The gas-powered Dodge Charger sedan model lineup – led by the V8-powered Hellcat (left) and Scat Pack (right) models – sell 80,000 units a year. They are being retired as Dodge moves to EVs to satisfy federal mandates. (Henry Payne)
Pontiac, Mich. — The prohibition era is back, only this time, the temperance movement is targeting your carbon-producing sins.
“It’s like if they decided to ban cows — but 5 percent of the population is vegetarian, and the rest still wanted beef. The meat industry would figure it out, they’d make Impossible Burgers and other stuff,” said Dodge CEO Tim Kuniskis in an interview as the auto brand announced the end of its iconic, gas-powered cars and unveiled its first, morally approved electric vehicle, the Daytona Charger SRT, on August 17. “Same for the auto industry, we’ll figure it out.”
The American car industry is buckling under pressure from federal bureaucrats targeting the end of the affordable, internal-combustion engine.
California on August 25 announced a ban on sales of gas cars by 2035, with 17 other so-called zero-emission states — and eventually the federal government — likely to follow. As with energy utilities, governments are now dictating to automakers their energy source. Dodge’s announcement stunned owners of its popular automobiles as protests filled online forums, but it was the inevitable result of the pain auto companies are feeling as regulators target individual mobility.
In the first half of 2022, Dodge’s parent Stellantis was fined a whopping $711 million, reported the Detroit News — about the cost of producing a new vehicle in the U.S. — for non-compliance after the Biden administration increased penalties on automakers. Part of that fine is because Dodge produces V-8 and V-6 engines — a sin in the eyes of Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, Energy secretary Jennifer Granholm, and other prohibitionists.
The rules will only get tougher in coming years. “The new Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards require an industry-wide fleet average of approximately 49 mpg for passenger cars and light trucks in model year 2026,” reads a directive from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Translation: Make more EVs and four-cylinder engines, or we will put you out of business with fines.
The pressure is not just from regulators. The industry has long feared it will be on the hook (think tobacco companies and Medicaid costs) for the costs of natural disasters that Greens claim are caused by the demon carbon. At the Major Economic Forum put on by the White House this June, United Nations chief António Guterres made the threat explicit:
We seem trapped in a world where fossil fuel producers and financiers have humanity by the throat. They exploited precisely the same scandalous tactics as Big Tobacco decades before. Like tobacco interests, fossil fuel interests and their financial accomplices must not escape responsibility.
Kuniskis made clear the industry is being forced down the EV path: “We didn’t ask for the rules to change. We didn’t want them to change. But they did.”
Dodge announced last week that it is eliminating its $30,000–$60,000 Challenger coupe and Charger sedan by the 2024 model year — to be replaced by expensive, battery-powered EVs making artificial gas-engine sounds. The action pulls the rug out from under 130,000 Dodge customers annually — a move that will be followed by others as automakers are forced to cancel model lines to satisfy regulations.
Due to strict federal carbon regulations, the popular, V8-powered Dodge Charger sedan will be discontinued after the 2024 model year. (Henry Payne)
The reaction from Dodge customers was swift.
“Bummed.” “Sad.” “I was absolutely astonished.” These were some of the responses posted to a Dodge Facebook forum. The loyal customers of one of America’s most storied brands felt gutted. Dodge’s announcement came during the Woodward Dream Cruise, the country’s biggest car festival, where about a million people descend on Detroit’s most famous street every year to show off their rides, talk cars, and enjoy car culture.
“Our electric grid can’t handle what we have now,” said Christina Kowalenko, 54, who drove her 1968 Dodge Dart GTS convertible to the Cruise. “[EVs] are inconvenient to charge on the road, and it’s expensive to put a charging station in your house.”
Kuniskis pointed out that — in addition to the Inflation Reduction Act’s $300 billion in spending on green energy — the auto industry is investing over $500 billion for auto electrification, twice what was spent by the federal government (in today’s dollars) to go to the moon.
The move is causing massive disruption to the industry. Despite the Biden administration’s claims that carbon prohibition will create a jobs boom, Ford announced on August 22 that it is cutting 3,000 jobs as it transitions to EVs. Affordable model lines are drying up as automakers focus on expensive, high-margin, gas-powered trucks and SUVs to pay for the EV era.
Trying to put lipstick on the pig, auto-analysis firm Edmunds claimed that EV market share rose to 5.8 percent in the first six months of 2022 compared with 2.7 percent from a year ago. But nearly half those sales are in one state, California, and 60 percent from a single luxury brand: Tesla.
What’s more, the average national transaction price of EVs in July was $62,893, up 14.8 percent from $54,797 in 2021. That parallels the average price of a car which is now a whopping $47,198 (up 12 percent over 2021) as government rules, inflation, and inventory shortages push middle-class buyers out of the new car market.
The minerals for these battery-powered cars will come from abroad — China controls an estimated 80 percent of the world’s lithium raw-material refining alone — a reversal of 50 years of federal policy aimed at making the U.S. more energy independent. Energy independence is out, carbon prohibition is in.
