End of the Electrified Road?
February 28, 2024 in News by RBN Staff
source: ericpeters
We are now at the point with battery-powered devices pretending to be cars that we were with mRNA drugs pretending to be vaccines. The truth is out – and people are not buying the lies anymore.
Or the devices.
Ford has stopped shipping 2024 Lightnings because there are so many unsold (brand-new) 2023 Lightnings collecting dust on dealership lots – like crates of “vaccines” that have gone bad because people aren’t lining up to get jabbed anymore. Volvo is putting a pillow over the head of Polestar – which was to have been its Bespoke device brand. But it can’t afford to waste more money on devices for which there are not enough or even any buyers. Mercedes just walked back its commitment of just a few years ago to be a high-end peddler of nothing but devices by 2030 – because (again) there are not enough people willing to buy a device when they are still able to buy and drive vehicles that aren’t devices.
And that bring us to what now?
In prior Sovietzied economies – i.e., planned economies, with supply determined by government fiat rather than demand – it didn’t matter that there wasn’t a market for what was produced. It was just produced. As much – or as little – as the political apparat decreed would be produced. The decrees were styled Five Year Plans – and so on. The people had to accept what was produced – because there was no other option.
It seems logical that the same approach will be resorted to in order to clear the glut of devices rejected by what’s left of the American market. That part being the still-viable option of not buying a device. It is an option being exercised by most people, for reasons everyone’s well-aware of. Devices are too expensive – and too inconvenient. Most people do not want to have to plan their lives around waits for a charge. They want to be able to just go – whenever they want to, without having to plan it ahead of time.
This latter is a vestige of the American rather than Soviet way of life.
It is a way of life most Americans will continue to choose for as long as they remain free to chose it. And that is why this choice will of necessity be taken away by the Soviets who have seized control of what used to be America.
If the Soviets are permitted to retain control of America.
There is no other way for them – or for us.
If the last vestige of the America that was is allowed to remain viable – if people are allowed to continue buying or even just owning vehicles rather than devices – then the Sovietization of the American car industry (indeed, of the car industry, generally) will fail spectacularly. It will fail for the same reason the old Soviet Union failed:
There was an alternative to it.
People not only knew things sucked in the Soviet Union, they knew they didn’t suck on the other side of the wall, in the West. Which – at the time – was far from being Soviet.
People in the old Soviet Union could see the choices people in the West had – including cars of all kinds and types, rather than a Trabant made of recycled plastic – and wanted them just as much as the people in the West (who often took them for granted) did. This disparity helped undermine internal support for the Soviet Union, which tottered and fell very much in alignment with its gerontocratic ruling elite.
Now the gerontocratic ruling elite rule the West – and they’re determined to Sovietize it. They have taken care of the supply side, by using the regulatory power of government to effectively outlaw choice without (very cleverly) actually outlawing it. That is why it is legal to offer for sale brand-new 1960s Mustangs, for instance – without any modern “safety” features or “emissions” controls. But it is only legal to offer them in very small numbers – at very high prices – to the nonemklatura who can afford to pay the (roughly) $250,000 it costs to buy a brand-new ’60s-era Mustang. It is also why it is still possible for GM to sell a V8-powered Escalade – for just shy of $100k to start. Because only a few such will be sold and that doesn’t meaningfully affect GM’s compliance profile.
Electric Trabants are for the rest of us. Only our Trabants are so expensive most of us can’t afford what most of us don’t want anyhow.
To make us “want” them, alternatives to them will be actually outlawed. Or made more expensive than the electric Trabants they want us to drive. Or – rather – which they intend to use to end driving for most of us. Expect gas to become scarce – and expensive. At $10 per gallon – if you can find a gallon – it will cost even more to drive than it costs to buy (and charge) a device.
It’s all coming – because it’s all coming to a head.
Better buckle up.