“No electric car since 1902, regardless of battery or drive train, had been able to compete effectively against its contemporary internal combustion counterpart.”
– David Kirsch, The Electric Vehicle and The Burden of History (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2000), p. 203.
Energy history takes the wind out of the sails of the advocates of forced energy transformation. Proponents of government- enabled renewable energies must contend with the fact that for most of mankind’s (impoverished) history, the market share of biomass, wind, solar, and falling water was 100 percent. (The carbon-based energy era is only a couple of hundred years old.)
And proponents of government-enabled electric vehicles (not golf carts) must know that their technology was beat fair and square than a century ago.
Here are some quotations on the rise and fall of EVs (or EEVs–emission elsewhere vehicles).…
“IER’s philosophy and research reflects a number of academic traditions, from natural-rights philosophy to market-process economics to Public Choice. We are heavily influenced by the lessons of history, given the extensive role of government intervention in energy markets (remember, for example, the 1970s energy crisis?). We are not a public relations firm but one based on classical liberalism, better known today as libertarianism.”
Former Obama advisor and Democratic operative David Axelrod recently tweeted: “Donald Trump cites energy analysis from The Institute for Energy Research, notorious as the climate change-denying arm of the oil industry.” In fact, Trump cited an IER-sponsored study that predicted that legalizing energy production on federal domains could result in a half-million well-paying jobs annually and economic benefits of more than $100 billion annually.
What was the study that Trump cited and Axelrod decried?…
“Tesla is redefining ‘too big to fail’ as ‘politically correct, so bail’.”
I publish a monthly post at Forbes.com, Political Energy. My fellow scholars Michael Lynch and Alex Epstein also have columns at Forbes. All of our contributions offer the energy community and policy makers an alternative to the current government energy planning mentality.
My most recent post, “Investors Confront Tesla’s Energy Fantasy,” has just been published. Some quotations follow:
…“Musk’s various ventures have received almost $5 billion worth of government assistance. Nevada recently chimed in with $1.3 billion to incentivize Tesla to build its “gigafactory” — a new battery producing facility — near Reno.”
“Each car sold by Tesla receives a federal income tax credit of $7,500. And California allows an additional $2,500 rebate to its citizens.”