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# Don’t Feel Good about Driving a Electric Car
- URL: https://goodoil.news/dont-feel-good-about-driving-a-electric-car/
- Published: 2023-02-16T23:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2023-02-16T04:13:38.000Z
- Author: Guest Post
- Tags: China Politics, General, Politics, USA Politics, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2024-07-16 22:34

**Peter Murphy**

[cfact.org](https://www.cfact.org/2023/02/15/whats-wrong-with-electric-vehicles-everything/?ref=goodoil.news)

*Peter Murphy is Senior Fellow at CFACT. He has researched and advocated for a variety of policy issues, including education reform and fiscal policy, both in the non-profit sector and in government in the administration of former New York Governor George Pataki. He previously wrote and edited The Chalkboard weblog for the NY Charter Schools Association, and has been published in numerous media outlets, including The Hill, New York Post, Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal. Twitter: @PeterMurphy26 Website: [https://www.petermurphylgs.com/](https://www.petermurphylgs.com/?ref=goodoil.news)*

---

The common pitch of car commercials, and any commercials that sell products, is that they make you *[feel good](https://youtu.be/LrSGT8bQ9V0?ref=goodoil.news)* and therefore are worth spending your money on. Driving a new \[fill in the brand\] car makes you feel noticed, safe, special, happy, and so on. Life is good; even [more!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoPVRBrfVzY&ref=goodoil.news)

With electric vehicles, we are being sold the colossal canard that owning one “is better for the planet!” A recent example comes with a [pizza](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbKjAKeGsxM&ref=goodoil.news). If you order Dominos Pizza delivery, you can feel better because the company’s car fleet is going all electric! And who can forget that hilarious 2022 [Super ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCthKlvxbQ8&ref=goodoil.news)Bowl ad with Arnold Schwarzenegger and one of my favourite femme fatale, Selma Hayek, hawking EVs?

Memo to Arnold, Selma and the [latest](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlHUhHEUORE&ref=goodoil.news) one-time A-lister, Kevin Bacon, cashing in on EVs: it is past time to examine reality. Electric vehicles bring environmental harm; do not net reduce carbon emissions in any appreciable way; are regressive against America’s poor to middle class; exploit the masses in the developing world; and empower Communist China, which is the biggest national security threat to the United States.

Electric vehicles require massive batteries that [weigh](https://axlewise.com/electric-car-battery-weight/?ref=goodoil.news) about 1,000 to 3,000 pounds that [comprise](https://axleaddict.com/cars/How-are-EV-Batteries-Made-for-Electric-Vehicles-BEV?ref=goodoil.news) metals such as cobalt, manganese, nickel and graphite. These materials come mostly from developing nations, primarily Congo, which uses [child labour](https://axleaddict.com/cars/How-are-EV-Batteries-Made-for-Electric-Vehicles-BEV?ref=goodoil.news) to extract them from underground. Mining for energy is one of the [reasons](https://www.citylab.com/equity/2016/02/keep-it-in-the-ground-climate-change-fossil-fuel-pollution/424284/?ref=goodoil.news) the so-called environmental green activists and organizations despise oil, coal and natural gas, though hypocrisy under the banner of “fighting climate change” means never having to say you’re sorry.

[Studies](https://www.cfact.org/2020/08/06/the-high-costs-and-low-benefits-of-electric-vehicles/?ref=goodoil.news) have [shown](https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2022/10/27/zero%5Femissions%5Ffrom%5Felectric%5Fvehicles%5Fheres%5Fwhy%5Fthat%5Fclaim%5Fhas%5Fzero%5Fbasis%5F860938.html?ref=goodoil.news) the fossil fuel energy to mine and transport metal ingredients and to manufacture batteries ([especially](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-03-14/teslas-in-california-help-bring-dirty-rain-to-china?ref=goodoil.news) in China), combined with the energy necessary [to power](https://www.cfact.org/2021/08/20/electric-vehicles-will-tax-the-electric-grid/?ref=goodoil.news) the electric grid, basically [negates](https://spectrum.ieee.org/electric-cars-2657880896?ref=goodoil.news) EVs purported benefit of lower carbon emissions.

> A 2015 [study](https://www.nber.org/system/files/working%5Fpapers/w21291/w21291.pdf?ref=goodoil.news) by the National Bureau of Economic Research found EVs had a more negative impact on the environment than gasoline vehicles.

Electric cars are expensive, [averaging](https://www.cfact.org/2023/02/15/whats-wrong-with-electric-vehicles-everything/?ref=goodoil.news#:~:text=According%20to%20Cox%20Automotive%2C%20parent,%2448%2C100%20in%20the%20same%20timeframe.) more than $65,000, akin to a luxury car, which makes them a virtue-signalling toy for mostly upper-income and wealthy. Since the U.S. government subsidizes the purchase of these vehicles with a $7,500 [tax credit](https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/credits-for-new-clean-vehicles-purchased-in-2023-or-after?ref=goodoil.news), it means every non-wealthy taxpayer is helping buyers with household income up to $300,000 become EV owners. Call it the “reverse Robin Hood” policy.

Beyond the dubious impact on carbon emissions (assuming that even matters, which is a whole other debate), and the perversity of the working poor subsidizing upper-income earners purchase of EVs, there are broader problems to transforming the U.S. car fleet to electric.

Electric vehicles represent a 21st century version of colonialism and will soon become an economic and national security vulnerability for the United States.

This is due to our biggest adversary, China; specifically, the Communist Chinese Party. This is the same bunch who just sent a spy balloon over America with impunity; imprisons millions of minority populations within their borders; threatens militarily U.S. allies in the Pacific; and is infiltrating the U.S. by purchasing farmland, bankrolling universities, dictating movie content to the Hollywood film industry, and stealing government and industry secrets by the bushel.

China is inexorably creating a global monopoly on battery materials by [investing](https://www.voanews.com/a/us-china-compete-for-africa-s-rare-earth-minerals-/6957617.html?ref=goodoil.news) heavily in mining in Africa and elsewhere while the Biden administration just [closed](https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/biden-slaps-20-year-mining-ban-on-minnesota-land-give-more-power-china?ref=goodoil.news) 225,000 acres of northern Minnesota from mining, even though it contains the nation’s largest mineral deposits. While President Biden reduces the U.S. capacity to manufacture electric vehicles even as he pushes to increase their numbers on the road, American livelihoods are becoming increasingly [vulnerable](https://www.cfact.org/2022/06/29/dark-clouds-on-the-horizon-for-electric-vehicles/?ref=goodoil.news) to the Chinese Communist Party.

After the coronavirus was unleashed by China and the knowledge that our own pharmaceuticals were so [dependent on](https://www.cfact.org/2020/03/13/time-to-extricate-from-china/?ref=goodoil.news) Chinese production, one would think our masters in government would be weaning us off dependence on China. No such luck.

Instead, President Biden, “Climate Ambassador” John Kerry and his entire administration are [Play-doh](https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/play-doh-was-originally-meant-for-something-very-different%5Fn%5F5ac51703e4b09ef3b24300db?ref=goodoil.news) in China’s hands, more concerned about offending its ruling politburo. One of the reasons for this, among [several](https://www.cfact.org/2022/07/20/biden-family-connections-to-u-s-china-energy-deals-reveal-compromising-coincidences/?ref=goodoil.news), is the credulous [hope](https://nypost.com/2021/05/06/concerns-kerry-downplayed-china-human-rights-abuses-for-climate-deal/?ref=goodoil.news) that they can make some sort of climate [deal](https://www.cfact.org/2021/03/24/china-is-outplaying-president-biden-on-climate/?ref=goodoil.news) with China.

Government policymakers and lawmakers obsessed with “climate change” seem blind to the ugly realities of their own policies. Force-feeding electric vehicles on Americans is a regressive fool’s errand that won’t impact the climate, will necessitate more mining and the exploitation of labourers in the developing world, and will put our economic well-being and security at the mercy of the Chinese Communist Party.

Do you still feel good about driving that electric car?

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