For months we’ve reported on the exponential cost increase (and lack, domestically) of all the rare-earth metals you need to mine to make batteries for the Electric Vehicle paradise the Left promised. EV makers are finally announcing price hikes, and they just happen to be almost exactly the sum Congress just approved for EV subsidies.
Related: The Left’s Electric Car Future Is All Carbon Smoke and Mirrors
The Detroit automaker adjusted the MSRP on the F-150 Lightning for the first time since it was revealed in the spring of 2021. Since then, industrial metal prices for batteries, including nickel, manganese, cobalt, and lithium, have jumped, forcing the automaker to raise the new EV truck prices by up to $7,000, depending on the model.
And …
The Senate passed legislation on Sunday allowing automakers to keep offering up to $7,000 in tax credits for EVs. The House plans to interrupt summer break to reconvene on Friday to clear the bill, sending it to President Biden’s desk for signature.
Which tail is wagging what dog?
No one in DC knows how to run a business that requires long-range planning. Material, logistics, manufacturing lead times, all of that. They print money and give it to their friends. And when it comes to Electric Vehicles, the US Government (Progs, Dems, and Libs in particular) are the automaker’s BFFs. And now there’s some rumbling about these just-in-time price hikes.
The digital murmuring class is mumbling about how car makers are raising their prices to cash in on the 7K handouts by the same amount. And that concern is not far-fetched unless you’ve been paying attention to the cost of rare earth metals (on top of inflation, etc.). Cost hikes were baked in as early as last year. It was just a question of when the costs in the manufacturing cycle would catch up to the sale price.
So, here we are. Congress has been hiding its green new deal in legislation the way cartels hide drugs, but the Inflation Reduction act, more appropriately called the Reduction Inflation Act, is packed with fake-green gimmes, including massive subsidies for wind, solar, and a 7K hand out for EVs.
In my opinion, it is not a coincidence that the automakers raised their prices to take advantage of the handout; the handout was created in response to knowledge of the unavoidable price hike. The Progs, Dems, and Libs are just trying to keep the dream alive even though most EVs are purchased by the upper classes, the only ones who ever would or could afford them.
It’s a dream, on paper, that has no future reality. And the 7k is just another gimme to people more likely to donate money to them. EV’s have no practical use in the real world. They are not green. They can’t replace most of the vehicles needed to move or build a society. And that was never the point.
We’ve been saying for years that the transition to useless vehicles no one can afford had but one purpose. To slow down and, if possible, end private or individual mobility. The green car goal was not to transition to green cars – and EVs are anything but – it was to end your ability to go and do whatever you wanted when you wanted. And the WEF just proved me right.
The WEF is concerned about the availability of rare earth metals. Their answer is shifting from ownership to users. A fancy way of supporting the world where you don’t own anything. In other words, communism. You’ll get it if they think you need it, but guess what? You don’t need it, but they do. It’s John Kerry saying, But I have to fly a private jet to the climate conference to do my job applied to everything.
Create scarcity, demand cultural change, and coincidentally, the cure for everything is communism. So, the 7K subsidy is another smokescreen. It keeps the dream within reach because they are not quite ready to tell you the truth. The green utopia is a dirty, empty, immobile future at the top of which sits a protected class of elites with all the guns and power.
Canadain Truckers, Dutch Farmers. There are a lot of dogs and tails and who ends up wagging what remains to be seen but here’s to hoping Liberty wins. The alternative is not much of a future, at least not for most of us.