Economist Stephen Moore pointed out Monday that despite government subsidies and companies pushing electric vehicles (EVs), Americans are rejecting them.
Moore told Fox Business anchor Stuart Varney on the Oct. 30 edition of Varney & Co. that extremely generous federal and state subsidies for electric cars have not been enough to push Americans towards them, simply because “car buyers do not want” electric vehicles. After mentioning that only 10% of cars being sold “off of lots” are electric vehicles, Moore said, “I’ve talked to dealers around the country, auto dealers, and they are telling me they have lots full of EVs, Stuart, and people come in and they say, ‘Wait a minute, I want to buy a gas car where are they?’ ‘Oh we don’t have many of those, but are you interested in this EV over here?’ And people say, ‘No, I don't want it.’”
After Varney asked if automakers might require a bailout, Moore agreed, but pointed out that the automakers were already being subsidized by the government. “I think a bailout is certainly in the offing. By the way, let's not forget, Stuart, that the federal government is also already offering all of these sweeteners to get people to buy electric vehicles. You get a $7,500 basically a check from the government every time you buy an EV. Let's not forget that we’re subsidizing the battery companies, all of these things. So that the subsidies are already enormous that the taxpayers are paying for these things,” Moore said, before driving his point home, “And yet the most amazing thing is even with all these sweeteners, Americans are still saying, ‘I don’t want them.’”
Earlier in the interview, the former Club for Growth president said that Ford was losing money on each electric vehicle. Moore mentioned “the huge losses, Stuart, that these companies, like Ford, are suffering because of the EV mania. I saw a statistic this morning that Ford is losing something like between $40,000 and $60,000 per car, Stuart, that they’re making with EVs because of the cost of the batteries. It's been a bad bet.”
In an opinion article for The Daily Caller, Moore expanded on these ideas. Both in the interview and in the article, Moore compared the present push to electric vehicles to the disastrous launch of the Ford Edsel Sedan. In both cases, Moore argued, a car company tried to mass produce a vehicle and then push it on customers, leading to minimal sales. Moore told Varney, “nobody bothered to ask consumers whether they wanted the car and of course the Edsel was one of the great flops of all time. I’m here to tell you, if these trends continue, we’re gonna see the EV market become the next big flop because car buyers don’t want them.”
Conservatives are under attack! Contact ABC News at 818-460-7477, CBS News at 212-975-3247 and NBC News at 212-664-6192 and demand they report on wasteful subsidies for unwanted vehicles!
