Liberal government officials continue to try and force citizens to buy electric vehicles, but the reality is the cars just aren’t selling.
The progressives want to promote their “green agenda” by banning gasoline powered cars in California and Canada, but it’s not going according to plan.
Now, some ex-auto executives are sounding the alarm and giving the politicians a dose of reality when they issued this strong warning about the government’s push for EVs.
Auto brand higher-ups slam the electric vehicle push
Former Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors executive Bob Lutz and ex-Chrysler Chairman and CEO Bob Nardelli sat down with Fox News Digital to discuss the electric vehicle push and how the entire thing has been handled incorrectly.
“In the short term, I’m afraid, it’s going to be a challenge. It’s going to be a challenge to convince the consumer that the EV is a reliable and affordable means of transportation. You could see what’s happening out there. We’re seeing the cascading effect of a failed initiative,” said Nardelli.
“The problem with the whole EV movement is that there was a colossal amount of hype behind it, largely from what I like to call the liberal mainstream media, making it sound like everybody’s next vehicle was going to be an EV. And of course, the government was pushing it, because of their climate change policies. And it just plain wasn’t going to happen,” added Lutz.
The former CEO also said that the EV push “did come too soon and too fast.”
Nardelli believes that forcing US transportation to zero emissions began on “Day One of this administration” as soon as President Biden stopped oil and drilling projects, saying he’d make over half of all new car sales electric by 2030.
In June 2022, when discussing rising prices, Biden said, “Major auto companies are preparing for 50% of future sales to be electric vehicles by 2030, 100% by 2035.”
At that time, EVs made up less than 1% of all US vehicle registrations, and later, Tesla missed its 2023 Q1 expectations.
Ford announced it would stop production on its electric trucks and cars, and Rivian lost a massive $5.4 billion over just the last year, announcing it would lay off 10% of salaried staff in February due to “economic and geopolitical pressures.”
However, a Rivian spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the company holds a “deep conviction that the entire automotive industry will electrify over the long-term” and that the company still has a “unique ability to resonate with customers.”
The electrical system will be at a “tremendous disadvantage”
According to Nardelli, the moves toward EVs have a “ripple effect” on the car brands, noting that pushing hybrid vehicles would have been the smarter way to start the transition.
“The focus on hybrids would have been well-placed as an evolution towards EV. It would have allowed for charging stations and would have allowed for the massive grid network, maybe to bolster their base supply to be able to absorb this. The utilities, the electrical system in this country [are] going to put us at a tremendous disadvantage as we advance further with electrical demand. That’s going to be a shortfall,” he said.
S&P Global Mobility polling shows that most Americans prefer hybrids over EVs as 9.3% of new light vehicle registrations from January to November 2023 were hybrids, beating EVs by 1.8 percentage points.
However, the CEOs conceded that transitioning to EVs is inevitable, which could potentially eliminate the car dealership experience.
“I think it’s going to be an exciting transformational opportunity. And whoever is leading these industries is going to have to be able to move at a rapid pace and be extremely flexible to switch technologies, infrastructure, delivery. Will the dealer system still be here 10 years from now? It’s a big question,” Nardelli said.
Informed American will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
