The Hertz EV disaster is a classic, clearly showing consumers don't like EVs

The Biden regime wants to phase out gas-powered cars in favor of electric vehicles (EVs).

They say they're doing this to "stop climate change."  That's a lie, even though many naive, scientifically ignorant people believe it.

The real reason the regime is doing this is to win the votes of gullible Americans who have been endlessly propagandized to believe that CO2--from burning carbon-based fuels--is causing global warming--which is why they called CO2 a "greenhouse gas," eh?  

Under no theory at all--none--does any rational scientist claim CO2 cools the planet.  Instead after a string of several record-cold winters started to make many Americans realize they were being played, the scammers simply replaced the phrase "global warming" with the unfalsifiable term "climate change."  See, no one could argue with "climate change," since it's always hotter in some years and colder in others, right?

The meltdown of the EV market is a classic, on-going economic disaster, created by government, the leftist social media giants and the irrational chasing of utopia.  We may be starting to see Americans beginning to wake up.  (Nah, just kidding.)

Stephen Scherr was appointed CEO of Hertz just over a year ago.  He had zero experience in the car rental biz when the wokie board of the company hired him--and made him the third-highest-paid CEO in the U.S.  

See, ol' Steve wuz reel woke, eh?  An' of course duh board was jus' as woke.  So he was an obvious choice, even though he didn't know jack shit about the car-rental biz.  Cuz if yew woke, dat all yew need to be hugely successful, right?  Yew keep hearin' dat phrase "get woke, go broke"?  Dat not true, citizen!  Duh mos' successful comp'nees iz reel woke, so woke mus' be gud, right?

Biden regime say woke iz gud, so...gud!  Or as a so-so writer once said, "double-plus good!"  (Ask your parents who wrote that.)

So...since duh wokie CEO knew duh biden regime loved EVs, an' wanted to show errybudy how woke he wuz, he ordered Hertz to buy a bunch of EVs--where "bunch" is defined as a quarter of a BILLION dollars worth.

The decision was highly praised by all the cool people on duh TV.  Just last year the company bragged “[Hertz has been] recognized by the White House for our efforts to expand access to electric vehicles across the country. Demand for EV rentals is growing and we’re here to help our customers electrify their travels.”

Hep customers electrify their travels, eh?  Now dat iz some plus-good wokiespeak, eh?  

Just one small problem wif' EVs:  most customers didn’t wanna rent 'em.

Can you believe it?  Stupid customers!  Dey din' know whut wuz best fo' em.

Now Hertz has cancelled new orders and has decided to sell its EV fleet, at a deep discount.  Scherr’s decision to have Hertz buy $250 million of EVs--to show how woke he was, and to please the biden regime--was a disaster.

See, the biden regime doesn't have to worry about silly things like "making a profit."  Scherr discovered--much too late--that pleasing the wokie Biden regime isn't the same as pleasing consumers.

The key issues with EVs:
  *Initial cost is much higher.
  *They depreciate faster than gas-powered cars.
  *Insurance is higher, by at least 25 percent
  *They cost a LOT more to repair, and most repairs take a lot longer.
  *Tires are more expensive and don’t last as long because EVs are about 25% heavier.
  *They're more likely to catch fire.
  *Accidents that would be "fender benders" for regular cars can damage the huge battery pack, which can cost more than the car is worth to repair.

The novelty of driving one quickly wears off.  At first they seem like the greatest thing evah-- like an iPhone with wheels. That’s great but then people start to realize while they may be okay for running around town, using your home charger, that's about it.

But rental conditions are far different: people have to use charging stations rather than a charger in your garage. That means spending part of your vacation figuring out where to find one.

Not all are chargers are high-speed, and recharging from a regular charger can take hours.  If you do find a station with fast chargers, you might have to wait in line.  And lots of chargers don't work.  You can waste hours doing this.

No one wants to do this. When you rent a car, all you want is a car that can go 450 or 500 miles on a tank.  And if it's cold, your range can be cut in half.  So they made terrible rentals--as Scherr would have known if he'd known fuck-all about the car rental business.

But Scherr had spent 30 years at an investment bank and was SO woke, eh?  So duh wokie board members din' think dere CEO needed any other qualifications.

So the board hired a putz.  And even if he brought the proposed  $250M buy to the board for approval before signing, the wokiez on the board don't know much about the business either, eh?  They're all wokie liberals, so they would have approved the wokie, fashionable thing.

The only reason more than a handful of virtue-signaling people have bought EVs is that eacy one is massively subsidized by taxpayers (i.e. the biden regime takes your tax dollars and gives $7,500 per car to carmakers; is that cool?).  But the car *rental* biz removes the effect of subsidies, and shows what people really want in a car.

The Hertz experience was a perfect experiment for how much drivers really want EVs.  We now know the answer: they don't.  Yet the biden regime will continue the massive subsidies and spending $5 BILLION to build charging stations (when that sum would have finished the Wall and saved taxpayers billions in welfare costs).

Before the regime made EVs mandatory (more on that in a minute) they should have been tested on a small scale first--say 20,000 cars. But the biden regime sneered that they din' need to do dat, cuz...reasons.  Their wokie analysts claimed they'd been tested, and that was that.  But they hadn't been.  That test is taking place now, and it's not looking good.

We keep hearing that manufacturers are going to solve all these problems--which sounds very similar to what Big Pharma said about the infamous mRNA shots: "Dis jus' a trial run!  Next time much better!  An' we reel sorry bout doze 50,000 people who died after gettin' duh jab.  Dey prolly wouda' died from covid anyway."

But even now the Biden regime is planning more subsidies, more mandates, more restrictions on the sale of gas cars.  Example:
The NY Times reports that last week the biden regime's EPA ORDERED that eight years from now 56% of all passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States must be either battery-powered or hybrids.

The Times slobbered that this was "one of the most significant climate regulations in the nation’s history."  I'd say "morons praising morons" but they're the smart ones--not for their DECREE but because they won't be the ones inconvenienced.  You will.

They're forcing you to obey, and you won't have a choice.  For them, that's a strong win.

And of course Democrats in big cities see no problem.  "Doze wunnerful Democrats beez savin' all life on Erf," they'll bleat--even though it's obvious horseshit.

See, the DECREE applies to car *makers*: they'll still be able to make gas-powered cars, but the *average* emissions of all their products must be below a decreed number.

If people don't buy all the EVs the makers will be *required by law to make,* what will happen?  One obvious thought will be for the Democrats to raise the subsidy even more, from $7,500 per car to, say, $15,000.  Why not?  It beez "free money," eh?

Another oh-so-logical choice for the rat-bastard Democrats is to put a "climate surcharge" on all gas vehicles, starting at $2,000 for 1.2 L cars and rising to $5,000 for big engines.  That money would be used to subsidize the purchase price for EVs.

Think that's absurd?  Never happen?  Guess you were under 25 when emperor Obozo ORDERED a law called "Cash for Clunkers," under which his regime would pay owners up to $5,000 to "sell" older vehicles to the gummint, which would...destroy them.

Think I'm kidding?  Look it up.  The Obozo regime paid Americans $3 BILLION to buy and destroy 677,081 working cars, the engines of which were then deliberately destroyed by pouring fine sand into the oil fillers, then running the engines til they were ruined.

This piece of destructive shit idea was first proposed in an op-ed by a leftist economist in the NY Times on July 27, 2008.  He carefully noted that one of its huge features was "reducing income inequality," which was exactly the magic words to get the obozo regime behind it.  It was parroted by the leftist Center for American Progress [really?] on November 20, barely two weeks after the emperor's faaaabulous victory.

* Blinder, Alan "A Modest Proposal: Eco-Friendly Stimulus," NY Times, (July 27, 2008)  
* Americanprogressaction.org. November 20, 2008.
* H.R.2751: Consumer Assistance to Recycle and Save Act,  March 17, 2009.

Obama's people reeeally wanted this program.

So on March 17, 2009--barely seven weeks after obozo was installed--Democrats in congress drafted a law to pay people to turn in their old cars--to be destroyed.  It passed, by huge margins, because with that "reduce income inquality" buzz, no one wanted to oppose it, eh?  And the insane program began on July 1, less than a year after the concept was first proposed by the goofy leftist economist. 

This RUSH to waste taxpayer dollars should have been a red flag that the fix was in.  This monstrosity was rushed through with far too little debate.  The dumb Dem law forced taxpayers to pay $3 billion to save a small amount of gasoline per year.  But the Dems wanted it, particularly reps from Michigan. (Detroit was once called "the car capital of the world."  Seriously.)

Anything that goes from first concept to spending three billion dollars in less than a year should set off everyone's alarms, but because obozo had just been elected no one in congress wanted to be seen as criticizing a program that would "reduce income inequality," so no one said a critical word.  See, the country's first black emperor had just won in November of 2008, and had been installed in Jan of 2009, so the Dem-controlled congress was eager to give him anything he wanted.  

No member of congress challenged him on anything.  Critics were booed.  See, dis faabulous program also gonna hep sell lotsa new cahs!  Which hep duh United Auto Workers union, which haz LOTSA voters!  See?

Many people were totally disgusted by the idea of tax dollars being used to buy and destroy running cars.  The regime even wrote highly detailed rulez barring junkyards from using even undamaged engine or other parts, even ordering that the car bodies themselves be crushed within X days.  Rational people would think "Couldn't those parts be used to keep other cars running?"  Sure, but the greenies wanted all those cars off the road, eh?

It was nuts.  Pure destruction--brazen waste of good parts.  But Democrats in congress couldn't have cared less--and people who owned old cars and saw a cash offer absolutely loved the monstrosity.

After the Democrats got away with Cash for Clunkers, slapping a "climate surcharge" on new gas-powered cars should be easy.

Thanks, Democrats.

Source.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/hertz-meltdown-reveals-scale-ev-debacle