The Patriot Post® · NPR Gaslights Over 'Clean' EVs

It’s no secret that the supposed burgeoning electric vehicle market has failed to, well, burgeon. This is despite the combined government carrot-and-stick approach of massive tax incentives and increasingly stringent emissions requirements for automakers. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of Americans don’t see EVs meeting their everyday needs.

Even with the mainstream media doing yeoman’s work trying to convince the public that climate change is an existential crisis, Americans find the “solution” of buying EVs a nonstarter. Furthermore, as more people learn about EVs and the claims of their being “green” vehicles, they start to suffer from some obvious contradictions.

As I have previously observed, the “clean electric vehicle” is mostly a fairy tale on at least three fronts: “First, there’s the highly toxic nature of lithium batteries, which are the essential component in making electric vehicles possible. Second is the disposal of spent batteries. Third is the means by which power is generated for those batteries.”

But those aren’t the only environmentally problematic aspects of EVs. A study conducted by Emissions Analytics found that EVs produce some 1,850 times more particle pollution than modern gas-powered tailpipes. That somewhat surprising study looked at the average tire wear from EVs versus gas-powered vehicles and found that due to the weight of EVs (on average 30% heavier than equivalent gas-powered cars), they wear down tires faster. This wearing down of these synthetic rubber tires produces oil-based particulate pollution, which is 400 times more from an EV than a gas-powered vehicle.

Any suggestion that fossil fuel-powered vehicles might not be as bad or that EVs might not be as “clean” is anathema to climate change apologists. Don’t forget: The oil industry is the bad guy.

For example, in a blatant gaslighting effort, NPR released a story this week claiming that “EVs are cleaner than gas cars, but a growing share of Americans don’t believe it.” The article, which insists that EVs are really better for the planet, was written by NPR correspondent Camila Domonoske, whose bio tells us she helped NPR “win a pie-eating contest in the summer of 2018.”

Domonoske, for the most part, dismisses objections to EVs’ “clean” reputation due to the pollution associated with the mining of minerals necessary for EV batteries, the use of coal-fired power plants to create the electricity, and the problem of disposing of toxic EV batteries. And then she laments that the number of Americans who believe they are clean has diminished, down from 63% years ago to 58%.

The article notes that EVs have increasingly become a political issue for many Americans, who are skeptical of the technology. It’s true that EVs have become more of a political issue, and that’s because politicians like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have pushed the transition to an all-EV future in order to combat climate change. Furthermore, the Biden/Harris administration has done so by putting its thumb on the scale to force Americans into EVs. In a free market democratic society, trying to control what people are allowed to buy will genuinely rub free people the wrong way. In addition, the government’s once-size-fits-all solutions generally solve nothing while at the same time creating a slew of new problems.

Domonoske does attempt to address the Emissions Analytics study conducted by researcher Nick Molden, but in doing so, she shows that the primary concern of the climate cult is less about tackling actual pollution and more about being anti-fossil fuel. She writes, “The idea that his work shows EVs are worse for the environment would make sense only if you ignore the existence of climate change.”

So, a study shows that when it comes to the production of actual pollutant particles as opposed to carbon dioxide — a naturally occurring gas that is required for plant life — Domonoske dismisses it as not directly dealing with climate change. Never mind that the climate has always been in a state of change and always will be.

To her credit, Domonoske eventually concedes the real reason why Americans are souring on EVs. They don’t meet two important metrics for consumers: recharge time and range. For all the technological innovations EVs have made, their failure to best gas-powered vehicles on those two fundamental issues is why people aren’t buying them.

Browbeating people for refusing to accept a product with clear drawbacks will never be successful in a free-market society. EV sales are failing because EVs have failed to meet the fundamental expectations and demands of Americans.