The End of Private Car Ownership

Chris

Administrator
Staff member
The End of Private Car Ownership
You will drive nothing and you will be happy.
By Daniel Greenfield

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

The term “pedestrian” has a derogatory meaning because peasants walked while nobles were “equestrians” and rode horses. The industrial revolution eliminated this class difference, as it did so many others, by making car ownership available to the masses until eventually Herbert Hoover was able to boast that “Republican prosperity has reduced and increased earning capacity” to “put the proverbial ‘chicken in every pot’ and a car in every backyard to boot.”

Democrats have spent two generations trying to get those cars out of every backyard.

Biden is trying to bring back Obama’s mileage standards that were estimated to raise car prices by 20%. The goal is to “nudge 40% of U.S. drivers into electric vehicles by decade’s end.”

Will 40% of Americans be able to afford electric cars that cost an average of $54,000 by 2030?

Not likely. Nor are they meant to. Biden’s radical ‘green’ government, which includes Tracy Stone-Manning, the former spokeswoman for an ecoterrorist group as the head of the Bureau of Land Management, isn’t looking to nudge drivers into another type of cars, but out of cars.

Gas prices are a way to price Americans out of car ownership under the guise of pushing EVs.

Biden’s Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm responded to American concerns about high gas prices by urging them to buy electric cars. Granholm, who had promoted a green energy tycoon who spent years in prison for fraud, who had served on the board of directors of an electric battery company, and made millions divesting stock in an electric vehicle manufacturer, is a fan.

“Most electric vehicles are now cheaper to own than gas-powered cars from the day you drive them off the lot,” Granholm tweeted.

That isn’t actually true, but actual cars have become more expensive to own, largely because of efforts by the Biden administration, and by various states, including California. That hasn’t however made electric cars any more affordable for ordinary Americans.

The average price of an electric car shot up to $54,000 in May. Car prices in general have risen in the Biden economy, but electric cars are naturally expensive. The raw material costs for an average electric car are up to over $8,000. That’s compared to $3,600 for an actual car.

When your raw material costs are that high, electric cars will be inherently unaffordable.

The Obama administration pumped billions in taxpayer money into battery and electric car manufacturing, the majority of which failed, on the theory that enough government subsidies would lower battery costs. Not only was much of that money lost, but currently electric battery costs hover around the $160 kilowatt-hour mark. Green boosters cheer that’s far down from over $1,000 per kWh a decade ago, but that still adds up to the reality that an electric car capable of traveling for even short distances needs a battery that alone costs thousands.

The Nissan Leaf, which approaches $30,000 once the reality of MSRP in the current sales market is taken into account, is one of the cheapest electric cars around, and has a range of only 149 miles. Replacing its battery can set back car owners $6,500 to $7,500. And that’s even when you can manage to find one or someone willing to replace it. In less than 3 years, Leafs lose 20 miles of range. By the fifth year, they have lost 30 miles. And it’s all downhill from there.

The Nissan Leaf was initially a hit, but car manufacturers quickly realized that anyone willing to overpay that much for substandard performance had money to burn. The electric car market is now thoroughly dominated by luxury vehicles subsidized by taxpayers. And the Leaf went from 90% market share to less than 10%. The EV market is now a taxpayer-funded status symbol.

The dirty truth about the “clean” car market is that it consists of traditional car companies and Tesla frantically trying to unload a limited share of luxury electric cars on wealthy customers to cash in on the emissions credits mandated by states like California. Tesla makes more money reselling these regulatory credits to actual car companies than it does selling cars. Taxpayers and working class car-owners pick up the bill for the entire luxury electric vehicle market.

A market that they are shut out from by design.

The “green” vision is not a world in which everyone has their own electric car. It’s one of collective transport, of buses, light rail, and car-pooling through shared rides and roving self-driving cars. The only vehicle the average consumer is supposed to own is a bicycle.

While the Biden administration is still pretending that it’s out to “encourage” electric car ownership by making actual cars too expensive for much of the country to afford, others are saying the quiet part out loud.

“Car-lovers will doubtless mourn the passing of machines that, in the 20th century, became icons of personal freedom. But this freedom is illusory,” an Economist article predicted.

“There will be fewer cars on the road—perhaps just 30% of the cars we have today,” the head of Google’s self-driving car project predicted.

“The days of the single occupancy car are numbered,” Brook Porter at G2 Venture Partners, a green energy investment firm, thundered in an article titled, The End of Cars in Cities.

Dan Ammann, the former president of GM, claimed that “the human-driven, gasoline-powered, single-passenger car” is the “fundamental problem” in a post titled, “We Need to Move Beyond the Car”. He has since gone to work for Exxon-Mobil.

Predictions are cheap, but car bans are expensive and all too real. The European Union voted to back a ban on the sale of non-electric cars by 2035. California is also pushing for a similar 2035 ban on the sale of new actual cars in the state. Officials noted that the ban would push more than half of mechanics out of work and leave much of the state unable to afford cars.

Canada has its own 2035 car ban. Last year, Governor Newsom and Governor Cuomo, along with 10 other governors, urged Biden to impose a 2035 car ban on all Americans.

Electric cars aren’t actually “cleaner”. The mining processes that produce “green” technologies are as dirty, if not dirtier, and trade dependence on oil for dependence on rare earth metals, and dependence on the Middle East for dependence on Communist China. The one thing that they decisively accomplish is to make it impossible for ordinary Americans to own cars.

And that is what environmentalists really want. But not just them.

The vision of a nation in which private car ownership is a luxury good, in which cars have been priced out of the reach of most people through environmental measures that concentrated on gas-powered vehicles, and then added more taxes and fines for the waste” and “inefficiency” of an individual owning a vehicle is not very far away.

The technocratic sales pitch is that ride-sharing and self-driving cars will make car ownership unnecessary. Why own a big clunky machine when you can own nothing and be happy?

The reality is that car ownership offers mobility and independence. That is exactly what the leftist radicals making social policy want to eliminate. Gas prices are not Putin’s price hike, they’re the green dream. And that dream isn’t to put you in a Nissan Leaf. It’s the Pol Pot dream of dismantling civilization and rolling back the industrial revolution.

Once the dark age norms of their dark enlightenment are restored, peasants will go back to being pedestrians and only the progressive philosopher kings will ride.

https://www.raptureforums.com/politics-culture-wars/the-end-of-private-car-ownership/
 

Mama Bug

Active Member
This saddens me. We bought my husband another car last week. It’s a little older than what he had been driving but our daughter just got her license and wanted a car with a back up camera. She’s short and says she can’t see by looking behind her. It’s what we could afford and we’re hoping to have it paid for in time for our son to get a car in four more years. It makes me wonder if my son will even be able to have a car or if I’ll be able to get another one in a few years. We live out in the country so it’s not like we can just catch a train or bus to go downtown or something. I’m guessing the idiots in charge will expect people like us to sell our land in the country and move to the crowded city? :ohno
 

Ghoti Ichthus

Pray so they do not serve alone. Ephesians 6:10-20
This saddens me. We bought my husband another car last week. It’s a little older than what he had been driving but our daughter just got her license and wanted a car with a back up camera. She’s short and says she can’t see by looking behind her. It’s what we could afford and we’re hoping to have it paid for in time for our son to get a car in four more years. It makes me wonder if my son will even be able to have a car or if I’ll be able to get another one in a few years. We live out in the country so it’s not like we can just catch a train or bus to go downtown or something. I’m guessing the idiots in charge will expect people like us to sell our land in the country and move to the crowded city? :ohno

Horse and buggy
Mule
Donkey cart
Oxcart
Buckboard and draft animal(s) of your choice


:pray :pray :amen :amen
 

NewWine2020

Well-Known Member
The End of Private Car Ownership
You will drive nothing and you will be happy.
By Daniel Greenfield

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

The term “pedestrian” has a derogatory meaning because peasants walked while nobles were “equestrians” and rode horses. The industrial revolution eliminated this class difference, as it did so many others, by making car ownership available to the masses until eventually Herbert Hoover was able to boast that “Republican prosperity has reduced and increased earning capacity” to “put the proverbial ‘chicken in every pot’ and a car in every backyard to boot.”

Democrats have spent two generations trying to get those cars out of every backyard.

Biden is trying to bring back Obama’s mileage standards that were estimated to raise car prices by 20%. The goal is to “nudge 40% of U.S. drivers into electric vehicles by decade’s end.”

Will 40% of Americans be able to afford electric cars that cost an average of $54,000 by 2030?

Not likely. Nor are they meant to. Biden’s radical ‘green’ government, which includes Tracy Stone-Manning, the former spokeswoman for an ecoterrorist group as the head of the Bureau of Land Management, isn’t looking to nudge drivers into another type of cars, but out of cars.

Gas prices are a way to price Americans out of car ownership under the guise of pushing EVs.

Biden’s Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm responded to American concerns about high gas prices by urging them to buy electric cars. Granholm, who had promoted a green energy tycoon who spent years in prison for fraud, who had served on the board of directors of an electric battery company, and made millions divesting stock in an electric vehicle manufacturer, is a fan.

“Most electric vehicles are now cheaper to own than gas-powered cars from the day you drive them off the lot,” Granholm tweeted.

That isn’t actually true, but actual cars have become more expensive to own, largely because of efforts by the Biden administration, and by various states, including California. That hasn’t however made electric cars any more affordable for ordinary Americans.

The average price of an electric car shot up to $54,000 in May. Car prices in general have risen in the Biden economy, but electric cars are naturally expensive. The raw material costs for an average electric car are up to over $8,000. That’s compared to $3,600 for an actual car.

When your raw material costs are that high, electric cars will be inherently unaffordable.

The Obama administration pumped billions in taxpayer money into battery and electric car manufacturing, the majority of which failed, on the theory that enough government subsidies would lower battery costs. Not only was much of that money lost, but currently electric battery costs hover around the $160 kilowatt-hour mark. Green boosters cheer that’s far down from over $1,000 per kWh a decade ago, but that still adds up to the reality that an electric car capable of traveling for even short distances needs a battery that alone costs thousands.

The Nissan Leaf, which approaches $30,000 once the reality of MSRP in the current sales market is taken into account, is one of the cheapest electric cars around, and has a range of only 149 miles. Replacing its battery can set back car owners $6,500 to $7,500. And that’s even when you can manage to find one or someone willing to replace it. In less than 3 years, Leafs lose 20 miles of range. By the fifth year, they have lost 30 miles. And it’s all downhill from there.

The Nissan Leaf was initially a hit, but car manufacturers quickly realized that anyone willing to overpay that much for substandard performance had money to burn. The electric car market is now thoroughly dominated by luxury vehicles subsidized by taxpayers. And the Leaf went from 90% market share to less than 10%. The EV market is now a taxpayer-funded status symbol.

The dirty truth about the “clean” car market is that it consists of traditional car companies and Tesla frantically trying to unload a limited share of luxury electric cars on wealthy customers to cash in on the emissions credits mandated by states like California. Tesla makes more money reselling these regulatory credits to actual car companies than it does selling cars. Taxpayers and working class car-owners pick up the bill for the entire luxury electric vehicle market.

A market that they are shut out from by design.

The “green” vision is not a world in which everyone has their own electric car. It’s one of collective transport, of buses, light rail, and car-pooling through shared rides and roving self-driving cars. The only vehicle the average consumer is supposed to own is a bicycle.

While the Biden administration is still pretending that it’s out to “encourage” electric car ownership by making actual cars too expensive for much of the country to afford, others are saying the quiet part out loud.

“Car-lovers will doubtless mourn the passing of machines that, in the 20th century, became icons of personal freedom. But this freedom is illusory,” an Economist article predicted.

“There will be fewer cars on the road—perhaps just 30% of the cars we have today,” the head of Google’s self-driving car project predicted.

“The days of the single occupancy car are numbered,” Brook Porter at G2 Venture Partners, a green energy investment firm, thundered in an article titled, The End of Cars in Cities.

Dan Ammann, the former president of GM, claimed that “the human-driven, gasoline-powered, single-passenger car” is the “fundamental problem” in a post titled, “We Need to Move Beyond the Car”. He has since gone to work for Exxon-Mobil.

Predictions are cheap, but car bans are expensive and all too real. The European Union voted to back a ban on the sale of non-electric cars by 2035. California is also pushing for a similar 2035 ban on the sale of new actual cars in the state. Officials noted that the ban would push more than half of mechanics out of work and leave much of the state unable to afford cars.

Canada has its own 2035 car ban. Last year, Governor Newsom and Governor Cuomo, along with 10 other governors, urged Biden to impose a 2035 car ban on all Americans.

Electric cars aren’t actually “cleaner”. The mining processes that produce “green” technologies are as dirty, if not dirtier, and trade dependence on oil for dependence on rare earth metals, and dependence on the Middle East for dependence on Communist China. The one thing that they decisively accomplish is to make it impossible for ordinary Americans to own cars.

And that is what environmentalists really want. But not just them.

The vision of a nation in which private car ownership is a luxury good, in which cars have been priced out of the reach of most people through environmental measures that concentrated on gas-powered vehicles, and then added more taxes and fines for the waste” and “inefficiency” of an individual owning a vehicle is not very far away.

The technocratic sales pitch is that ride-sharing and self-driving cars will make car ownership unnecessary. Why own a big clunky machine when you can own nothing and be happy?

The reality is that car ownership offers mobility and independence. That is exactly what the leftist radicals making social policy want to eliminate. Gas prices are not Putin’s price hike, they’re the green dream. And that dream isn’t to put you in a Nissan Leaf. It’s the Pol Pot dream of dismantling civilization and rolling back the industrial revolution.

Once the dark age norms of their dark enlightenment are restored, peasants will go back to being pedestrians and only the progressive philosopher kings will ride.

https://www.raptureforums.com/politics-culture-wars/the-end-of-private-car-ownership/

The people who think this is a great idea are simpletons...perhaps well meaning and intentioned, but they are dyed in the wool simpletons.

The People masterminding this who know exactly what they are doing to the simpletons and the few who have common sense to see what will happen are just plain vile.

When they can produce EV's that are comparable in every way as regards utility, range, ability to replenish energy to gas vehicles, then people, (myself included), will buy them happily but it doesn't sound like this will really be viable for many, many decades.

Maybe take some of that "military aid" they are sending the Z-man in Ukraine and/or the "humanitarian aid" they lavishing on illegals and pump those $$ into developing the actual infrastructure that will be required to make ev's feasible.

We know that will never happen though. And anyway, it sounds like the present state of building new and scrapping old, worn out EV's is actually far more ruinous to the environment than gas vehicles. If only we had some sort of Gov agency to look into that.....
 

JamesSuth

Well-Known Member
Well explained article about the intentions behind EV's. The motor industry is hoping to produce cars that can complete on price with gas powered cars in time - its their business. But the politicians dictating the crazy rules to ban petrol and diesel cars, that in turn technology is either going to be able to catch up to or not, are rather hoping that they are unsuccessful. And if the motor industry does manage it I'm sure the politicians will respond with realising that EVs are not that green and trying to restrict them too. Essentially politicians don't want us to own or have cars. Europe is probably ahead of the US on this. Some of our politicians don't even want a car. They are happy living in cities, taking taxis or chauffer driven cars. And then there are those who don't want others, normal people to have cars, but want to keep them for their own use. It is socialism all over - claims to be for the people, while actually keeping them down and looking after themselves.

I was driving past my nearest city on a longer distance day trip to somewhere nice at the weekend and I saw an electric car being used by the Ambulance Service as a rapid paramedic response vehicle. Its a KIA e-Niro, probably one of the best EV's on the market with a 280 or so mile range (when new), and towards the lower end of EV pricing. But, while that is a great range (by EV standards - my petrol car has 480 mile range) for around town, and even medium distance trips for a personal customer, a paramedic vehicle is on the road potentially 24 hours a day. But not that one, it will do a proportion or work and will then need to sit at the Ambulance Station for 7 or 8 hours until it is fully charged again. So, I assume they will need another petrol vehicle to cover it while its charging. Madness.
 

jab777

Well-Known Member
This saddens me. We bought my husband another car last week. It’s a little older than what he had been driving but our daughter just got her license and wanted a car with a back up camera. She’s short and says she can’t see by looking behind her. It’s what we could afford and we’re hoping to have it paid for in time for our son to get a car in four more years. It makes me wonder if my son will even be able to have a car or if I’ll be able to get another one in a few years. We live out in the country so it’s not like we can just catch a train or bus to go downtown or something. I’m guessing the idiots in charge will expect people like us to sell our land in the country and move to the crowded city? :ohno
That’s exactly what they have in mind. Move to a crowded crime ridden city and walk or take public transportation. Be jammed in a crappy little apartment. Apparently, that’s what the old Soviet Union had people do. By doing that they can control us better. This is partly what the WEF means by you will own nothing and be happy. Actually, China’s cities are like that too.
 

Baby Yoda

Watchman
That’s exactly what they have in mind. Move to a crowded crime ridden city and walk or take public transportation. Be jammed in a crappy little apartment. Apparently, that’s what the old Soviet Union had people do. By doing that they can control us better. This is partly what the WEF means by you will own nothing and be happy. Actually, China’s cities are like that too.

That's why they want the airline industry to disappear as well.
 

Mocha Latte

Active Member
Control, control, CONTROL!!! That’s all these vile and evil overlords want. They have all the riches and luxuries of this life already so the only thing left for them to get their jollies is to control other human beings and have the thrill of knowing they can ruin others’ lives. It is evil at its core…absolute power corrupting absolutely.

They want to take away food to FORCE people to give in to their demands. They want to take away airline travel and cars because movement is independence and freedom. We must be controlled! Satan’s desperate desire is to control us all, and the elite overlords are happy to be complicit.
 

NewWine2020

Well-Known Member
That’s exactly what they have in mind. Move to a crowded crime ridden city and walk or take public transportation. Be jammed in a crappy little apartment. Apparently, that’s what the old Soviet Union had people do. By doing that they can control us better. This is partly what the WEF means by you will own nothing and be happy. Actually, China’s cities are like that too.

The movie "Idiocracy" was a comedy about a dystopian America that had finally been totally dumbed down. We are basically there right now.

The Movie "Ready Player One" (while really cool to people who love 80's references and/or gamers), while intended to be an action adventure movie actually does a pretty good job of showing the type of dystopian city that these elites really would love to see here:


"The Stacks" are a type of refugee shanty villages that were constructed on the outskirts of most major cities during the rise of the global energy crisis.

The Stacks are named due to how the dozens of trailers and similar mobile living quarters that make up the spaces are stacked on top of one another in "stacks", held together by metal beams, pipes and makeshift girders. They were created to save space, labor, and resources. This cheap construction caused the over crowded homes to become a breeding ground for theft, murder, molestation and other heinous activities.

The top level or "roof" of each stack is blanketed with a patchwork array of old solar panels that provided supplemental power to the units below. A bundle of hoses and corrugated tubing snake up and down the side of each stack, supplying water to each trailer and carrying away sewage (although not every Stack is reported to possess such luxuries). Very little sunlight make it to the bottom level (known as the "floor") and the ground between the stacks are clogged with abandoned cars and trucks that have to be cleared away by construction cranes before a new stack can be created.


https://readyplayerone.fandom.com/wiki/Stacks

stackss.jpg



It's super depressing looking and peoples lives are so dull and awful that the hopeless young who don't turn to crime fully embrace living in a virtual reality setting that sounds very much like what Facebook/Meta (with the "metaverse") and Elon Musk (with his neural implants) are working diligently to create.

The elites are gonna bring all of us plebs and serfs "Commie Sci-Fi" not the benevolent united federation of planets/ "Star Trek Sci Fi"
 

Ghoti Ichthus

Pray so they do not serve alone. Ephesians 6:10-20
How much does a adverage horse cost and to maintain.

A lot more than a bicycle, and they must be cared for every day. Each horse is like taking care of a high-need dog in terms of time (minimum), although most of it is very pleasurable for both human and horse (not mucking out the stall, etc., though :lol Riding takes more time, and the horse needs to be ridden frequently so he or she doesn't get ornery, lazy, etc. If you have a mare, there's the issue of whether or not to breed, and if you do, there's the cost of stud (unless you have your own stallion) and taking care of the foal (time and money). The ability to reproduce can be a huge plus.

Horses have seriously gone up in price. Hay and feed have gotten outrageously priced and harder to find. If drought, not enough grass and maybe a problem with enough/good enough water. IIRC, each horse needs an acre of good pasture. Plus fencing (not barbed wire or electric), veterinarian, farrier, shelter, saddle, tack, and maintenance for the fencing, shelter, and equipment. Boarding is immensely expensive, plus unless next door/across the road, not quickly available when you need him/her.

One horse is good for riding or can pull a lightweight buggy (think Amish horse and buggy). A buckboard, covered or otherwise, that can haul stuff plus a family, requires at least two horses or (less desirable) a draft horse. A draft horse like a Percheron or Clydesdale can pull a milk or ice wagon, but they're bigger and eat more, plus the heavy work wears them out faster. Horses can pull a plow, but mules do it better and they don't wear out as fast or get hurt doing it as often as horses. Oxen do a good job with buckboards/similar and plowing.

If it gets bad enough, people will eat horses and other not-usually-eaten-in-the-US animals, which will mean a lot of extra security required.
 
Last edited:

Wally

Choose Your Words Carefully...
A mule might be a better option.
Horses will work themselves ragged. A mule knows when to stop. Aside from that, horses do seem to be a little more fragile.

We were very fortunate, our standardbread was about $500. Feed was $30 a bag plus $100 in hay per month. If you don't have an acre of grazing field, you will likely have higher hay costs. Ferrier was $45 a quarter, and then wormer, sawdust bedding, floating teeth, and annual vet bill add on. Not much more than what some pay for a couple dogs.
This was a couple years ago, no doubt the prices are higher.

Tack or buggy will have initial cost, then not too much to operate.

If you have Amish nearby, you may do better.
I guess the main challenge is space and mucking out [where to put manure/bedding], but if you have a garden, that can be a boon.

But getting a good horse, broke, and healthy is the trick.

:doh oh yea, get a pickup to go fetch the hay, feed, wood shavings you need for the horse.
 

TrustinHim

Well-Known Member
A lot more than a bicycle, and they must be cared for every day. Each horse is like taking care of a high-need dog in terms of time (minimum), although most of it is very pleasurable for both human and horse (not mucking out the stall, etc., though :lol Riding takes more time, and the horse needs to be ridden frequently so he or she doesn't get ornery, lazy, etc. If you have a mare, there's the issue of whether or not to breed, and if you do, there's the cost of stud (unless you have your own stallion) and taking care of the foal (time and money). The ability to reproduce can be a huge plus.

Horses have seriously gone up in price. Hay and feed have gotten outrageously priced and harder to find. If drought, not enough grass and maybe a problem with enough/good enough water. IIRC, each horse needs an acre of good pasture. Plus fencing (not barbed wire or electric), veterinarian, farrier, shelter, saddle, tack, and maintenance for the fencing, shelter, and equipment. Boarding is immensely expensive, plus unless next door/across the road, not quickly available when you need him/her.

One horse is good for riding or can pull a lightweight buggy (think Amish horse and buggy). A buckboard, covered or otherwise, that can haul stuff plus a family, requires at least two horses or (less desirable) a draft horse. A draft horse like a Percheron or Clydesdale can pull a milk or ice wagon, but they're bigger and eat more, plus the heavy work wears them out faster. Horses can pull a plow, but mules do it better and they don't wear out as fast or get hurt doing it as often as horses. Oxen do a good job with buckboards/similar and plowing.

If it gets bad enough, people will eat horses and other not-usually-eaten-in-the-US animals, which will mean a lot of extra security required.
Spot on analysis!
 

Jan51

Well-Known Member
Horses will work themselves ragged. A mule knows when to stop. Aside from that, horses do seem to be a little more fragile.

We were very fortunate, our standardbread was about $500. Feed was $30 a bag plus $100 in hay per month. If you don't have an acre of grazing field, you will likely have higher hay costs. Ferrier was $45 a quarter, and then wormer, sawdust bedding, floating teeth, and annual vet bill add on. Not much more than what some pay for a couple dogs.
This was a couple years ago, no doubt the prices are higher.

Tack or buggy will have initial cost, then not too much to operate.

If you have Amish nearby, you may do better.
I guess the main challenge is space and mucking out [where to put manure/bedding], but if you have a garden, that can be a boon.

But getting a good horse, broke, and healthy is the trick.

:doh oh yea, get a pickup to go fetch the hay, feed, wood shavings you need for the horse.
And a trailer for hauling to the vet. Unless you're lucky enough to have one that does non-emergency house calls.
 

GotGrace

Well-Known Member
The End of Private Car Ownership
You will drive nothing and you will be happy.
By Daniel Greenfield

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

The term “pedestrian” has a derogatory meaning because peasants walked while nobles were “equestrians” and rode horses. The industrial revolution eliminated this class difference, as it did so many others, by making car ownership available to the masses until eventually Herbert Hoover was able to boast that “Republican prosperity has reduced and increased earning capacity” to “put the proverbial ‘chicken in every pot’ and a car in every backyard to boot.”

Democrats have spent two generations trying to get those cars out of every backyard.

Biden is trying to bring back Obama’s mileage standards that were estimated to raise car prices by 20%. The goal is to “nudge 40% of U.S. drivers into electric vehicles by decade’s end.”

Will 40% of Americans be able to afford electric cars that cost an average of $54,000 by 2030?

Not likely. Nor are they meant to. Biden’s radical ‘green’ government, which includes Tracy Stone-Manning, the former spokeswoman for an ecoterrorist group as the head of the Bureau of Land Management, isn’t looking to nudge drivers into another type of cars, but out of cars.

Gas prices are a way to price Americans out of car ownership under the guise of pushing EVs.

Biden’s Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm responded to American concerns about high gas prices by urging them to buy electric cars. Granholm, who had promoted a green energy tycoon who spent years in prison for fraud, who had served on the board of directors of an electric battery company, and made millions divesting stock in an electric vehicle manufacturer, is a fan.

“Most electric vehicles are now cheaper to own than gas-powered cars from the day you drive them off the lot,” Granholm tweeted.

That isn’t actually true, but actual cars have become more expensive to own, largely because of efforts by the Biden administration, and by various states, including California. That hasn’t however made electric cars any more affordable for ordinary Americans.

The average price of an electric car shot up to $54,000 in May. Car prices in general have risen in the Biden economy, but electric cars are naturally expensive. The raw material costs for an average electric car are up to over $8,000. That’s compared to $3,600 for an actual car.

When your raw material costs are that high, electric cars will be inherently unaffordable.

The Obama administration pumped billions in taxpayer money into battery and electric car manufacturing, the majority of which failed, on the theory that enough government subsidies would lower battery costs. Not only was much of that money lost, but currently electric battery costs hover around the $160 kilowatt-hour mark. Green boosters cheer that’s far down from over $1,000 per kWh a decade ago, but that still adds up to the reality that an electric car capable of traveling for even short distances needs a battery that alone costs thousands.

The Nissan Leaf, which approaches $30,000 once the reality of MSRP in the current sales market is taken into account, is one of the cheapest electric cars around, and has a range of only 149 miles. Replacing its battery can set back car owners $6,500 to $7,500. And that’s even when you can manage to find one or someone willing to replace it. In less than 3 years, Leafs lose 20 miles of range. By the fifth year, they have lost 30 miles. And it’s all downhill from there.

The Nissan Leaf was initially a hit, but car manufacturers quickly realized that anyone willing to overpay that much for substandard performance had money to burn. The electric car market is now thoroughly dominated by luxury vehicles subsidized by taxpayers. And the Leaf went from 90% market share to less than 10%. The EV market is now a taxpayer-funded status symbol.

The dirty truth about the “clean” car market is that it consists of traditional car companies and Tesla frantically trying to unload a limited share of luxury electric cars on wealthy customers to cash in on the emissions credits mandated by states like California. Tesla makes more money reselling these regulatory credits to actual car companies than it does selling cars. Taxpayers and working class car-owners pick up the bill for the entire luxury electric vehicle market.

A market that they are shut out from by design.

The “green” vision is not a world in which everyone has their own electric car. It’s one of collective transport, of buses, light rail, and car-pooling through shared rides and roving self-driving cars. The only vehicle the average consumer is supposed to own is a bicycle.

While the Biden administration is still pretending that it’s out to “encourage” electric car ownership by making actual cars too expensive for much of the country to afford, others are saying the quiet part out loud.

“Car-lovers will doubtless mourn the passing of machines that, in the 20th century, became icons of personal freedom. But this freedom is illusory,” an Economist article predicted.

“There will be fewer cars on the road—perhaps just 30% of the cars we have today,” the head of Google’s self-driving car project predicted.

“The days of the single occupancy car are numbered,” Brook Porter at G2 Venture Partners, a green energy investment firm, thundered in an article titled, The End of Cars in Cities.

Dan Ammann, the former president of GM, claimed that “the human-driven, gasoline-powered, single-passenger car” is the “fundamental problem” in a post titled, “We Need to Move Beyond the Car”. He has since gone to work for Exxon-Mobil.

Predictions are cheap, but car bans are expensive and all too real. The European Union voted to back a ban on the sale of non-electric cars by 2035. California is also pushing for a similar 2035 ban on the sale of new actual cars in the state. Officials noted that the ban would push more than half of mechanics out of work and leave much of the state unable to afford cars.

Canada has its own 2035 car ban. Last year, Governor Newsom and Governor Cuomo, along with 10 other governors, urged Biden to impose a 2035 car ban on all Americans.

Electric cars aren’t actually “cleaner”. The mining processes that produce “green” technologies are as dirty, if not dirtier, and trade dependence on oil for dependence on rare earth metals, and dependence on the Middle East for dependence on Communist China. The one thing that they decisively accomplish is to make it impossible for ordinary Americans to own cars.

And that is what environmentalists really want. But not just them.

The vision of a nation in which private car ownership is a luxury good, in which cars have been priced out of the reach of most people through environmental measures that concentrated on gas-powered vehicles, and then added more taxes and fines for the waste” and “inefficiency” of an individual owning a vehicle is not very far away.

The technocratic sales pitch is that ride-sharing and self-driving cars will make car ownership unnecessary. Why own a big clunky machine when you can own nothing and be happy?

The reality is that car ownership offers mobility and independence. That is exactly what the leftist radicals making social policy want to eliminate. Gas prices are not Putin’s price hike, they’re the green dream. And that dream isn’t to put you in a Nissan Leaf. It’s the Pol Pot dream of dismantling civilization and rolling back the industrial revolution.

Once the dark age norms of their dark enlightenment are restored, peasants will go back to being pedestrians and only the progressive philosopher kings will ride.

https://www.raptureforums.com/politics-culture-wars/the-end-of-private-car-ownership/
I notice more people walking now that I had not noticed before,
 
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