Electric Vehicles are Fleecing Us Out of Billions

When you buy a new internal combustion vehicle, you are also paying for someone else’s electric vehicle.

While the subsidies are egregious enough, it turns out EV manufacturers are fleecing us out of billions, and doing it with government help.

Attorneys Michael Buschbacher and James Conde explain at The Wall Street Journal:

When carmakers test gasoline-powered vehicles for compliance with the Transportation Department’s fuel-efficiency rules, they must use real values measured in a laboratory. By contrast, under an Energy Department rule, carmakers can arbitrarily multiply the efficiency of electric cars by 6.67. This means that although a 2022 Tesla Model Y tests at the equivalent of about 65 miles per gallon in a laboratory (roughly the same as a hybrid), it is counted as having an absurdly high compliance value of 430 mpg. That number has no basis in reality or law.

Government subsidies and mandates wildly distort automobile production.  And as Buschbacher and Conde further explain, this funny math sucker punches us all, right in the wallet:

For exaggerating electric-car efficiency, the government rewards carmakers with compliance credits they can trade for cash. Economists estimate these credits could be worth billions: a vast cross-subsidy invented by bureaucrats and paid for by every person who buys a new gasoline-powered car.

CFACT has been educating the public on the myriad follies stemming from government pushing us to buy electric vehicles for years.

Buschbacher and Conde remind us that makers of diesel vehicles, Volkswagen in particular, were fined tens of billions of dollars for fudging their emissions compliance math.

There should be no double standards for EV manufacturers fudging their math to cash in on compliance credits.

The government agencies enabling EV makers to fleece the public should be called to account as well.

AUTHOR

Craig Rucker

Craig Rucker is a co-founder of CFACT and currently serves as its president. Widely heralded as a leader in the free market environmental, think tank community in Washington, D.C., Rucker is a frequent guest on radio talk shows, written extensively in numerous publications, and has appeared in such media outlets as Fox News, OANN, Washington Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Hill, among many others. Rucker is also the co-producer of the award-winning film “Climate Hustle,” which was the #1 box-office film in America during its one night showing in 2016, as well as the acclaimed “Climate Hustle 2” staring Hollywood actor Kevin Sorbo released in 2020. As an accredited observer to the United Nations, Rucker has also led CFACT delegations to some 30 major UN conferences, including those in Copenhagen, Istanbul, Kyoto, Bonn, Marrakesh, Rio de Janeiro, and Warsaw, to name a few.

EDITORS NOTE: This CFACT column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

---