EVs. Not Yet My Cup of Tea

I get that not all EV owners are climate virtue signalers. I've test driven a Tesla and there is a lot of cool stuff that comes with these vehicles, not the least of which is near autonomous driving. Also, EV's torque and acceleration is amazing! My resistance to EVs is mainly about their sheer inconvenience given the eclectic way I use my vehicles. Between my three motorcycles and three cars I drive in excess of twenty-five thousand miles a year. Planning EV "fuel" stops with my driving methodology is impractical if not impossible.

Also, I don't like the potential jeopardy to my personal freedom EVs imply... like a centralized brain (controlled by some area of consciousness - government, corporate cabal yada) having as much power over the vehicle as I do. Here I'm talking about Tesla's network interconnection with all the vehicles it has manufactured. There are, no doubt, good reasons for such network interconnection. Gathering data to inform a better vehicle brain for autonomous driving would be one of them. But there are downsides of manufacturer/vehicle network interconnectedness. I just completed reading Jack Carr's latest novel, "Red Sky Mourning." In it a dogged reporter on to the scent of something "authority" doesn't want him to know, is assassinated as "authority" digitally captures his Tesla controls from afar and runs him off a cliff. And now, today, life imitates art. If the Mossad can blow up a couple of thousand pagers in Beirut, what does that imply for any other device, including EVs, that can be used in nefarious ways by bad actors? At least my current gas-powered cars and motorcycles are not (yet) networked to some potentially menacing central brain... if not my smartphone and my microwave oven.


And then, there's vibe. I have an affinity for gas engine power... big V8's... five hundred HP plus vehicles. I own two of them. A 2015 Porche Cayenne Turbo and a 2021 Jeep Rubican 392 with a performance exhaust adjustment. Like my preference for intricately engineered, automatic/wind-up watches over digital/internet watches, so also my preference for classic, finely crafted, multi moving part, internal combustion vehicles with a menacing note over soulless EVs that sound like sewing machines.

In general, I don't have a problem with EVs, as long as they compete in an open marketplace. They don't. EVs sold in the US, even while government subsidized, are affordable only by the wealthy... at least as long as China's inexpensive EVs are prevented from entering the US market by high tariffs. Free market competition? NOT.