Gas prices reached an all-time peak last week at $4.33 a gallon, according to a AAA tracker, remaining at $4.30 Wednesday. The White House solution? Get an electric car, you poors.
“Clean transportation can provide significant cost savings for the American people,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said at an event alongside the vice president earlier this month touting the administration’s $5 million spend on a nationwide network of charging stations, “so the people from rural, to suburban, to urban communities can all benefit from the gas savings of driving an EV.”
At record-breaking gas prices slapping families with a projected $2,000 in additional transportation costs this year, the switch to an electric vehicle may sound tempting — were it not for the nearly $60,000 price tag. This plus the illogic of destroying U.S. energy independence from the most reliable an inexpensive sources makes Democrats’ lack of concern about gas prices a version of Paris Hilton’s famous Photoshopped T-shirt meme, “Stop being poor.”
According to Kelly Blue Book in December, the average transaction price of an electric vehicle is north of $56,400. That’s $5,000 more than an entry-level luxury car, averaging more than $51,300 in November.
Absent radical changes in the power grid, the emissions savings from a gas-powered vehicle to electric are minimal because its production still relies on the very sources their use aims to eliminate. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), 60 percent of U.S. electricity production is generated by fossil fuels. Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie eloquently made this point in a tweet last week.
And forget about manufacturing electric cars without a reliable power grid, its reliability secured by fossil fuels. China, the world’s largest producer of electric cars, gets 58 percent of its power from coal, 20 percent from petroleum and other liquids, and 8 percent from natural gas. Beijing also stands to benefit most from Biden’s pledge to push American auto sales to 50 percent electric because it monopolizes the global market of the rare earth minerals needed to make them.
High energy prices also translate into higher prices for just about everything. On top of the $2,000 projection in added transportation expenses per household this year due to gas price increases, food prices climbing with inflation will cost another $1,000 more than in 2021, according to Yardeni Research, a global investment and strategy firm.
“That’s $3,000 less money that households have to spend on other consumer goods and services, which are also experiencing rapid price increases,” Edward Yardeni, the firm’s president, wrote in a LinkedIn post.
But Americans can rest assured that instead of unleashing American energy production, consumers can dodge the administration’s self-imposed price spikes with the $60,000 purchase of an electric vehicle charged on coal.
