Wyoming State Legislators File to Phase-Out Sales of New EVs by 2035
While this is a symbolic move, Wyoming certainly offered rational reasons for this bill.
Legal Insurrection readers will recall that California legislators voted to phase out gasoline-powered car sales by 2035.
The rule will also set interim targets to help phase out the sale of internal combustion engine models: By 2026, it states, 35% of new cars sold must be zero-emissions vehicles — an amount that climbs to 68% in 2030. Currently, just 12% of new cars sold in the state are electric vehicles.
Well, turnabout is fair play. Wyoming legislators filed to phase out the sales of electric vehicles.
Wyoming’s legislature is considering a resolution that calls for a phaseout of new electric vehicle sales by 2035. Introduced on Friday, Senate Joint Resolution 4 has support from members of the state’s House of Representatives and Senate.
In the proposed resolution, a group of lawmakers led by Senator Jim Anderson says Wyoming’s “proud and valued” oil and gas industry has created “countless” jobs and contributed revenue to the state’s coffers.
They add that a lack of charging infrastructure within Wyoming would make the widespread use of EVs “impracticable” and that the state would need to build “massive amounts of new power generation” to “sustain the misadventure of electric vehicles.”
SJ4 calls for residents and businesses to limit the sale and purchase of EVs voluntarily, with the goal of phasing them out entirely by 2035. If passed, the resolution would be entirely symbolic. In fact, it’s more about sending a message to EV advocates than banning the vehicles altogether. To that point, the final section of SJ4 calls for Wyoming’s Secretary of State to send President Biden and California Governor Gavin Newsom copies of the resolution.
While this is a symbolic move, Wyoming offered more rational reasons for this bill than the California rule. It is also heartening to see another state challenge the socialist behemoth that the Golden State has become.
The move is also designed to force a more robust debate and reasoned consideration about fossil fuels, the economy, and civilization-essential products.
“I’m interested in making sure that the solutions that some folks want to the so-called climate crisis are actually practical in real life,” GOP co-sponsor Sen. Brian Boner said, according to Cowboy State Daily. “I just don’t appreciate when other states try to force technology that isn’t ready.”
Boner even acknowledged the resolution’s trolling nature. “One might even say tongue-in-cheek,” Boner said of the resolution, adding, “But obviously it’s a very serious issue that deserves some public discussion.”
Personally, I am hoping Twitter CEO Elon Musk has someone review the Twitter Files related to the discussion of green energy versus fossil fuels. It would be informative to see how fair points about EVs, as brought up in the Wyoming legislation, were throttled…and who throttled them.
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Comments
In states with cold winter weather, EVs are very practical. Running a heater reduces range. Cold batteries don’t work as well. A cold enough battery uses charge time to warm the battery before it can be charged.
I think you meant to write “impractical”.
Autocorrect you should be use to it
Autocorrect caused me to sell my soul to Santa.
That may have been a fraudulent Santa. There were a lot of them in shopping malls across the country last month and it is suspected that many of them were actually impersonators.
I can’t tell if this is sarcasm.
Not very practical but impractical works
What about golf carts?
I would laugh if Musk decides to manufacture a hybrid Tesla with a Toyota engine so he can expand his market and go which ever way the wind blows. He could take a poll on Twitter and ask how many would buy it.
Tesla has made a series of crucial mistakes with the cars. I am an EV owner, and I know. The customers have treated the cars as a cause, which I have always thought was stupid. Now that Musk has the wrong politics, they’re seeing the flaws. Let me list a few.
1. New models. The Model S has run its course. This has nothing to do with it being electric. It’s simply getting old by automotive standards. The new ones don’t cut it, IMO.
2. Reliability, build quality & customer service. Both are abysmal. Yes, there are good Tesla cars, but there are enough really bad ones to justify avoiding Tesla vehicles altogether.
3. Full self driving simply doesn’t work.
4. Quirky design. This has worked with the early adopter types, but it won’t work as EV climb the famed S curve. I could give lots of examples, but will for now focus on just one. Not the biggest flaw, but striking. The cheapest Tesla, the Model 3 (which, by the way, is still too expensive), doesn’t have an instrument cluster in front of the driver. Want to see how fast you’re going? You have to take your eyes off the road. Trust me, it goes on, but when I drove a friend’s Model 3 that issue stuck out right away.
5. Cost. Not only has Musk never met a release target (typical Silicon Valley), but he has always lowballed prices and then brought out the actual models at much higher prices. That worked for the early adopters, but I will note that the $40,000+ Model 3 competes with GM’s Chevy Bolt at $28,000. IMO, only a fool would buy a Model 3 rather than a Bolt EUV.
“That worked for the early adopters, but I will note that the $40,000+ Model 3 competes with GM’s Chevy Bolt at $28,000. IMO, only a fool would buy a Model 3 rather than a Bolt EUV.”
Tesla is hoping the cachet helps. I mean, the types who buy a Tesla to virtue signal will never, EVER buy a … sniff! Chevrolet.
This is just a variation the Toyota Prius when it first came out. It was a “look at me!!!” car, and, Toyota being the astute marketers they are, put the Prius into an instantly recognizable body shell, rather than what Honda did with the Civic Hybrid: same body as a Civic except different grille and very flat wheel covers for aerodynamics.
The cachet was there until Musk turned out to be more independent than the wokesters expected. Now they’re busy talking up the Bolt. This makes me laugh, if for no other reason than that I’ve been pro-Bolt for several years, at least if someone wants an EV.
I am unusual, at least for the time being, in that I have ALWAYS looked at EVs as cars and nothing else. Electric motive power has had a lot going for it, ever since none other than General Motors commercialized the diesel-electric locomotive on the eve of WW2.
The problem is that batteries, including lithium-ion ones, lack the energy density they need, plus their cold-weather perfomance leaves quite a bit to be desired. Solve those problems at an acceptable cost, and I’d be the EV shill. But neither of those problems has been solved, and I don’t see anything on the horizon that will solve them.
Snobbery aside, it’s very fun to see the wokesters suddenly fall in love with General Motors.
I’d prefer passing them out by 2025,but OK.
Musk offers a product, he doesn’t demand anyone buy them
No, but he expects ALL of us to subsidize them.
We don’t subsidize anything. He took a loan, he paid it back. Personally, I think Musk is half-con-man and Tesla’s a crap. BUT this whole ‘we subsidize Tesla’ crap is annoying.
Huh? What about the $7,500 direct subsidy to buy an EV? Not to mention all the other indirect subsidies?
Tesla has the finest and most technologically advanced manufacturing facilities on the planet. Other EV manufacturers are 10 years behind.
Compare the Chevy Volt to the Tesla.
The tax credit has been paid without regard to who makes the vehicle. The latest regulations are stupidly complicated, so that might change, but thus far there is nothing Tesla-unique about the credits.
Nobody said “we subsidize only Tesla”. It’s understood that “we subsidize Tesla” means “as we do all the other EV makers”. But Tesla makes only EVs, and thus it benefits more from the subsidies than anyone else.
To Matt: It doesn’t matter how advanced their manufacturinig facilities are. The finish and workmanship on many Teslas is Detroit 1975.
I can dig a State with a sense of political humor. Makes me want to visit more often.
Someday I will return to Thermopolis…
I live in Metropolis. It’s about 20 minutes from there.
I think steam engines are not classified as internal combustion engines so they’d qualify in California. That’s not even touching stirling engines which don’t even need water and explode less often.
There was a fellow in California whose daily driver was Doble. CARB tried bullying him but none of their regulations applied to his steam engined car. Another agency thst oversaw stationary boilers tried squeezing.him for permits and inspections. He pointed out that the Doble’s boiler, by its very nature, was not stationary.
Wyoming has coal mines, I thought. You’d think state officials would promote coal-powered “EVs”.
Stirling engines are too heavy for automotive use, and have other problems that someone better than me at metallurgy and engineering could explain. In any case, if they were any better, we’d see some cars with them.
In think this is kind of silly. I think people should be free to buy what they like
Yes, but California is trying to force the entire country to give up gasoline powered cars, by banning them in that state. The idea is that if normal cars can’t be sold in CA then the manufacturers will stop making them. So if another large state, or several small states, ban EVs then that will counteract the CA ban on normal cars. Manufacturers will have to continue offering both kinds
After AK, WY is the least densely populated state in the country. Most of the state is extremely sparsely populated, and people there drive long distance all the time. I was surprised at all of the Bucking Horse plates at the mall when I lived in Fort Collins, CO. Sure Cheyenne is only maybe 40 miles away, but there were people coming from well north and west of there, some driving several hundred miles each way. (It also drew from NE NE too). Until I moved to NW MT for half of every year, and now take a 100 mile drive each way for shopping as normal. We are about 2 hours drive from Missoula, Kallispell, Coeur d’Alene and Sandpoint, and rotate through them every other week.
And that doesn’t even count getting stuck in a blizzard in the winter.
So California is obnoxious, and that justifies Wyoming’s stupidity? Sheesh. Oh well, I guess I haven’t been hyperbolic in telling people on both sides that they’re no different from each other underneath the hood.
That ended when Ralph Nader got Washington’s attention.
There used to be more electric cars than gas powered cars (100 years ago). The market decided and the limitations of the electric vehicles let gas powered cars win. The same limitations are true today; EVs can’t compete in a free market.
Subsidies and preferences make poor alternatives “economical” by making other alternatives “less economical.” In other words, you end up paying the extortionate price of the least economical alternative for all the other alternatives as well, despite their natural market price.
I think Wyoming should add a thousand dollar tax on the coal it mines. Of course the tax would be passed along to consumers. Might be especially hard on ev buyers though…
Wyoming has long had a severance tax on minerals.
https://revenue.wyo.gov/divisions/mineral-tax
“Minerals are assessed at 100% of their fair market value.
the severance tax on surface coal is 6.5%, and the severance tax on oil & natural gas is 6% of fair market value.”
It’s mainly the severance tax that lets Wyoming’s tax-and-spend politicians tax and spend without imposing a personal income tax.
Good riddance!
I despise legislative symbolism. There are exceptions but they are rare, at least for me. I understand Wyoming’s frustration, but this is inappropriate. If Republicans are the freedom lovers they claim to be, they wouldn’t be trying to abrogate freedom of choice.
I have owned an EV for 10-1/2 years, bought on the cheap (a 70% discount) when Think went out of business in 2012. Did it purely out of curiosity, and since then I have gotten to know a lot about EVs and about the generation and distribution of electricity.
I view Wyoming, and generally the intermountain West and the northern Great Plains, as some of the least promising places for EVs as they are now configured and as they are likely to be configured for the foreseeable future. If there’s a battery chemistry breakthrough, that will change, but for the last decade I’ve watched all kinds of hype fail. The only material progress has been on cost, which has dropped as a result of manufacturing scale economies.
The latest EVs have a practical, good-weather range in daily use of 200 to 250 miles on 80% of the battery. Throw in winter, lowing/hauling, and uphill climbs, and those numbers plummet. Add the distances in the intermountain West and northern Great Plains, and in most places EVs don’t make sense.
There are some exceptions, but not very many. Still, if businesses and people in Cody, Jackson, Casper, Fargo, Grand Forks, Missoula, Boise, and some other towns and cities want to deploy EVs, it’s their call and not Wyoming’s. It’s symbolic horseshit to do otherwise, and an attack on freedom of choice, something that Republicans supposedly favor.
Wyoming’s Republicans should take a step back, think it over, and reverse themselves, and declare that they made a mistake. Why? Because that’s what it was. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to see some of these clowns admit that they were wrong? How often does that happen in either party?
I’m not shilling for EVs. Anyone who thinks so is simply wrong. My farmer buddy in East Nowhere, North Dakota and I laugh about EVs in North Dakota. But it should never be a government decision.
Progressive fascist states such as CA are outlawing sales of gas engine cars in the near future. This is the perfect response. They should also outlaw charging stations.
Recalls a line from Deteriorata, a parody of that sappy Disiderata from what, 50 years ago? To wit: “Consider that two wrongs never make a right, but that three do.”