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Steve Mudge's avatar

A friend on FB has been posting sarcastic negative EV memes of late and I finally said that in the big picture oil is a finite resource, especially at the rate we're consuming it (climate considerations aside). So isn't it a good thing that we have all these beta testers on the road these days working the bugs out ahead of time for a oil-less future? It seems to me it's like the beginning of the last century where there were many new car companies or the late 90s with all the dotcoms vying for leadership with new technologies. Lots of ups and downs in these early tech periods.

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David R. Guenette's avatar

It's fine to say that market forces are a central consideration for choosing EV or ICE, but only if real costs are considered. The IMF quantifies direct and indirect fossil fuel annual subsidies at ~$1.7 trillion, of which ~$600-700 billion are by U.S.

EVs look a heck of a lot better when subsidies are taken away and the real price for gasoline is $12/gal. The real cost of fossil fuels--including pollution and greenhouse gases--should be considered in any cost assessment of EVs. As it stands now, fossil fuel subsidies are a regressive tax hiding behind suppressed fuel prices, while real and enormous costs get ignored.

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