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Carmakers and policymakers desperately want people to buy plug-in electric cars, but they have a problem: drivers don’t share the same passion.Almost 100,000 plug-in vehicles are sitting on dealer lots, and Ford is slashing the price of its electric pickup truck. Demand from drivers is simply not keeping up with the dreams of the corporate and political elites. A recent Bank of America research note suggested that possibly “consumers are happy with their ICE vehicles and don’t want EVs.”We’ve been down this road before. We've seen corporations try to convert their customers to a new green technology, telling us we will love the new high-tech stuff better than the old stuff. This is exactly what happened with the good old-fashioned lightbulb. That story ended with the federal government forcing us to buy the new tech against our wills.“Consumers need to be educated that the new bulb lines help reduce energy consumption,” a trade publication stated in the 1990s, explaining why the energy-efficient bulbs were not selling that well.
Right now, Ford and other traditional automakers are experiencing growing pains in the EV market. But within a few years, they will have set up supply chains and manufacturing facilities. At this point, the industry will be begging drivers to switch to electric cars, which will require much less labor to make. (The United Auto Workers has good reason to dislike the rush to EVs.)Plus, the spigot of state and federal subsidies could mean that plug-in cars provide bigger profit margins for automakers.The free market is pretty annoying to corporate planners, because consumers get to make their own choices. It takes government to force people to buy what industry wants them to buy. Soon enough, this old story will play out in our car dealerships.
