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“The market for electric vehicles (EVs) has grown rapidly in recent years and is expected to continue to grow at a fast pace over the coming decade. Electric car sales in the United States increased from a mere 0.2 percent of total car sales in 2011 to 4.6 percent in 2021.” U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics.

“The EV revolution is losing momentum: After electric car sales soared in 2022, interest among buyers has underwhelmed and plans for a rapid transition away from gas-powered cars could be in jeopardy.” Money.com.

The dichotomy represented by the above conflicting reports demonstrates Americans are not yet sold on the idea of electric-powered vehicles. After the creation by government and automakers of a huge EV car momentum aimed at reducing pollution and moving away from an oil and gas dependent vehicle economy, I keep hearing that consumers are not that satisfied with the technology.  A friend bought a Ford F-150 Lightning recently, kept it for three months, then traded it in on a hybrid vehicle.

“Every time the weather changed drastically or the load I was towing got heaver,” he said, “the range of the batteries decreased from its published standard.”

While it is certain there was mention of this somewhere in the fine print of the vehicle brochure, the rush to embrace EV’s promises and rely less on gas overcame any fine print reading. This movement seems emblematic of other initiatives which ultimately failed the common sense test. There was once a plan to build nuclear power plants throughout the south by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) in order to provide power and rely less on coal and water-powered technology.  The result was a scattering of unfinished and abandoned nuclear power plant shells costing millions and billions of dollars as the agency stumbled toward a shift in philosophy and the public grew weary of arguments about safety.

General Motors bought in to a new culture for building automobiles when it built the Saturn plant near Spring Hill, Tennessee, in the 1980’s, promising jobs using then-governor Lamar Alexander’s influence to get it done. Instead, jobs were awarded to out-of work GM union employees from Michigan and points north, and the GM CEO (Mr. Smith) forgot to buy in to the Japanese mindset for auto manufacturing.  Saturns are long gone, the plant has been re-tooled several times, and the company had to ask the government for a bailout because it was too big to fail. Unbelievably, the current lady serving as GM’s CEO has staked the automaker’s future on electric vehicles. General Motors CEO Mary Barra said in December 2023 the Detroit automaker still plans on moving to all electric vehicle sales by 2035 even as it has recently delayed some EV production.

Because we did not learn from these mistakes, we now see huge amounts of subsidized battery plants being built, gulping down billions of grant money from the Feds, in places like Glendale, KY, Jackson, TN, and the aforementioned Spring Hill. The partnership between Ford Motor Company and South Korea with the catchy title of “Blue Oval” promises to be the “new neighbor” for these locales.  Sound familiar?

To me, the EV movement suffers from a common problem – lack of research.  Surely, someone thought to ask consumers if they thought it was a good idea, instead of relying on environmentalists and politicians to make those decisions, but I guess not. Imagine a NASCAR race featuring all-electric versions of your favorite drivers’ cars whispering their way around Daytona.

If they had just polled the Retiree Roundtable (formerly called The Tribe) who meet once a week around the table at LuLu’s here in Estill Springs for coffee and to solve the world’s problems, we could have saved them a lot of time and money. Of the eight or ten of us old guys who drive there every week, none of us own an EV.  There are two or three hybrid vehicles owned by the group, but no one has committed to an EV, not even the ubiquitous Tesla type I see more of than any other brand.  (I have to be careful here not to arouse the ire of Elon Musk, which may result in a middle finger and an expletive deleted being tossed my way by one of the richest men on the planet.)

Even the hybrid owners in the Roundtable keep an old gas-powered Chevrolet Silverado or F-150 in the driveway to do the heavy lifting, like taking garbage to the recycle center or pulling the boat in and out of the lake on one of the many ramps in this area.

Bottom line, until the majority of the members of the Retiree Roundtable show up driving an all-electric vehicle to the weekly meeting, this whole EV thing falls into the category of “a bad idea whose time has come.” And that’s the way it oughta be.

Alan Clark is a retired US Army Colonel, former Chief Technology Officer, Past District Governor of Rotary International, radio host and general manager, and holds a Doctorate in Education from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. His editorials have been published by Lakeway Publishers, Inc., and he is the author of several books and monographs. He was the recipient of awards for his editorials by the UT/Tennessee Press Association in 2019, 2021, and 2022.