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The real reason politicians have a stupid grin when posing with electric vehicles.

Politicians used to kiss babies. These days they stand, grinning from ear to ear, beside short-range carriers of large heavy batteries, also known as electric vehicles.

It’s a wonder our MPs don’t kiss EVs as if they were babies, such is their affection for them.

I liked politicians better when they spent their time annoying babies. At least babies are real. Electric vehicles are not; at least they are not real alternatives to internal combustion engine vehicles.

Negligible Effect

Australia produces 1.3% of global carbon emissions. And emissions from passenger vehicles account for about 10% of that.

If we convinced half of all drivers to switch from their internal combustion engines to electric vehicles, our contribution to world emissions would drop by 0.0026%.

Take that, weather!

You know how I said politicians love to grin while standing beside electric cars? Well, it’s a stupid grin.

For all the inconvenience and expenditure, we will make almost no difference to global emissions and absolutely no difference to the climate.

But since when has spending enormous amounts of taxpayer money to affect no change whatsoever deterred the political class?

Against All Reason

Our government wants to offer tax incentives for people purchasing electric vehicles.

If EVs didn’t need battery replacements, if EVs had long range, if EVs didn’t have such a bad reliability rating, if EVs didn’t take forever to recharge (if you can find a charging station and if that charging station isn’t already being used), and if EVs didn’t burst into flames, well then maybe the government wouldn’t have to offer incentives for people to buy them. Just a thought.

In three minutes you can fill the fuel tank of a Ford Mustang and have a 500km range. The Mustang Mach-E needs to be charged for 10 hours to get the same result.

No problem, charge it overnight, they say!

Sure thing, just as soon as I get those lunar panels on the roof of my house.

Pricing Out the Poor

Speaking of power shortages, cars in the UK travel 250 billion kilometres every year. If the smallest EV was used to travel that distance, it would demand 16% more of the national electricity grid that is currently being used.

Author Ian Plimer writes:

“Where will this extra electricity come from? If it was from wind, then there would need to be an extra 10,000 onshore and 5,000 offshore wind turbines requiring a subsidy of at least 2 billion pounds (AUD$3.5b) per annum.”

As Plimer points out, this would be a double whammy for England’s poor, for whom the cost of electricity would skyrocket to pay for all the electric cars they cannot afford.

One more thing…

According to the International Energy Agency, if the world was to switch to EVs by 2040, the production of lithium would need to rise by 4200%, graphite by 2500%, nickel by 1900% and other rare earth elements by 700% compared to 2020 production of these metals.

Such mineral deposits do not currently exist.

Bottom line? We are headed for a world in which freedom of moment exists only for the rich, since they are the only ones who can afford EVs and the electricity to run them. Everyone else will be catching the bus. Chris Bowen earns well over $200,000 a year, which explains the stupid grin.

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Originally published at The James Macpherson Report.

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Photo: Federal Labor leader Anthony Albanese, Chris Bowen and Ed Husic visiting a Nissan Leaf electric car dealer. Source: Anthony Albanese/Facebook