The Impact Of Electric Cars In The US - A Big Win For China

Major car manufacturers have announced they will stop making gas and diesel powered cars in the next 15 years so that all new cars produced will be electric or hydrogen powered.  How nice.  Has anybody really thought through the implications of the end of gas powered cars.   Let’s start with the easy stuff. 

First, there are currently 168,000 gas stations in the United States, many of them independently owned convivence stores.  Those businesses effectively will have no value.  The owners may or may own the land the gas stations sit on.  Many of those gas stations are at intersections.  The problem is that the lots are not really big enough for other commercial uses because of parking restrictions.  They may not even be big enough for electric power stations, since cars have to remain in a spot for 30 – 60 minutes.  Besides, why would there be a need for neighborhood power stations when most people will just plug in where they live.  

While there may still be a natural gas industry to produce fuel to power electric plants, obviously the millions of Americans that work in high paying jobs in the oil and coal industries will be out of work.  To say those people will be redeployed making solar panels, or wind turbines is folly because China owns those industries.  We can’t compete with their cost of labor.  

And, then there are the materials needed to make batteries for the cars.  China controls a lot of those minerals.  We would be held hostage to buy them from China not to mention adding to our trade deficit.  So, our country will go from being energy independent today to dependent on other countries for the things needed to build electric cars. 

There are so many implications to the end of gas powered cars that literally many industries will be impacted in a negative way.  Just wish those pushing the Green New Deal would study the issue to fully understand the implications.  Millions of jobs will be lost