They tried electric buses in Connecticut. Because of their tendency to burst into flames, the entire fleet was pulled from service. They tried them in Wyoming. At last word, none works. Edmonton blew a fortune on 60 electric buses. Most of those don’t work either. Turns out electric vehicles don’t make sense in the cold. Naturally the next step was to try them in frigid Minnesota:

In 2015, Duluth received a $6.3 million federal grant for six, ultimately seven, battery-electric buses from Proterra.

Proterra has gone bankrupt, leaving customers trying to keep their vehicles running in the lurch.

In Minneapolis,

Metro Transit followed in 2017 when it received a $1.7 million federal grant to buy eight battery-electric accordion buses…

They got free money and saved the allegedly imperiled climate from harmless carbon emissions. Everyone lived happily ever after — until reality set in:

Both the Twin Cities and Duluth have had problems with their battery-electric buses. For one, they can’t go as far as their builders advertised, in part because of the cold weather.

Too bad the global warming hoax isn’t real. If temperatures would rise by more than the current insignificant fluctuations, EVs would be less insane.

Metro Transit’s battery-electric buses are also less reliable than their diesel-fueled counterparts. A September 2023 presentation to the Met Council’s Transportation Committee showed the battery-electric buses broke down twice as often.

The outlandishly expensive batteries frequently fail, as do the chargers.

Duluth also had problems with its battery-electric bus fleet. Between April 2019 and February 2020, the fleet averaged 7,717 miles between breakdowns, four times as often compared to their diesel counterparts. … The buses struggled to make it up the city’s storied steep hills and to keep riders warm in the winter.

The federal government continues to throw our money at the quixotic cause of electrifying buses in frozen Minnesota:

In August, the Federal Transit Administration awarded Metro Transit a $17.5 million grant to buy 12 battery-electric buses…

Since Duluth and Metro Transit rode the electric wave, other agencies joined in on the current. With $5.4 million from two federal grants, Rochester placed into service four battery-electric buses of the exact same make and model as Metro Transit’s…

Another federal grant for electric buses in Minnesota will cost us $8.1 million.

It’s almost as if our rulers couldn’t care less how hard we have to work to create the wealth they waste.

On tips from ABC of the ANC and Skip.

Democrats have spent $billions upon $billions of our money in the name of getting us to drive dangerous, expensive, inefficient, unreliable, and environmentally harmful electric cars, for reasons they have not divulged but that probably don’t have anything to do with the allegedly problematic climate, which will remain unaffected. What are we getting for the money? Nothing:

The 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act included $7.5 billion to build 500,000 public charging stations across the country. Under the program, states can qualify for as much as 80 percent of the cost to build chargers and bring them online. But as Politico reported this week, not a single charger funded by the program is yet operational.

Nonetheless,

Earlier this year, the Environmental Protection Agency mandated that by 2030, half of all vehicles sold in the U.S. must be electric.

In other words, EPA bureaucrats have mandated that we will be going without cars, in accordance with the totalitarian power evidently bestowed upon them by the US Constitution. There will be nowhere near enough chargers to support them.

“The slow rollout…primarily boils down to the difficulties state agencies and charging companies face in meeting a complex set of contracting requirements and minimum operating standards for the federally-funded chargers, according to interviews with state and EV industry officials,” the article notes.

Too bad vehicles can’t run on red tape. Then our moonbat rulers could offer a viable alternative to normal cars.

No worries. Biden’s bureauweenies can just issue another decree dictating that we must drive electric vehicles whether there are charging stations or not.

On a tip from Lyle.

You can subsidize EVs to the hilt with other people’s money. You can replace bus fleets with them, leaving people to walk through the snow. You can use your control of the media to shriek that life on earth will perish if people don’t embrace them. But so long as safer, more reliable, and more financially sensible real cars are available, you can’t make people buy the absurd contraptions — as 3,900 car dealers suggest in a letter to Biden:

Dealers have a 103-day supply of EVs compared to 56 days for all cars. It takes them on average 65 days to sell an EV, about twice as long as for gas-powered cars. EV sales are slowing though manufacturers have slashed prices and increased discounts. Consumers paid on average $50,683 for an EV in September, compared to $65,000 a year ago.

Prices will rocket upward when they no longer have to compete with real cars.

Among the numberless reasons not to buy an EV,

“Customers are also concerned about the loss of driving range in cold or hot weather,” the auto dealers say. “Some have long daily commutes and don’t have the extra time to charge the battery. Truck buyers are especially put off by the dramatic loss of range when towing.”

The dealers want the Administration to “tap the brakes” on its proposed tailpipe emissions rules that would effectively mandate that EVs comprise two-thirds of car sales by 2032. Auto makers might meet the government’s quotas in leftwing cities where Teslas are a political fashion statement, but price and convenience matter more elsewhere.

Our rulers represent the populations of cities rotted through with liberalism like New York and Los Angeles. They regard the rest of us as “deplorable” and “threats to Our Democracy.”

The dealers’ letter is an important political signal that progressive climate coercion isn’t as popular as Democrats think. Americans don’t like to be told what to do or what they must buy.

Why would Democrats care what we think? They have the media to tell us what to think.

Before progressives can achieve absolute tyranny, we must be denied independent transportation. Electric vehicles, which regular people can afford only so long as they are subsidized, which rely on a power supply that is being choked off in the name of the global warming hoax, and which can easily be remotely disabled en masse, are a bridge to this objective. If Democrats remain in power much longer, they will achieve it.

On tips from Varla, Jack D, and ABC of the ANC.

The electric vehicles that leftists subsidize to the hilt with our money and that they intend to force us to drive continue to make no sense.

Exhibit A:

Automaker Stellantis on Wednesday announced a recall of more than 32,000 of its hybrid Jeep Wrangler SUVs because they pose a potential fire risk.

As part of what the company described as a routine review of customer information, Stellantis determined that eight of the hybrid Wranglers had caught fire while they were turned off and parked.

Those foolish enough to have purchased these vehicles rather than real cars are advised by Stellantis not to park them near buildings, because they might burst into flames at any time.

For Exhibit B, David Blackmon guffaws over an Edmonton Journal article entitled, “More than half of Edmonton’s $60-million electric bus fleet not roadworthy.”

The Canadian city purchased 60 electric buses for $1 million each (double the cost of reliable diesel buses) from the green boondoggle Proterra, which has gone Chapter 11, making it difficult to keep the buses running in Edmonton as in Jackson, Wyoming, where the entire fleet does not work.

From the story:

It takes a diesel-powered on-board heater to keep the body of the bus warm. And despite $200,000 in special blankets to keep all those batteries toasty, the Proterra buses are still feeling that northern Alberta chill in their skimpy range.

That’s $3,333 per bus to keep the batteries warm. But still the buses don’t work.

That’s okay; soon electric moonbatmobiles will be mandatory. They will work because bureaucrats will command that they have to work.

On tips from ABC of the ANC and R F.

Among the countless reasons not to knuckle under to moonbats and buy an electric car is the cost of replacing the battery:

Simrat Sooch of Stoney Creek, Ont., was a true believer in electric vehicles.

He was disabused of his illusions after he bought a Hyundai Ioniq. The overpriced toy stopped charging, so he took it to the dealership, where he learned the battery needed to be replaced.

The quoted cost, including the battery, installation and taxes came to more than $50,000.

This is $50,000 Canadian, but still.

The warranty had just run out. Since the cost of repair exceeded the value of the car, he scrapped it. Total loss, like all of our money Biden has been shoveling at EV charging stations and subsidies. Unless Democrats succeed at making them mandatory, no one is going to be driving an electric car once even liberals realize how foolish they are.

On a tip from Steve T.

A coercion-based economy run by corruptocrats and deranged ideologues makes possible marvels of lunacy and waste. In a free country, few if any electric vehicles would be produced, since they are not worth the money it takes to manufacture them. In contrast, in the USSA,

Lucid, the California-based electric vehicle company that makes the Air Sedan, lost over $430,000 for every car it sold in the third quarter of this year, according to the firm’s latest financial report.

Last quarter was even worse. Lucid lost $544,000 for every vehicle sold in Q2.

Ford only loses $60,000 for every ideologically correct electric moonbatmobile sold. But give the federal government time to finish absorbing Detroit and no doubt in will manage to compete with Lucid.

You can see why Democrats are giving up on extravagant subsidies and have introduced straightforward bans on real cars.

On a tip from R F.