If a new product or technology is better than what’s on the market, won’t people buy it without being forced by the government? From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:
If EVs are wanted by enough people to make them worth making, why is it necessary to force the not-making of alternatives to them?
It was not necessary for the government to out-regulate cassette tapes when the compact disc came along. Nor the compact disc, when digital music storage/playback came along. The reason there aren’t ice boxes in people’s homes anymore is because the refrigerator came along.
It is never necessary to out-regulate an inferior product. But it is always necessary to out-regulate a superior one – when the alternative being pushed on people as its replacement is inferior.
For example, Freon – or R-12.
It was – it is – superior – to the replacements that have been pushed on people since Freon was forced off the market back in the ’90s via regulations that banned its use in new vehicle air conditioning systems, restricted its sale to credentialed “professionals” and raised is price from about $1 per can to more than $100 for the same amount. This was supposedly done to close a hole in the ozone layer. In fact, it was done to protect DuPont, which held the patent on Freon that was about to run out.
More expensive – and less efficient – automotive AC systems was the result.
Electric cars are like the various replacements pushed on people in lieu of Freon, which worked really well – and didn’t cost much. Like the nferior – and more expensive – replacements for Freon, EVs require the suppression of superior alternatives – because if people were free to choose them, the “market” for EVs would evaporate like a piece of dry ice in the July sun.
