: short on facts, long on rhetoric, and filled with unrealistic expectations. Sadly, though, Mr. Biden’s policy mistakes are moving beyond fiction to a reality that confines consumers to cars that are unaffordable and unwanted.
Even if Mr. Biden managed a 500% increase in EV sales by the end of the decade, he’d still fall woefully short of his goal. The only conceivable way to make half of new vehicle sales EVs by 2030 would be if Americans were so poor that they could afford very few new cars, and thus the small number of EVs could still amount to half of all new vehicles. That’s right out of Mao’s Great Leap Forward.
But when you consider that “it has taken on average over 16 years to move mining projects from discovery to first production,” then Biden’s proposals aren’t unachievable — they’re laughable. The Biden administration repeatedly refers to EVs as zero-emission vehicles, as if the electricity powering them did not have emissions. EVs are powered primarily by fossil fuels, not just because fossil fuels generate much of our electricity but because they are dispatchable, meaning their electrical output can be ramped up and down in response to demand.
Worse, America is dependent on countries such as China when it comes to EVs, and those countries will receive a windfall under Mr. Biden’s centrally planned industrial policy.