Let's Not Give Up on Electric Cars Just Because Elon Musk Sucks
Priorities, folks
***I’m planning a podcast next week about reactions, respectful disagreements, and not-so-respectful disagreements to this week’s columns. So, if you’re dying to tell me off — and research shows that most of my readers are — please send an e-mail to hereswhyyousuck@gmail.com. All thoughts, questions, and soul-destroying insults are welcome!***
Tesla is suddenly hurting. Quarterly sales are down 8.5 percent — their first drop since the pandemic — and Tesla stock has plunged more than 30 percent this year. As Tesla goes, so goes the EV industry in the US, generally, because Teslas are 54 percent of EV sales in the US (the “Big Three” auto makers account for a measly 14 percent). EV sales are still growing, though not as fast as recently predicted, and last quarter was not good. What’s going on? Technological transitions typically don’t sputter like this; there was no moment in the ‘90s when everyone went “Actually, I’d like to hear the Spice World soundtrack on cassette.”
There appear to be several reasons for the rough patch. Gas prices are down, which leads to people: 1) Buying more gas-powered cars, 2) Increasing demand for gas, and 3) Becoming baffled and indignant when gas prices go up (but that’s a topic for another column that I already wrote). Biden’s push to build 500,000 charging stations by 2030 is short by 499,993 stations, and liberals are still deciding if we’d rather build a 21st century nation or indulge a permitting kink that’s become so severe that diaper fetishists probably look at us and think “What a bunch of freaks.” But another factor seems to be apparent in the data: It looks like people on the left may have cooled on EVs because they hate Elon Musk.