The Plug-in Hybrid is Next - EPautos - Libertarian Car Talk (2024)

Engineers are clever people. Throw a “mandate” or “regulation” at them and they’ll find a way to comply with it – thus regularly defeating the true purpose of the mandate or regulation, which was issued in the hope it could not be complied with.

Tailpipe emissions standards, for instance, were meant to eliminate engines – not pollution. But the engineers figured out how to make engines emit so little pollution that not only did engines survive, they thrived. By the 1990s, V8 and V12 engines produced lower emissions than the four cylinder engines of the ’70s. And they produced more power (and used less gas, an “emissions control” rarely acknowledged)than most of the V8s of the ’60s and ’70s.

By the early 2000s, no engine in any new vehicle emitted much of anything other than water vapor and carbon dioxide, neither gas worsening or having anything to do with air pollution. So, naturally, the definition of “emissions” was changed – and CO2 became one, just like that. Much in the same way we are told that a man can become a woman, just like that. It doesn’t matter whether it’s true. What matters is that such beliefs – relentlessly pushed – can then be used to further an agenda.

All of a sudden, engines that had qualified under the old definitions of “emissions” as partial zero emissions (PZEV) engines – note that you never see those badges anymore – were the new (and “gross”) “polluters” and engines – all of them – were once again in the crosshairs. The only way to comply with the new regulations – and mandates, which now included zero emissions vehicle (ZEV) production quotas – appeared to be to get rid of engines, since no matter how “clean” an engine is, a running engine will necessarily result in the “emissions” of carbon dioxide (and water vapor).

The goal was in sight!

At last, after 50 years of hard work, the regulators – those busy little bees who work in what are innocuously styled “agencies” that operate with impunity as de facto legislatures, without any bother about elections – appeared to be on the verge of achieving that which they’d sought all those decades: The end of engines in cars and – thereby – they end of cars (which they despise). At least, the end of cars for most people, who would no longer be able to afford one or not want to own one. The special people – think John Kerry; think Kamala Harris – would of course continue to enjoy access to and use of the very types of cars “the little people” would not longer drive.

Like what is styled The Beast, as a for-instance.

The reference is to the presidential limo – which is actually a modified SUV made to look like a Cadillac limo. An armored limo that weighs twice as much as a typical car and has a huge and thirsty V8 engine that “emits” probably three or four times as much C02 as the typical car we’re still allowed to buy. It is exempt from the regulations. The special people always exempt themselves from what they impose on us (viz, Obamacare; the little people are required to buy in but the special people are exempted from its requirements).

The hope was that the redefining of “emissions” to encompass C02 would be the end of engines – for good this time.

But engineers are clever people. They figured a way to continue making engines and comply with the redefined regs. They developed hybrids. And – specifically – plug-in hybrids. The latter “emit” no “emissions” of the bogeyman gas when they are operated on their batteries, which power electric motors that propel the vehicle. Most plug-in hybrids can be operated as “zero emissions” electric vehicle for 20-30 miles, burning no gas along the way and also “emitting” no gas.

Voila, compliance!

Genius!

Even more so because it defeats the intent of the regs, which is to push people out of vehicles with engines and into battery powered devices, which most can’t afford and many do not want. So as to achieve the goal of getting most people to stop driving.

But the plug-in hybrid does not have to be plugged in. It can be driven just like any other vehicle with just an engine; the battery/motor part merely along for the ride. More finely, the plug-in hybrid is not tethered to an umbilicus, unlike a battery powered device. It charges itself up – as it is driven – using its engine as a generator. This means it does not force its owner to stop (and wait) for a charge.

And that is precisely why the next move – of the regulatory apparat – will be to out-regulate the plug-in hybrid. Michael Regan, the current head of the EPA – which ceased protecting the environment decades ago and now uses “the environment” as an excuse to regulate us ever-more and ever-harder – has already publicly complained that people who buy plug-in hybrids are not plugging them in often enough. They are just driving them – egads!

You see the intent there. Regan – just one of many busy bees – does not want people (that’s you and me but not him and the other special people) driving. They want us waiting – whether at a not-so-fast charger or for the bus. Ideally, the bus. However long we have to wait for it.

There is a chance – perhaps – that the Orange Man will put a stop to all of this. If he’s for- real and if the coming (s)election isn’t fake, this time. It might turn out to be real – in that it is plausible there are enough of Lenin’s Useful Idiots ready to vote for Kamala Harris; which is to say, for their own (and our) enserfment. Many are young people who have never owned a car and so don’t like or care about them – not understanding they’ve been pushed out of the car market by the very people they keep on voting into power.

Hence Useful Idiots.

But if there are enough who aren’t – and their votes are enough to overcome the pending repeat of what happened in 2020 – there is a chance the special people might be put where they belong for all they’ve done (and plan to do) to the rest of us.

. . .

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