EVs Are Going To Be An Interesting Test Of Consumer Sovereignty Against Corporate Insistence
So, who, in the end, decides?
We’ve an interesting little test coming up of a major insistence. We don’t have to look far to find people insisting that real choice - us the people getting to choose - doesn’t exist. Because it’s all the capitalists and the big corporates insisting upon what we do. We can’t live virtuous lives because reasons and all that.
You know the thing. We all still use oil because Exxon Lied! The only reason we like fast fashion is because Shein advertises and so mesmerises us. We’re all fat because UPF is profitable. The alternative, that we like being toasty, cheaply clothed and to eat food that tastes of something isn’t allowed a look in. We’re all mere victims of the system.
The advantage to those who put forward this style of thinking is that this then justifies the toddler insistence that the system must be overthrown. Despite the obvious evidence around us that humans actually rather like the modern world. You know, that flow of migration from places without it to places with modernity?
This is, I think, going to come up against a fairly stern test. And we should hold feet to the fire over that test too.
So, governments are bribing us - with our own money but still bribing - into buying Electric Vehicles. They’re changing the law so that it will be illegal to buy an internal combustion one from 2030, or perhaps 2035, onwards. The big car companies have all switched to at least offering EVs. That is, we’ve the entire and whole weight of government and Big Corporate pushing EVs at us.
So, if the story that we consumers are mere mercies at the victim of the producers then EVs should win, win big and with very little resistance. For we’ve exactly the same forces ranged against us as with fossil fuels, clothing glitz and tasty food. Our actual preferences will get entirely steamrollered by that industrial pressure upon us.
Fiat will reintroduce a petrol-engined 500 city car in the next two years due to a lack of demand for electric vehicles, particularly among older drivers, its CEO has said.
Olivier Francois confirmed the new petrol 500 Ibrida will arrive in early 2026 due to a ‘slower than anticipated uptake of EVs across Europe’ in an interview with Autocar.
Oh. You mean the way we spend our money is what influences what is produced? Well, doesn’t that just kill the idea that we’re mere victims of the corporates. They want our money so they’ve got to offer what unlocks our wallets.
That is, in the end - and sure there are diversions and all that but in the end - the consumer is sovereign, we are the kings.
At which point that EV rollout. We really should use this as the proof of that contention. Is it going to work? If not then we are king, right? Even in the face of the might of both governments and corporates, we win.
We can even make a midstage of this argument. For that at least an attempt at the ban is coming. And why would anyone make something illegal if they didn’t think that left legal it would still happen? That is, unless the consumer actually is king, calling into existence the goods they desire by the mere existence of that desire, why would anyone pass a law insisting that demand not be assuaged?
The only reason for a 2030 ICE ban is that the consumer is king.
Simple questions: Is less air pollution better or not? Is less noisy traffic better or not? Of course one can endlessly nit-pick and lament about all the things going wrong in the energy transition, and there are certainly larger issues that need to be raised and those responsible be politically crucified.
But the underlying principle is simple truth: Arguably we are still in the period of warming after the last ice age, pre-existing, the trend having nothing to do with us. But we did manage to speed it up substantially and thereby deny our and other species adaptation, if any. If we were able to slow the warming ever so little, it would be advantageous.
The comparatively short Paris Agreement features the term Sustainable Development more than a dozen times. Of course this was a spin to imply "sustainable growth" without expressly saying so, nonetheless signatories read it as such, else most of them would certainly not have signed. This sustainable development (=growth) spin is in complete denial of the fact that actually only substantially reduced consumption resulting in zero and/or negative global economic growth is likely to make a dent in global warming.
However, we have no economic model that works at zero or negative growth, also the infinitely wise, infallible and utterly divine Communists do not have a zero growth model to offer.
Doing something is better than doing nothing. Consensus has been reached on doing something. So, we have got to go with the cynical spin of sustainable development and swap drilling for fossil fuels for mining of nonferrous metals. Perhaps it will have a positive impact, other than introducing exciting new technologies. Perhaps it doesn't, but then we have at least tried.
Oh... and Ford
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/24/ford-motor-f-earnings-q2-2024.html