We love this in ways which might not even be healthy. It’s terrific, and necessary, and we need it here in Louisiana this session.
In the Wyoming legislature, a bill is moving that would move the state toward a goal of no sales of electric vehicles by 2035.
While jurisdictions like California and New York move toward banning the sale of new gasoline-powered cars, one US state wants to go in the opposite direction. Wyoming’s legislature is considering a resolution that calls for a phaseout of new electric vehicle sales by 2035. Introduced on Friday, Senate Joint Resolution 4 has support from members of the state’s House of Representatives and Senate. In the proposed resolution, a group of lawmakers led by Senator Jim Anderson says Wyoming’s “proud and valued” oil and gas industry has created “countless” jobs and contributed revenue to the state’s coffers. They add that a lack of charging infrastructure within Wyoming would make the widespread use of EVs “impracticable” and that the state would need to build “massive amounts of new power generation” to “sustain the misadventure of electric vehicles.” SJ4 calls for residents and businesses to limit the sale and purchase of EVs voluntarily, with the goal of phasing them out entirely by 2035. If passed, the resolution would be entirely symbolic. In fact, it’s more about sending a message to EV advocates than banning the vehicles altogether. To that point, the final section of SJ4 calls for Wyoming’s Secretary of State to send President Biden and California Governor Gavin Newsom copies of the resolution. “One might even say tongue-in-cheek, but obviously it’s a very serious issue that deserves some public discussion,” Senator Boner, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, told the Cowboy State Daily. “I’m interested in making sure that the solutions that some folks want to the so-called climate crisis are actually practical in real life. I just don’t appreciate when other states try to force technology that isn’t ready,”
EV’s don’t work in Wyoming at all. Why? Well, it’s one of the most sparsely-populated states in the country, with vast stretches of open land separating the series of small towns in which the population lives. A 400-mile drive isn’t an uncommon experience in that state; in fact, it’s 433 miles from Cheyenne to Jackson Hole.
And there aren’t any EV’s with enough range to make that drive without stopping to charge, which means what’s a six-hour drive in an ordinary gas-powered vehicle is at least a seven-hour drive in an EV – assuming you’re able to find a charging station in Tipton, the halfway point along the way.
Not to mention you’re driving on some relatively steep inclines along the way.
Oh, and we’re talking about summertime range for the EV’s which would be failing to make the drive from Cheyenne to Jackson Hole. Winters are awfully cold in Wyoming, and extreme cold chops down an EV’s range pretty severely. You’d have to charge two or three times to make such a trip in the winter.
So “impracticable” is a very good word to describe electric vehicles in Wyoming.
But Louisiana has even more reason to disparage EV’s.
Did you know electric vehicles are a lot heavier than gas-powered vehicles are? The battery on an EV makes it 1,000 pounds heavier. Given that our drivers in this state get in wrecks considerably more than the average, heavier vehicles probably mean more severe injuries to the people they hit. Not to mention our roads tend to be built on some fairly soft soils, which is one reason they fall apart so much faster, and converting the vehicle fleet to heavier EV’s can only accelerate the deterioration.
You’d say that’s a minor thing. But over time, and over all of those hundreds of miles of roadways, it’s going to add up. Not to mention the fact that our governing class keeps lecturing us that our gas tax revenue isn’t enough to maintain and upgrade our roads now, and EV’s would put more wear and tear on the roads without generating gas tax revenue to pay for any of it.
But none of that is the real reason why Louisiana has a state interest in passing a bill like the one they’re working on in Wyoming.
That would be…hurricanes.
We’ll get hit with a hurricane of size every other year if not more, and when one comes we’ve got to evacuate low-lying areas. That means tons of cars on not that many roads at the same time. And if those cars are electric vehicles with major limitations on range and they’ll have to hit overloaded charging stations every couple hundred miles as they’re stuck in traffic, you’re going to have a lot of people stuck out in the open when a hurricane hits.
And the mess EV’s will make of evacuations is nothing compared to what happens in hurricane recovery.
What happens after a hurricane moves through an area? The power is knocked out. It can take as much as a couple of weeks to restore it in a place which gets hit hard by a hurricane. Three weeks isn’t even completely unheard of; we had that with Hurricane Ida in New Orleans and Houma/Thibodaux.
When the power is out, you get in your car and turn on the air conditioning to cool off, because your house becomes a hotbox. And you’re in your car a lot because you can’t eat at home – all your food spoils and you can’t cook anything unless it’s on the grill outside. Not to mention the stuff you need to make repairs you have to drive somewhere to get.
The point is, your car or truck is an indispensable piece of equipment in putting things right after a hurricane, and if it’s electric it’s going to be down for the count just like all the rest of your stuff will be. There’s an EV commercial, from Ford if we remember correctly, that touts the possibility your car could power your house, but that’s laughable. After a few hours your car battery would be drained out and then it’s done until the power comes back on.
Gas stations have generators and can come back on line after a hurricane, and they’re a lifeline for hurricane-stricken communities. Could charging stations do that as well? Yeah, maybe, but they’d be running on diesel generators.
None of this is practical. EV’s are a politically-driven fad which don’t work for us, and we shouldn’t be buffaloed by idiots from California and New York into making policies which degrade our quality of life.
Not to mention enriching the Chinese communists, who make most of those batteries.
Somebody should bring a bill like the one moving in Wyoming this year here in Louisiana. It ought to pass, and then John Bel Edwards can explain to the people why he wants them helpless after a hurricane comes when he makes his veto statement.