Electronic Car Graveyards, Driverless Car Attacked & Other Tech Consequences
Electric/Self-Driving Car Tech Update: Up In Smoke?
It has been said before that “electricity is in the air.”
And in today’s technologically-sophisticated culture, it probably is.
But it is, apparently, perhaps not fully present in the hearts and minds of the American people who are tasked with hastily adopting electric car technology, or at least being subject to the intense cultural promotion and technological marketing campaigns now directed at the general public.
Of course, this is not to say that the vast campaign has not been successful, or that electronic vehicles (EVs) have not yet been embraced by some, or cannot already be seen on our nation’s roadways, and elsewhere.
But it seems to be the case that the mass-marketing of EV technology has, at least thus far, been insufficient to convince all of culture that adopting the tech, in the face of its noted faults and limitations, is in its best interest.
One might even be justified in saying that our culture’s forceful approach to integrating EV technology into society is backfiring amongst those hesitant to hastily do away with the internal-combustion engine.
Should readers contend that the appropriation of EV tech is not being coerced in culture, than perhaps a simple look into some of the recent and plenary advertisements created by America’s automakers and transmitted throughout popular culture may be useful in helping to establish this easily-noticed fact.
I must specify here that I am not purporting that all EV owners wish to banish the internal-combustion engine and confine it to the pages of history.
I mean only that this appears to be the aim of some, for it is difficult to refute that there are certain individuals, politicians, social “influencers,” government figureheads and technological chieftains who appear to be forwarding this very notion.
My stance is so because many have said that this is what they desire to have come to pass.
Indeed, watchers of technology will recall California Governor Gavin Newsom’s 2020 Executive Order, which aims to phase out gasoline-powered cars by 2035.
This forceful approach to integrating technology in culture is certainly nothing new, for computers in the classroom, our culture’s omnipresent surveillance apparatus, experimental vaccine technology and more are just a few examples of particular contrivances being forced on populations who may not consent to their widespread application.
I have often written about how forcing people to adopt particular technologies always carries consequences that are important to take into account.
To summarize the point: compelling culture to accept certain technologies against its will does not always work as intended.
What also does not work, at least some of the time and in certain scenarios and circumstances, appears to be EV technology.
And because many of those promoting EV tech seem to speak exclusively of its benefits while being silent on its disadvantages, I maintain that exploring some of its consequences may be in order.
Naturally, I have previously explored some of the blemishes of electric car technology in a previous article, the contents of which can be reviewed below.
But when it comes to technology’s never-ending list of truisms, there is always more to articulate.
I should like to begin here by providing some of the recent historical background as to how our culture’s transportation infrastructure has arrived at this point.
“We are living through one of history’s longest and most excruciating versions of ‘We told you so,’” noted an article by Jeffrey A. Tucker, of the Brownstone Institute. “When in March 2020, the world’s government decided to ‘shut down’ the world’s economies and throttle any and all social activity, and deny kids schooling plus cancel worship services and holidays, there was no end to the warnings of the terrible collateral damage, even if most of them were censored . . . Learning losses, infrastructure breakages, rampant criminality, vast debt, inflation, lost work ethic, a growing commercial real estate bust, real income losses, political extremism, labor shortages, substance addiction, and more much besides, all trace to the fateful decision. The headlines on seemingly unrelated matters go back to the same, in circuitous ways. A good example is the news of the electric vehicle bust. The confusion, disorientation, malinvestment, overproduction, and retrenchment – along with the crazed ambition to force convert a country and world away from oil and gas toward wind and solar – all trace to those fateful days.”
The article goes on to say, “The technology of EVs simply cannot and will not become the major way Americans drive . . . Looking back, the lockdowns hit in the spring of 2020 and supply chains were entirely frozen by force . . . At that same time, pre-arranged government subsidies and mandates for EVs flooded the industry, all of which were later ramped up by the Biden administration . . . It might have seemed for a time like the crazed period we just lived through was birthing a completely different way of life. A kind of irrationality, born of shock and awe, swept industry and culture. The EV was central to it . . . So on it went as more carmakers threw more resources at production, benefitting from massive subsidies and staying in compliance with new mandates for reducing their carbon footprint.”
The author adds, “Truly, this has been one spectacular boom-bust in a single industry. There seems to be no real end to the bust either. These days it appears that everyone has given up on any chance of actually converting the mass of American cars to become EVs. All recent trends are headed in the other direction . . . This story is impossible to understand without reference to the crazed illusions caused by lockdowns. Those are what provided the respite of time to allow automakers to retool. Then they boosted demand artificially for transportation after a long period in which inventory had been depleted.”
Tucker further notes that, “It turns out that the entire bit, including the fake prosperity of the lockdown economy, made possible by money printing and grotesque levels of government spending, was unsustainable. Even sophisticated car companies bought into the nonsense. Now they are paying a very heavy price. The new market depended on a panic of buying that turned out to be temporary. In short, the illusions of these horrible policies have come crashing down. It was born of liberty-wrecking policies under the cover of virus control. Every special interest seized the day, including a new generation of industrialists seeking to displace the old ones by force. More and more, it’s obvious what a disaster this was. And yet no one has apologized. Hardly anyone has admitted error. The big shots who wrecked the world are still in power. The rest of us are left holding the bag, and paying very high repair bills for cars that are non-optimal for driving from one town to another and back again in the cold weather that was supposed to be gone by now had the ‘climate change’ prophets been correct. They turn out to be as correct as those who promised us that we would no longer need ‘fossil fuels’ and that the magic inoculation would protect everyone from a killer virus.”
As detailed in an opinion piece by Todd G. Buchholz, a former White House director of economic policy under President George W. Bush, “In the early 1990s, every self-respecting American yuppie and retired suburban couple bought an electric bread maker, with sales hitting 4 million units. But the fad soon faded as these amateur bakers discovered that stuffing a precise quantity and ratio of flour, eggs, butter, yeast and salt into a metal box takes time and costs much more than strolling to the corner bakery.”
Buchholz poses a question EV owners may do well to take into account: “Are plug-in electric vehicles the bread makers of our day?”
The author also said, “Despite Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk’s entrepreneurial brilliance and billions of dollars in U.S. government subsidies to support EVs, it appears that consumers still prefer to drive to a gas station for a five-minute fill-up than to retrofit their garage and suffer the range anxiety that comes from hunting for a charging station in the parking lot of an abandoned shopping mall. J.D. Power reports that 21% of public chargers do not work in any case . . . The evidence is rolling in fast. Earlier this month, Hertz, which purchased 100,000 Teslas to great fanfare in 2021, executed a squealing 180-degree turn and began dumping one-third of its EV fleet, taking a $245 million charge against its earnings. Its pledge to buy 175,000 EVs from GM will likely go up in smoke, too.”
The article goes on to note how state governments “have been pumping EVs with enormous subsidies, even as their own budgets are bleeding red. California still pours $7,000 into each new EV (on top of the maximum $7,500 federal credit), despite reporting a record $68 billion budget deficit. New Jersey sends a $4,000 check to EV buyers, despite shrinking revenues. How long can these states keep the money spigot open?”
According to The Wall Street Journal, “The auto industry’s pivot to electric vehicles has been rocked by setbacks this year, just as a flood of new battery-powered models is hitting showrooms. Volvo Car said it won’t provide further funding to Polestar, the electric-car maker it created with Volvo’s Chinese owner Geely—the latest EV retrenchment by the global auto industry . . . French automaker Renault said it has decided to cancel the initial public offering of its electric-car unit Ampere. Ford, meanwhile, has slashed production of its electric F-150 Lightning, a pickup truck that has generated major buzz since its launch. Rental-car firm Hertz has said it was dumping about one-third of its EV rental car fleet, replacing the cars with gas-engine vehicles.”
Due to the matter’s relevance, self-driving car technology, another topic I have also referenced beforehand, is also worth specifying here.
In December, 2023, the city of San Francisco, California filed a lawsuit against a state commission that permitted Google and General Motors’ autonomous car companies to expand in the city.
“It’s yet another blow for the rapidly evolving self-driving car industry, which flocked to San Francisco hoping to find a prominent testing ground that would legitimize it around the United States,” reported The Washington Post. “Instead, the two major companies — Google-owned Waymo and General Motors-Owned Cruise — have largely been cast aside by the city as an unwelcome nuisance and a public safety hazard.”
The Post adds that, “The lawsuit essentially asks the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to review whether its August decision, which allowed Waymo to operate 24/7 paid taxi service around the city, was compliant with the law. This legal action does not impact Cruise, as it already lost its permits to operate in California last year after one of its cars struck a jaywalking pedestrian and dragged her for about 20 feet . . . That accident — and Cruise’s initial misrepresentation over the events — prompted the California Department of Motor Vehicles to suspend Cruise’s driverless permits. The company has since stopped testing its autonomous cars around the country, and has faced significant turmoil, including layoffs and the resignation of its CEO.”
In the face of these revealing tidings, a more extreme stance on the technology may also be worth mentioning.
On February 10, 2024, a crowd in San Francisco's Chinatown surrounded a Waymo robotaxi, broke its windows and threw fireworks inside, setting the vehicle on fire.
“Video posted to social media showed a crowd of several dozen people surrounding the car and scrawling graffiti on the sides,” reported The San Francisco Standard. “One man bashed the front passenger window and the windshield with a skateboard, shattering the glass. Subsequently, someone threw a firework inside, setting the car on fire. Flames quickly engulfed the Jaguar, totally destroying the car.”
Video of the attack quickly went viral on X, which can be seen here.
Some view this incident as part of a rising trend of hostility towards autonomous vehicles.
But what can be said with certainty is that this kind of behavior towards the technology is not an isolated incident.
One group, Safe Street Rebels, who claims that these vehicles are “polluting, dangerous & murderous,” have been coning driverless cars.
And though coning or attacking so-called “smart” vehicle technology appears to be a significant hurdle to be overcome, it is also true that such behavior is not yet requisite to bring such contrivances to a halt.
In realigning our focus back to electronic vehicles, it seems that the simple occurrence of cold weather might be all that is required to bring this “smart” technology to a standstill.
As reported in a January, 2024 article from The New York Times, “With Chicago temperatures sinking below zero, electric vehicle charging stations have become scenes of desperation: depleted batteries, confrontational drivers and lines stretching out onto the street. ‘When it’s cold like this, cars aren’t functioning well, chargers aren’t functioning well, and people don’t function so well either,’ said Javed Spencer, an Uber driver who said he had done little else in the last three days besides charge his rented Chevy Bolt and worry about being stranded with a dead battery — again. Mr. Spencer, 27, said he set out on Sunday for a charging station with 30 miles left on his battery. Within minutes, the battery was dead. He had to have the car towed to the station. ‘When I finally plugged it in, it wasn’t getting any charge,’ he said. Recharging the battery, which usually takes Mr. Spencer an hour, took five hours.” One woman was characterized by The Times as experiencing a “bit of buyer’s remorse” after waking in the morning to find about a third of her car battery drained from the overnight cold, in addition to spending hours every morning waiting in line to recharge the battery to her 2023 Tesla Model 3. She told The Times that, “It’s kind of like, I don’t really want a Tesla.”
FOX 32 Chicago would go further, and refer to this recent mass-failure of electric vehicles and their public charging stations as “car graveyards.”
“Nothing. No juice. Still on zero percent," said one unlucky Tesla owner among the dozens of other drivers attempting to recharge their vehicles at a Tesla supercharging station in Oak Brook, Illinois. "And this is like three hours being out here after being out here three hours yesterday."
The television station reported that, “It was a scene mirrored with long lines and abandoned cars at scores of other charging stations around the Chicago area. ‘This is crazy. It’s a disaster. Seriously,’ said Tesla owner Chalis Mizelle. Mizelle was forced to abandon her car and get a ride from a friend when it wouldn’t charge. Another man summed up the situation succinctly: ‘We got a bunch of dead robots out here.’ But it was no laughing matter to people like Kevin Sumrak, who landed at O’Hare on Sunday night to find his Tesla dead. Sumlak was forced to hire a flatbed tow truck to try to find a working charging station.”
In delivering these troubling technological occurrences, my words should not be taken to mean that I am angry at those who have elected to purchase an electronic vehicle, or that I am attacking the concept, or that I seek to shame those who have purchased an electric car without reflecting on the technology’s questionable attributes, or that I am ignorant of its benefits, or that I am an enemy of EV technology.
To be true, for if I elect to speak on the ills of smartphone technology, or the printing press, or pornography, or artificial intelligence, or our culture’s image-based mediums, or drones, or social media, my purpose is always one in the same— to illustrate consequences that might be convoked through our technologies.
And I am also not ignorant of the downsides of traditional vehicles, for it is true that all of our cherished tools can be used in detrimental ways.
What I am trying to impart is that it can be sensible to ponder about EV technology, and to speculate as to what deficits it might present to culture.
And because some seem to perceive the tech as containing the all-too valuable answers that our culture is seeking in today’s world of transportation, I have chosen to speak of EVs so that I might be able to unearth questions that can be useful to ask.
Indeed, for inquiries like How do the benefits of EVs match up to its deficits? or How do EVs reformulate and reframe the traditional driving experience? or How do vehicles being charged using electricity produced from coal-burning and nuclear power plants lead to decreased levels of carbon emitted in the state of California? or Who decided that this electronic path in our culture’s transportation sector is in the best interest of United States citizens? or Is the United States’ power grid capable of charging all of the nations EVs simultaneously? or Is it possible that driving electronic vehicles, and thus being subject to long-term exposure of its electronic fields, yield any consequences to human health? are apparently not often uttered among advocates of EV technology.
And though time will not permit me to provide answers to these questions here, I submit that our culture might do well to ask them, if any are even obliged to consider them at all.
Or, at the very least, comprehend the shortcomings of forcing those in culture to embrace electronic vehicles without reasoning of how the technology might fall short of expectations.
Or, if not that, than cogitate as to why highly-technological cultures are all-too quick to integrate their tools into society, and how slow they are to anticipate their consequences.
I understand that one person grasping the reality of forcing compliance in culture was former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a man who was able to perceive how forcing people to do something they do not want to do stands as an ineffective means of societal management.
I should like to conclude here with Buchholz’s deduction: “President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who looked great in a 60-horsepower jeep, once warned that ‘you don’t lead by hitting people over the head: That’s assault, not leadership.’ In the automobile market, the internal combustion engine is still in the lead.”