory and a 54-day inventory of gas-powered cars.3 In other words, EVs are piling up in dealer lots, with supply already outweighing demand.

It seems like we’re nearing the end of a trend of electric cars being aspirational status symbols. Tesla replaced century-old luxury marques and traditional sports cars as the dream car for young Americans. However, the longer the grand EV experiment goes on, the more cracks in the façade are starting to show, and the more elites double down on their role as the inevitable future of transportation.

Pete Buttigieg

A key player in the ongoing electric car saga is U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, E. Michael Jones’ former neighbor and mayor. “Mayor Pete” is a homosexual who believes he’s a husband to another man and a father to twins he legally kidnapped from their mother. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that as the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, this man who fails to understand the basic truths of marriage, fatherhood, and the purpose of maternity leave, ordered garbage trucks that don’t fit in his city’s alleys. And that now as transportation secretary, he has delusions about electric vehicles, and thinks they are practical transportation for average Americans. He clearly struggles with logos.

Where to begin with Mayor Pete’s outrageous public statements about electric vehicles? While promoting the Build Back Better Act in 2021, Buttigieg infamously told MSNBC that families who buy EVs “never have to worry about gas prices again.”4 This was slammed by critics as a “let them eat cake” moment for the transportation secretary. Pricey EVs are harder for average American families to afford, and, as we’ll get into shortly, today’s selection of EVs aren’t practical family vehicles if you need more than five seats. Also, high gas prices impact every part of the economy since America’s commercial transportation system still runs on diesel.

Buttigieg went on to say, “The people who stand to benefit most from owning an EV are often rural residents who have the most distances to drive, who burn the most gas, and underserved urban residents in areas where there are higher gas prices and lower income.” The demographics Mayor Pete was talking about actually benefit the least from EVs because gas engines make much more sense for rural residents who regularly drive long distances. “Urban” residents with low incomes struggle to afford a car at all, much less an electric car, which has an average transaction price of over $53k.5

pete Buttigieg and his “husband” Chasten

When confronted by Pennsylvania Representative Scott Perry (R) about the high transaction prices of EVs compared to the overall industry average, Buttigieg smugly rattled off a list of prices for American-made electric vehicles.6 He noted that the Chevy Bolt starts at $26,595. GM has since discontinued the Chevy Bolt and made a passing remark that a new generation will arrive eventually. The most affordable American EV is on its way out of the market.

Then Buttigieg mentioned that the Ford F-150 Lightning and the Chevy Silverado EV both start at under $40k. He was right about the Ford at the time he made that remark, but the 2023 Ford F-150 Lightning starts at just under $50k (it flirts with $100k when fully loaded), and the Chevy Silverado EV still isn’t on the market. Mayor Pete quoted the price of a truck that didn’t exist yet and still isn’t available to buy a year later. If you go to Chevy’s website, you won’t even find an estimated price for the Silverado EV, raising doubt about a starting price anywhere near $40k.

The only electric pickup truck GM has sold so far is the GMC Hummer EV Pickup. The pricing of the Hummer EV is a bit of a mystery; there are no prices listed on the GMC website as of this writing, and you can’t order one because the manufacturing is moving so slowly. When it was last available to order, it started at about $85k, and the Edition 1 model started at $110,595 when it came out in 2022.

What Buttigieg said next accidentally weakened the case for buying a new EV. He said that the first plug-in car he bought was a used Ford C-Max Energi [sic] for $14k. The C-Max Energi is a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) that can run on gas or electricity, and it has something in common with the Chevy Bolt. They’re both affordable, electrified cars from American brands that have been discontinued. Right now, the only plug-in hybrid vehicle available from Ford is the PHEV variant of the Ford Escape SUV, which starts at over $40k. In case you’re wondering, the gas-powered Escape starts at under $30k.

You'll Own Nothing

“We’re close to the point – and may actually be there, on certain models, and under certain circumstances – where the extent to which your car payment would go up is actually already outweighed by the extent to which your gas bill would go down, even factoring in the cost of electricity,” Buttigieg told Perry.

This statement from our transportation secretary speaks volumes about how our government expects us to get around. Car payments are a foregone conclusion. Buttigieg speaks as if buying a car with cash simply isn’t an option anymore in the EV era.

I’m not here to give financial advice, but it feels good to have a monthly payment of $0 on the car and three motorcycles in my garage right now. Proverbs 22 tells us, “The borrower is slave to the lender.” There’s nothing immoral about financing a car, but debt is a form of servitude to whomever the money is owed. It’s one of many ways that banks own a part of your labor.

If you’re not paying with cash, the higher the price of your car, the longer it will take for you to actually own it, if ever. Of course, you could always lease the car in which you make dozens of payments, typically totaling over $10k, and never have any equity at all in the car.

I can’t help but be reminded of the infamous World Economic Forum video that promises “you’ll own nothing and be happy” in 2030.7 Rent your apartment forever, eat bugs and synthetic meat, and lease your EV—a smartphone on wheels that tracks and sells your data – that’s wholly dependent on the state-run power grid.

How Green are EVs?

Dismantling the climate change narrative is beyond the scope of this article. For our purposes, let’s acknowledge that everyone switching to electric cars would not have a significant impact on the weather.

But let’s play by the rules of the environmentalists promoting EVs. We’re told that in order to combat climate change, we must reduce carbon emissions. EVs don’t produce any exhaust, so do they achieve this goal? The short answer is “no,” but you’ll keep hearing clever language like “carbon neutral” and “zero tailpipe emissions” to make you think your electric car runs on magic with no carbon byproduct at all.

The breakeven point where EVs supposedly do less harm to the environment than their gas-powered counterparts is 13,500 miles, according to an analysis of data by Reuters.8 However, that number varies wildly depending on the manufacturing process of the car and how “green” the local energy grid is where you plug it in.

According to Volkswagen’s own estimates, the electric e-Golf hits that breakeven point at 77,000 miles. Volvo said in 2021 that the manufacturing process for EVs generates up to 70 percent more carbon emissions than manufacturing for gas-powered cars, and they hit the carbon breakeven point somewhere between 30,000-68,400 miles.9 Mining materials needed for electric car batteries, like lithium and cobalt, is a carbon-intensive process that often takes place in undesirable working conditions in Africa, South America, and China.

Speaking of lithium mines, the World Economic Forum has admitted that there isn’t enough lithium in the world to replace every car on the road today with an EV.10 The WEF’s strong enthusiasm for EVs is consistent with its depopulation agenda, which would naturally result in lower global demand for automobiles in general.

Impractical for Families

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that we’re told we will inevitably all be driving EVs soon, and there are no EVs on the market that are practical for big families. My local Institute of Christ the King parish that celebrates the Traditional Latin Mass has a parking lot overflowing every Sunday with full-size vans like Ford Transits and Mercedes-Benz Sprinters alongside minivans like Chrysler Pacificas and my own Honda Odyssey.

Two tenets of the modern environmentalist movement are a transition to EVs and having fewer children. If you look at the most family-friendly options in electric cars today, none of them come close to the practicality of a normal minivan with a gas-powered V6 engine under the hood. A few 3-row EVs on the market today include the Rivian R1S, the Mercedes-EQ EQB and EQS, and both of Tesla’s SUV offerings. However, those third-row seats aren’t very useful in any of these SUVs, and you have very little cargo room left when all of the seats are in place.

The Rivian R1S is one of the roomiest electric SUVs, so let’s compare its family-friendly practicality with my Honda Odyssey minivan. My Honda minivan has 16 percent more third-row legroom and 85 percent more cargo room behind the third row, and the starting MSRP of the Honda is less than half of the Rivian’s price tag. Even the top Elite trim of the Odyssey—a legitimately luxurious minivan—is about $30k cheaper than the base model of the Rivian R1S.

Another big perk of regular minivans is that you can actually go to your local dealership, buy one, and drive it home today. As I write this in September 2023, Rivian’s website says, “Deliveries for new reservations are expected to begin in 2024.” There’s no indication of when in 2024 they’ll begin. Some of the Rivian trucks and SUVs I just saw being built in central Illinois were likely ordered a year ago.

All of this to say, if you have three or more children, there aren’t any practical EVs on the market for you. Forcing us into EVs is a way of discouraging big families.

Safety Concerns

The question of whether EVs are safer than gas cars is a little complicated. Since many EVs are expensive luxury cars, they often come equipped with a full suite of driver assistance technology like automatic emergency braking, lane-keep assist, and blind-spot monitoring. Some can even be driven hands-free on the highway. These modern safety features are also becoming common on gas-powered cars, but they're almost ubiquitous on EVs.

However, what happens when those heavy electric vehicles do get into accidents? We can’t talk about the safety of EVs without talking about their gargantuan weight. The GMC Hummer EV weighs over 9,000 pounds (more than three Honda Civics), and the dealers that service them need special equipment just to hoist them in the air. Granted, the Hummer is a huge truck, but the Chevy Tahoe is a similar size and weighs less than 6,000 pounds.

The extra weight of EVs comes from the heavy battery packs. Automakers want to impress buyers and investors with long range estimates, which require big batteries. Generally, the bigger the battery, the longer the range and the heavier the weight.

The weight is a safety issue because of the basic laws of physics. If a Hummer EV weighing more than 9,000 pounds gets in a head-on collision with a 3,000-pound Honda Civic, the lighter car (and its unfortunate occupants) will practically disintegrate. Crumple zones and airbags can only do so much to mitigate that kind of weight differential.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), a car safety watchdog group that gives safety ratings and awards, has raised a red flag about the safety of EVs.11 IIHS Vice President Raul Arbelaez said in a recent article that his “biggest concern is how heavy [EV batteries] are and what all that extra vehicle weight means for the safety of people on the road, specifically occupants of lighter vehicles as well as pedestrians and bicyclists.”

“When two vehicles collide, the heavier vehicle pushes the lighter one backward, resulting in higher forces on the people in the lighter vehicle and lower forces on people in the heavier vehicle,” Arbelaez continued. “That’s why we stipulate that our frontal crash test ratings — which are conducted against a fixed barrier and simulate a crash with an identically sized vehicle — can only be compared among vehicles of similar weight.” So, even if EVs get favorable safety ratings from groups like the IIHS and NHTSA, they present a safety risk to the rest of us on the road…

[…] This is just an excerpt from the Nov 2023 Issue of Culture Wars magazine. To read the full article, please purchase a digital download of the magazine, or become a subscriber!

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(Endnotes)

1 “EV Acceleration Challenge.” The White House, The United States Government, www.whitehouse.gov/cleanenergy/ev-acceleration-challenge/. Accessed 18 Sept. 2023.

2 Tucker, Sean. “New Car Sales Fell in 2022, but New Electric Car Sales Rose ...” Kelley Blue Book, Jan. 17, 2023, www.kbb.com/car-news/new-car-sales-fell-in-2022-but-new-electric-car-sales-rose-dramatically/.

3 Muller, Joann. “Unsold Electric Cars Are Piling up on Dealer Lots - Axios.” Axios, July 10, 2023, www.axios.com/2023/07/10/unsold-electric-cars-are-piling-up-on-dealer-lots.

4 “The Infrastructure Bill in Action.” MSNBC, NBCUniversal News Group, Aug. 14, 2023, https://www.msnbc.com/the-sunday-show/watch/the-infrastructure-bill-in-action-127353925939. Accessed Sept. 18, 2023.

5 Hailes, Dara. “Kelley Blue Book Analysis: New-Vehicle Transaction Prices up Less than 1% Year over Year, Smallest Increase in Decade.” Cox Automotive Inc., Aug. 9, 2023, www.coxautoinc.com/market-insights/kbb-atp-july-2023/.

6 “‘I Just Pulled A Few Of The Latest Prices...’: Scott Perry And Pete Buttigieg Clash Over EV Prices.” YouTube, Forbes, July 19 2022, https://youtu.be/Y15nnwZuRSI?si=UVbHavgcpbH40hST. Accessed 18 Sept. 2023.

7 “The Great Reset: ‘You’ll Own Nothing and You’ll Be Happy.’ (World Economic Forum).” YouTube, Moisterrific, Feb. 13, 2022, https://youtu.be/SqzepGBatWo?si=UCXqeJ885C38IQH7. Accessed 18 Sept. 2023.

8 Lienert, Paul. “Analysis: When Do Electric Vehicles Become Cleaner than Gasoline Cars?” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, July 7, 2021, www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/when-do-electric-vehicles-become-cleaner-than-gasoline-cars-2021-06-29/.

9 Hardy, Jack. “Why Electric Cars Are Not Green Machines: The Environmental Benefit of EVS May Never Be Felt.” Daily Mail Online, Associated Newspapers, July 2, 2023, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12256823/Why-electric-cars-NOT-green-machines-environmental-benefit-EVs-never-felt.html.

10 Shine, Ian. “The World Needs 2 Billion Electric Vehicles to Get to Net Zero. but Is There Enough Lithium to Make All the Batteries?” World Economic Forum, July 20, 2022, www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/electric-vehicles-world-enough-lithium-resources/.

11 Arbelaez, Raul. “As Heavy EVS Proliferate, Their Weight May Be a Drag on Safety.” IIHS, Mar. 9, 2023, www.iihs.org/news/detail/as-heavy-evs-proliferate-their-weight-may-be-a-drag-on-safety.

12 Nissan Leaf owner’s 2014 manual.

13 “Fuel Economy in Cold Weather.” Energy.Gov, United States Department of Energy, www.energy.gov/energysaver/fuel-economy-cold-weather. Accessed Sept. 18, 2023.

14 “Electric Vehicles in the US: Out of the Shadows - Berylls - Making Automobility Viable.” Berylls, Apr. 14, 2023, www.berylls.com/electric-vehicles-in-the-us-out-of-the-shadow/.