Horowitz: Electric vehicles should be banned for safety issues

In a free market, any producer should be allowed to produce a product of his choice and any consumer should be afforded the right to purchase a product of his choice. But what happens when the government monopolizes the public square and uses subsidies, regulations, and mandates to create an industry of electric vehicles that a free market would never support just on the safety concerns alone? If the left is able to get away with banning normal vehicles, then shouldn’t red states be justified in banning electric vehicles from the highways and garages until the technology improves?

A new analysis from CBS News shows that the number of fires caused by rechargeable batteries in New York City surged from 30 in 2019 to 220 in 2022. Firefighters are warning that lithium-ion battery fires burn longer and hotter than regular car fires and are hard to extinguish safely. Since 2019, they found 669 incidents between NYC and San Francisco, resulting in hundreds of injuries.

Just as we are seeing many sudden deaths in public since 2021, we are also witnessing many sudden vehicle fires on the road or in garages that threaten lives and the integrity of infrastructure. This is occurring with just a tiny percentage of vehicles holding rechargeable batteries; imagine how we’d live if the left got their wish and converted all cars to electric.

According to the CDC, there are over 2 million car crashes a year. If all cars were electric, punctures from crashes could ignite the batteries and lead to thermal runaway, which is a chemical reaction that travels from one cell of the battery to another. This level of heat can lead to the breakdown of chemicals inside the battery and can create flammable gases, heightening the risk of a full-scale explosion. The batteries burn at 1200 degrees Fahrenheit and in a "thermal event" that doesn't require oxygen to burn. This is why Nikola, an electric truck company, just recalled every EV semi truck it produced, because they are ticking, rolling bombs.

At a time of heightened concern over massive wildfires, why would we place hundreds of thousands of ticking bombs on the road and in garages? With control of 83% of the lithium-ion battery market, the Chinese – with the help of their allies in our government – are looking to install them in many other appliances and products besides cars. Government has created this problem with its subsidies, mandates, and monopolization of the public square with climate lies. Then it will parachute in to solve the problem it created with a bunch of expensive fire safety programs and more crony infrastructure projects to protect against the ubiquitous infernos the vehicles create in our large cities and densely packed parking garages.

Nikola company just suspended sale of all its trucks until it “fixes” the problem with a component of its batteries that have caused several fires. A coolant leak inside a battery pack was responsible for a massive fire in Phoenix two months ago that destroyed five other trucks parked nearby. But does anyone believe the trucks will come back to the market with the safety concerns fixed, given how much our government will subsidize the company’s losses?

Then of course there is the problem of flooding and hurricanes. We are now seeing EVs catch on fire when submerged. Imagine a hurricane or a flood if nearly every car is an EV. And what about the wear and tear and structural safety on highways, bridges, and particularly parking garages because of the sheer weight of these vehicles? According to the U.K. Telegraph, the British Parking Association’s structures group is working on new recommendations for multi-floor parking garages that will require load-bearing for concrete floors to be able to hold three kilonewtons per square meter, a 20% increase from the current recommendations. Should we really allow the garages to fill up with these monster bombs before we are forced to spend billions repairing the damage to the infrastructure?

These are all issues that are vetted by the free market. But with billions in subsidies for EVs and headwinds thrown at regular vehicles, we have no free market, we have a fascist market. Goldman Sachs estimates that the EV industry will get close to $400 billion in subsidies from Biden’s Orwellian-named “Inflation Reduction Act.” That is enough to overcome any initial market losses and safety issues to keep the product unnaturally afloat. That is why, if blue states can ban normal vehicles that we’ve enjoyed for 120 years, then red states would be justified in banning EVs until companies can prove they have solved these safety issues.