The automobile is one of the devices that truly changed America and the world. Invented originally in Germany, it found its greatest expression and success in America.

In the early years, car technology competed with each other based on gasoline or kerosene power, diesel, electric, and even steam. The internal combustion engine using gasoline prevailed.

The car literally changed the way we laid out our cities and towns.  No longer restricted to horse and buggy, towns could spread out.  This was derogatorily called “urban sprawl.”  Indeed, it is a sprawl of sorts just as having your own room is accommodation sprawl.  It allowed families to have independent homes and yards, not apartments and tenement rooms.

It allowed cities like Phoenix and Los Angeles to develop.  The US is not Holland.  It is not densely populated, flat, and cool, or situated at sea level.  Many young people travel to Europe and come back with really impractical ideas on a variety of fronts, but geography makes a difference. Getting anywhere on a bike in Phoenix might work for occasional exercise, but try actually going across the valley when it is 110 degrees in the summer!

Many communities have spent vast sums on bike paths based on this myth.  Yet, with all the expense and promotion, only about 0.6% of commuting is done by bicycle. 

The automobile changed the way we dated and courted.  It widened the choices people could make in marriage or just dating. No longer restricted to the front porch and the watchful eyes of parents, boys and girls could leave home and have some privacy, that could be used for a variety of activities.  You could even drive outside your neighborhood to meet a girl.

It increased job opportunities, because travel was so much faster and cheaper, and a much broader range of employment opportunities developed.

The same can be said for recreational, shopping, and medical choices.

It meant freedom, especially freedom from parents, from public transport, and the requirement to live one’s life on a schedule determined by someone else.  It also meant independence from frequently striking transport unions.

Going where you want, when you want, to see whomever you want, is a great force multiplier for personal freedom.

As a teenager, many hours of menial labor were required to get a car, and it was a priority.  Male high school society was once generally divided between Ford guys and Chevy guys. It meant independence and the ability to date girls.  It meant in many cases, a chance to participate in extracurricular activities and engage in sports.

In short, owning an automobile allowed individuals and families to exercise their freedom because it widened their choices in almost every aspect of life. Cars are wonderful!

Now it seems, many younger people do not want or value that independence. Some believe this is simply another sign that Gen Z does not want to grow up and take responsibility for important aspects of their life.  They don’t want to even want to learn to drive and like the idea of a loft apartment downtown where they can take public transport.  Or, they think they can get around on a bike.  Yes, you can do that in a restricted area when you are 25, but try it at 75.

Understand, I like biking, especially mountain biking.  But that is recreation and exercise and I usually get to where I want to bike in a pickup truck.

How did we get from “See the USA in your Chevrolet” to viewing automobiles only in terms of their carbon footprint?

The chief culprit is the “environmental movement” that moved from sensible conservation and a desire to combat smog, to the notion that all human activity is bad, as it destroys “the earth.”  The “earth” further became almost a religious abstraction, wherein people and their flourishing are not part of the equation.

Ideas are being floated about the “15-minute city”, where we will all be restricted to a narrow neighborhood, a kind of environmental ghetto.  As you might have guessed, the idea sprung from the head of a professor.  There is even one under development in Tempe, Arizona, home of ASU. This will keep us from burning fuel and teach us to live in restricted areas, much like our ancestors were when powered by horses.

The government has entered the fray and now seems entirely captured by the environmental zealots. The car, the very essence of American freedom and mobility, is now cast in a dark light of environmental degradation. The trick was to define CO2 as a “pollutant.”  Therefore, your breathing is a source of pollution and should be regulated.

Governmental regulations and currency debasement have caused the price of automobiles to soar. Regulation directly costs about 1/8^th of the total sales price.  There seems no end to the safety and air quality demands, despite the fact that emissions of traditional pollutants have dropped drastically.  Now, they are after carbon, and they want us all in electric cars.

The average payment for a new car is soaring.  It just reached a new all-time high monthly payment, exceeding $700 per month.

As for overall cost, for a full-size sedan, we are now at about $48,000, and for a pick-up truck, $65,000.  For obvious reasons, much of this now has to be financed.  Auto loans are now about $1.6 trillion.  For new cars, it is about 9%, and for used cars 14%.  Maintaining those payments in the next recession could be a real challenge.

Sandwiched between record-high home mortgage payments that now are taking 40% of gross income, increasing car payments put the middle-class family in a real squeeze.

Electric cars remain substantially more expensive than conventional gas-powered cars.

This is all a product of top-down central planning, using tax incentives and mandates to achieve something a small group of environmental zealots wants and they care little about the economic well-being of real people or of the choices real people want to make.  They want to force their choices on you.

This goes well beyond your transportation choices.  The Biden Administration and the Democrats want to dictate to you how to cook your food, what you eat, how you wash dishes and clothes, and how you heat your house.  By controlling energy and the emissions produced, they now have a wedge to curtail your freedom to choose and to substitute their choices for yours.

And the beauty of it all is, you get to pay for the choices they will make.

As you might guess, when the government mandates people to do something, not all of us will agree.  We even resist their subsidies. In the case of auto companies, they are caught between trying to please their customers and trying to please the government.  The following two videos about the approach Ford is taking, and the approach Toyota is taking, is both instructive and revealing.

This push toward electric cars will direct a great deal of production to China, which from a national security perspective, is clearly insane.  Making us more dependent on them for critical minerals is also hazardous.

The government pays for highways supposedly out of a trust fund on gasoline taxes.  Now proposals are being floated to tax you on miles driven, which would require tracking devices in your car. It even wound up in the “infrastructure bill”, although it was voluntary.  What could go wrong with that? Surely the government would never track your whereabouts except to save the world.

Electric cars have not shown they can make longer trips or haul heavy loads.  And many studies show that overall, they may not even lower so-called greenhouse gasses.

They are increasingly proving to be a major fire hazard as well.  Just recently the US Coast Guard warned ocean shippers of the risk lithium batteries have around salt water.

Regular auto insurance for electric cars is about 25% more expensive than for internal combustion cars, largely due to their increased cost and fire hazard.  Even electric bikes are proving a fire hazard.

Putting in a home charging station can vary but cost around $2,000-$2,500 seem typical.

For those that want EVs, fine.  It is your money. But how about leaving the rest of us the freedom not to choose them?  It seems a case of freedom for thee, but no freedom for me.

Meanwhile, as the strain on our electrical grid increases, government mandates expensive and unreliable “renewables”, while attacking dependable nuclear, hydropower, and natural gas.  This will make powering what electric vehicles we do choose more expensive and make the entire electrical grid less reliable.

Choking off domestic oil and gas production, makes us more dependent on Russia and the volatile Middle East, making powering our internal combustion cars more expensive.

There just seems no limit to the mischief that can be created by the government mandating untested technologies based on a quasi-religious premise.

Clearly, the Democrats do not want you to own a car.  And if you do, they want you in a very expensive EV.

They are attacking the idea of personal transportation on a variety of fronts. They have a dream, and you are compelled to share it and pay the consequences for their choices.