Artificial demand is no way to “fix” the auto industry

President-elect Obama and like-minded supporters have made much of their grand idea to force the U.S. auto industry into producing “green” vehicles as the next wave of the future, with electric cars and plug-in hybrids held up as  particularly attractive saviors. Never mind that there are no indications that consumers actually want to buy these vehicles in economically sustainable numbers; simply saying that this is the direction the auto industry must go is enough for those with the vision of the elite.

The masses will simply have to get with the program, if the language used by the visionary leftists is any indication. New York Times blogger Andrew Revkin points to a story in the paper wondering if consumers are the biggest threat to the electric car, while the story he’s referencing uses similarly revealing language:

So far, consumers have proved to be fickle about how much they care about fuel economy. When gas prices soared above $4 a gallon last year, sales of the market-leading Prius hybrid surged so quickly that Toyota could not build them fast enough. But demand sagged when gas prices dropped below $2 a gallon. [emphasis added]

It’s subtle but significant word choice, and follows a popular trend evident in the liberal mindset: that the choices of hundreds of millions of Americans across the country are little better than the mindless lowing of cattle, while the decisions that leftists want them to make are the correct ones… like purchasing ultra-fuel-efficient cars, for example. By calling consumers “fickle,” a negative connotation is added; in short, the fact that consumers respond to higher or lower gasoline prices by purchasing vehicles that meet their needs at the time is regarded as “fickle,” rather than “sensitive to fuel prices,” or “adaptable to rapidly-shifting economic realities,” or “responsive” or even “responsible.”

It’s undeniable that electric vehicles have advantages, reduced dependence on foreign oil and less pollution chief among them. But there are trade-offs. They come with unfortunate baggage that people don’t like paying for: they have less range, they offer less power, they need to be charged for hours on end, and they cost a hell of a lot more than comparable internal-combustion vehicles – the Chevy Volt and Ford’s new electric car will hit the $40,000 mark, even with the performance drawbacks of less range and hours-long recharge sessions.

Living in the country on a farm probably biases my outlook, but it’s nonetheless valid to note that huge numbers of people in our sprawling country don’t live in cities where it’s a short commute from home to work to grocery store to school and home again. Many live in relatively spread-out places and need to have vehicles that can get around in inclement weather, can get through off-road conditions, and can travel serious distances to get from home to other necessary destinations. I look around my community and see far more pickup trucks and SUVs than passenger sedans, because people need these vehicles to get around and go about their daily lives. We would be totally unable to get up our driveway in winter without a four-wheel drive, and we need the four-wheel drive to be a pickup truck to haul manure, firewood, hard-pack… you get the idea.

So I’m displaying my non-urban bias here. But the Obama administration and its ardent supporters who champion public transportation and ultra-efficient cars as the solution to our energy woes are biased too; they are urban folks who can afford to drive a trendy little Prius – or a Cadillac Escalade Hybrid, for that matter – and never have to worry that their ground clearance isn’t enough to get them across the horse pasture with a watering trough in the bed, or that they can’t let a mere foot of snow render them unable to traverse their driveway, or that they’d run out of battery power before they could get to the nearest airport and back.

Rather than letting the millions upon millions of consumers make their preferences known through the simple mechanism of watching how we spend our dollars, the Obama administration and others who want to make our decisions more “informed” or “wise” are going to use their new leverage over the auto industry (via the massive bailouts) to force them to produce “green” vehicles whether people want them or not, because that’s what makes sense to them.

And what happens when consumers don’t respond? Two things: First, the automakers will be blamed for somehow not getting it quite right (because it can never be a politician’s fault), and second, consumers will be coerced and cajoled into buying the vehicles through tax rebates of some sort.

In other words, those of us who don’t buy those kinds of vehicles will be subsidizing those who do, simply because we’re too dumb to make the “correct” or “wise” decision when it comes to spending our own money.