EDITORIAL: EV graveyards

When it comes to electric vehicles, the Biden administration and Democrats have long admired China’s heavy-handed recipe of handouts and mandates. How’s that working out?

This year, according to Reuters, China unveiled a $73 billion package of subsidies to boost sales of plug-ins. This has been the preferred policy approach in a nation hostile to consumer choice and free markets. The news agency reports that China spent $57 billion on such subsidies — for buyers and manufacturers — from 2016-2022 and became the world’s largest auto exporter in the first quarter of this year.

The wave of “free” money led to scores of new companies looking to get a piece of the green. According to Bloomberg News, “They churned out huge numbers of early-stage EVs — relatively no-frills cars whose batteries in some instances could only run for around 100 kilometers (62 miles) on a charge.”

Many of these models didn’t sell well in the private market. Companies went out of business. Bloomberg observes that there are now about 100 EV makers in China, down from 500 four years ago. Meanwhile, many of those new electric cars are now turning into rust buckets.

“On the outskirts of the Chinese city of Hangzhou, a small dilapidated temple overlooks a graveyard of sorts: a series of fields where hundreds upon hundreds of electric cars have been abandoned among weeds and garbage,” Bloomberg reports. “Similar pools of unwanted battery-powered vehicles have sprouted up in at least half a dozen cities across China, though a few have been cleaned up. In Hangzhou, some cars have been left for so long that plants are sprouting from their trunks.”

The Biden economic team has shown an admiration for Chinese-like “industrial policy,” which empowers government bureaucrats over the marketplace. They advocate for EV subsidies to goose sales and production mandates to force automakers to comply. California and other blue states have outlawed the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by the arbitrary date of 2035.

Yet the battery breakthrough that many are awaiting has yet to occur. Range is below advertised in many vehicles, and charging times significantly exceed fill-up times at the pump. The cost of EVs remains high.

While EV sales in the United States have increased in recent years, warning signs abound. Though more than 50 percent of potential car buyers say they would be interested in purchasing a plug-in, polling suggests, the vast majority of them aren’t pulling the trigger. The rate of EV sales has “slowed from a year earlier,” The Wall Street Journal reported this week, “and unsold inventory is starting to pile up for some brands.”

While the United States is unlikely to see vast lots of abandoned EVs “among weeds and garbage,” perhaps it’s time for Democrats to realize that the nation is not immune from the predictable results of central planning.