Unless I Have To

Never will I ever, outside of having no other choice:

Drive an electric car. I hate that society through government power is trying to make us drive them, and is trying force the auto industry to make them. Nature is a lot more resilient than we think; climate change is not destroying the Earth. Besides, as P.J. O'Rourke said ages ago about fossil fuels, "Fat lot of good they did lying in the ground for millions of years."

Saturday rant over.

Let Dominoes Fall

I admit it: sometimes I feel like being a complete snot just to be a snot.

Domino's Pizza has lately been running a commercial about the 300,000 or so electric cars they're going to be using for pizza delivery because 'it's better for the planet'. I get it. They're trying to appeal to potential consumers with a smarmy and vaguely self righteous sales pitch. It's their right.

Yet with me, every time I see the commercial - every single time - I find myself seriously considering calling in an order - a very small order like breadsticks - simply as a reason to drive my gasoline burning van to a competitor of Domino's and pick it up myself. I merely want to assert, in my own little way, that you can jump off a bridge with your virtue signaling, Big Pizza Chain. I will drive my new old van whenever and wherever I want, as I'm not actually harming the planet in any real, long term way. Earth is resilient, folks. 

In some ways I think I am becoming a curmudgeon. And, as my friend Maxwell Smart says, loving it.

Electric Cars Found Wanting

GM will halt production of the Chevy Volt for five weeks due to a lack of demand. A company which makes batteries for electric cars lost around $258 million dollars. Electric cars aren't selling, and even hybrids aren't doing all that well, despite gasoline being at around four bucks a gallon in most of the country. What does it tells us?

For starters, nobody wants the stupid things. Secondly, no amount of government cajoling will make people buy them. Thirdly, everyone knows that the environment is both resilient and not nearly so bad off as the liberal environmentalists claim. When you top it all off with the fact that electric cars and hybrids cost more than traditional gasoline vehicles, and it's no wonder Volts don't sell. Such is not a, ahem, good climate in which you can influence people to buy what you want them to buy. The consumer wants what he wants.

Just give electric cars time, supporters say. But why? Essentially for the same reasons we have already listed, and likely a few more. Outside of a lack of options, you cannot make folks spend money on what they don't want.

You want to spread the purchase and use of electric vehicles? Burn the gas until there's no option but to use hybrids and the like. And get the government out of the car business while you're at it.

The consumers, as we've said, can see through all that. Consumers will not buy because of government pressure, outside of lacking other options. Necessity being the mother of invention, people aren't going to buy nontraditional vehicles without having to. Only when car makers are completely free to produce what they know the consumers want, which means they'll find a way to produce cheaper electric cars and hybrids when it pays them, will such cars become dominant. Before that, we simply have our tax dollars spent unwisely, with automakers forced to spend cash on things which they would rather not. Cash which could be used towards making better gasoline driven vehicles.

Let the market determine what we drive. Anything short of that, or short of absolute necessity, only makes it tougher on the consumers and workers the Obama Administration claims to love so much. Driving up taxes and increasing the cost of personal transportation will only stall private initiative.