NPR:
When Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm set out on a four-day electric-vehicle road trip this summer, she knew charging might be a challenge. But she probably didn’t expect anyone to call the cops.
Granholm’s trip through the southeast, from Charlotte, N.C., to Memphis, Tenn., was intended to draw attention to the billions of dollars the White House [that would be the taxpayer] is pouring into green energy and clean cars. The administration’s ambitious energy agenda, if successful, could significantly cut U.S. emissions and reshape Americans’ lives in fundamental ways, including by putting many more people in electric vehicles.
“Clean cars” is something of an exaggeration. “Cleaner” is more accurate. After factoring in the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions generated in producing electric vehicles (EVs) and in generating the electricity used to power them, a midsize traditional car is (according to the International Energy Agency) responsible (roughly) for a bit more than twice as many GHG emissions as an EV.
NPR:
On town hall stops along her road trip, Granholm made a passionate, optimistic case for this transition. She often put up a photo of New York City in 1900, full of horses and carriages, with a single car. Then another slide: “Thirteen years later, same street. All these cars. Can you spot the horse?”
One horse was in the frame.
And yet no one banned the horse, or, for that matter, the electric and steam cars that were also on the market in the early 20th century. The internal combustion engine won on its merits, and without the help of vast amounts of taxpayer money.
NPR:
“Things are happening fast. You are in the center of it. Imagine how big clean energy industries will be in 13 years,” she told one audience in South Carolina. “How much stronger our economy is going to grow. How many good-paying jobs we’re going to create — and where we are going to lead the world.”
Lead the world, eh? Maybe, but that will mean overcoming China in this area. The decision to mandate EVs in the West has given China an opening it would not otherwise have had, sweeping away the advantages of incumbency that Western companies have up to now enjoyed thanks to their long history with internal combustion engines.
While forcing the switch to EVs will create new jobs, the more important question is how many net new jobs will be created, and what those jobs will pay. That’s clearly a part of what’s worrying the UAW’s leadership as it prepares for a strike. Not without reason.
NPR:
The auto industry, under immense pressure to tackle its contribution to climate change, is undertaking a remarkable switch to electric vehicles — but it’s not necessarily going to be a smooth transition.
“Not necessarily.”
Emperor Hirohito, announcing Japan’s surrender in 1945:
the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.
“Not necessarily.”
NPR:
But between stops, Granholm’s entourage at times had to grapple with the limitations of the present. Like when her caravan of EVs — including a luxury Cadillac Lyriq, a hefty Ford F-150, and an affordable Bolt electric utility vehicle — was planning to fast-charge in Grovetown, a suburb of Augusta, Georgia.
Her advance team realized there weren’t going to be enough plugs to go around. One of the station’s four chargers was broken, and others were occupied. So an Energy Department staffer tried parking a nonelectric vehicle by one of those working chargers to reserve a spot for the approaching secretary of energy.
That did not go down well: a regular gas-powered car blocking the only free spot for a charger?
In fact, a family that was boxed out — on a sweltering day, with a baby in the vehicle — was so upset they decided to get the authorities involved: They called the police…
The story ends on a more upbeat note — NPR is NPR, after all — but not without its author reporting other glitches on the way:
Despite overcrowding, broken chargers, and slow speeds, charging on the road worked most of the time for Granholm’s team.
That’s a lot of despites.
And a “most of the time” too.
But, but, progress . . .
NPR:
“I think two days in, I would totally buy an EV,” an Energy Department staffer who was driving an EV for the first time mused halfway through the trip. “Like, it would be pretty easy to do a road trip. You have to stop for lunch anyway, so you stop, charge, keep going.”
Stopping for lunch? What madness is this? When I go on a road trip, lunch is a packet of beef jerky and a can of Coke Zero, bought from the gas station after a couple of minutes spent filling the car, and enjoyed (yes, enjoyed) while driving along.
But it takes all sorts, and the staffer presumably must stick with the party line. Unanswered is what happens when the need to charge does not coincide with a mealtime. Then it’s just wasted time. Progress!
The pity, of course, is that many or most of these teething troubles, if that’s what they are, could have been avoided (and all the taxpayer dollars saved) if central planners had kept out of things, leaving EVs to develop organically. If EVs are as much of an improvement as their boosters claim, they will steadily win market share, and the infrastructure to support that growing market share will grow naturally alongside it (as Tesla has demonstrated). Moreover, by being forced to compete for a longer period against internal combustion engine cars that are themselves continually improving, EV manufacturers would have every incentive to improve their product (and probably its pricing) much more than would otherwise be the case. Competition works in a way that central planning does not. Yes, this would take more time, but not so much longer as to make any significant difference to the climate.
But that’s a road we are not being allowed to take.