Even with lavish government subsidies—which are disproportionately
funded by the middle class
and disproportionately given to the wealthy—sales
of electric vehicles remain stuck in the low single digits.
According to a new report
from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (USEIA), “hybrid electric,
plug-in hybrid electric, and battery electric” vehicles accounted for a mere
2.5% to 4.0% of total light-duty vehicle sales from 2012 through 2017.
It’s not that policymakers haven’t tried to encourage people
to buy EVs. To date, EV owners have benefitted from direct
purchase subsides of up to $7,500 from the feds and up to $5,000 from a
number of states; free
use of electric charging stations and reduced utility rates in their homes;
free access to HOV
lanes; and exemptions from
various taxes, registration fees and inspection requirements. The U.S.
government has even lavished
$2 billion dollars on car manufacturers to encourage the production and
sale of EVs.
Yet despite all these subsidies, EV sales can’t get out of
park.
The US EIA report cited several factors for the “limited
growth” of EV sales, including low gasoline prices, the increased fuel economy
of conventional vehicles, and the “relatively high” price of new EVs. They also
cited the lack of charging stations, which is “the biggest hurdle in the
adoption of EVs,” according to a new
study from the Rocky Mountain Institute.
It is becoming increasingly clear that if we hope to
persuade the most well-off among us to purchase electric vehicles, we need to
build a national network of Level
3 charging stations that would rival the network of gas stations that
blankets the United States today.
It won’t be cheap. At a cost of up to $100,000
per charging station, such an ambitious undertaking would cost American taxpayers
untold billions of dollars. And a project of that magnitude would require a
virtual army of workers to complete.
But there is an obvious solution that is both simple and
elegant: make some minor adjustments to existing child labor
laws to allow children as young at 12 to help build a national network of EV
charging stations.
The benefits are twofold. First, an influx of roughly 12
million kids between the ages of 12 and 14 would dramatically decrease the
amount of time it would take to construct the more than 100,000
charging stations needed to match the current gasoline-station grid.
Second, the additional income these kids will bring in will
help offset the higher taxes and utility bills that their parents will inevitably
be hit with to help fund the construction of this new nationwide EV charging
network.
To be sure, not all children will be physically capable of meeting
the rigorous demands of manual labor of this kind. Others may find it difficult
to adjust to an eight-hour workday on a construction site far from home. But
those children can also contribute to the national effort to encourage the
well-off to buy electric vehicles by serving as “gophers” at existing charging
stations.
These gophers would perform small tasks for EV owners, such
as washing their cars or fetching cups of coffee while the EV owners waited for
their cars to charge, thereby enhancing the EV-ownership experience.
Older “gophers” who were licensed to drive would shuttle the
EV owners back to their homes or offices and pick them up again after their cars
were fully charged, providing a kind of “Uber-rich” service
to the deserving class.
Of course, these recommendations are quite ludicrous. But considering
that 90 percent of existing subsidy programs go to the top 20 percent
of taxpayers, “ludicrous” doesn’t seem to be a deal-breaker when considering EV
public policy.
It’s time for policymakers to rethink these Robin-Hood-in-reverse
policies of EV subsidies for the rich.