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natural gas car. Oh yes, the tax on your gasoline to keep our roads maintained will soon be replaced by a special tax on your electric vehicle registration, and well it should be.

COLD CLIMATES

The nature of batteries is that they yield less energy in cold climates. EV owners will all learn this soon enough. Advertised ranges on a fully charged battery will not be achieved. The shortfall will be significant. THE CALIFORNIA JOKE California plans to have 25 million EVs in the not too distant future. It already has 50% of the nation’s EVs. The utility companies have thus far had little to say about the alarming cost projections or the certain increased rates that will be required to charge their customers. It is not just the total amount of electricity required but the transmission lines and fast charging capacity that must be built at existing filling stations. Neither wind nor solar can support any of it.

In order to match the 2000 cars that a typical filling station can service in a busy 12 hours, the station would require 600, 50 watt chargers at an estimated cost of $24 million and a supply of 30 megawatts of power from the grid. That is enough to power 20,000 homes. No one likely thinks about the fact that it can take 30 minutes to 8 hours to recharge a vehicle between empty or just topping off. What are the drivers doing during that time.

The 49 states not named California have the other 50% of EVs, an average of one percent each. It would appear that those states understand the problems California faces. USED CAR MARKET

The average used EV will need a new battery pricing them well above used internal combustion cars. The average age of an American car on the road is 12 years. A 12-year-old EV will be on its third battery. A Tesla battery costs $10,000, so there will not be many 12-year-old EVs on the road. Outside of Paris there is a huge vacant lot filled with hundreds of electric cars previously used by the city government of Paris. At this point a replacement battery is worth more than the used car. No landfill or disposal site will allow the batteries to be disposed of there. So these green fairy tale electric cars are all just sitting in vacant lots while their batteries drain toxins into the ground.

EVs PER BLOCK IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD A home charging system for a Tesla requires 75 amp service. The average house is equipped with 100 amp service. On most suburban streets the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than three houses with a single Tesla. For half the homes on your block to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly overloaded.

BATTERIES

Although the modern lithium-ion battery is four times better than the old lead-acid battery, gasoline holds 80 times the energy density. The great lithium battery in your cell phone weighs less than an ounce while the Tesla battery weighs 1000 pounds.

CONCLUSION

The electric automobile will always be around in a niche market likely never exceeding 10% of the cars on the road. All automobile manufacturers are investing in their output and all will be disappointed in their sales. Perhaps they know this and will manufacture just what they know they can sell. Surely not what President Biden or Governor Newsom are planning for.

Dr. Jay Lehr is a Senior Policy Analyst with the International Climate Science Coalition and former Science Director of The Heartland Institute. He is an internationally renowned scientist, author, and speaker who has testified before Congress on dozens of occasions on environmental issues and consulted with nearly every agency of the national government and many foreign countries. After graduating from Princeton University at the age of 20 with a degree in Geological Engineering, he received the nation’s first Ph.D. in Groundwater Hydrology from the University of Arizona. He later became executive director of the National Association of Groundwater Scientists and Engineers.