Commentary

By coincidence, I was reading fellow blogger Francis Menton’s piece on unelected bureaucrats who use their positions of power in regulatory agencies to control our lives, when remarks by Bob Lutz, who spent years in the auto industry at GM, Ford and Chrysler, came to my attention.

Perhaps the most obvious abuse of power we experience is in the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) where they have a broad mission to protect our health and environment on land, in the air and on the water.

“Regulation is way ahead of the public,” says Lutz. “Not only is the American public not ready for the broad adoption of electric vehicles, there’s not enough electricity generating infrastructure in the U.S. to support it.”

You may recall that Tesla’s Elon Musk voiced the same concern this summer.

As I wrote in April, the EPA proposed sweeping emissions cuts deemed the “most ambitious pollution standards ever for cars and trucks.,” while projecting that this plan would accelerate the transition to electric vehicles. 

In other words, the EPA is telling us which cars and trucks we should buy.  Of course, the auto makers like that kind of support, but unwanted EVs are piling up on car lots because people aren’t convinced with their reliability.

“The transition by 2030 is just not going to happen,” says Lutz, believing the government will have to push out its transition deadlines to allow the auto industry, electric utilities and the public to catch up.  Meanwhile, he claims that combustion driven vehicles will continue to be produced and sold.

While mandating the purchase of an electric vehicle may work in an authoritarian government like China, Lutz says it’s not going to work in the United States.

Lutz went on the record as someone who encourages clean transportation like an EV, but adds that there’s still a lot of development that needs to take place.

In addition to the push to go all electric in transportation, government regulators most recently banned the incandescent light bulb, and there’s talk of regulating dishwashers, clothes washers and dryers and gas ranges.  This has to stop.

May God continue to bless the United States of America.