One of the textbook marketing flops of all time was the Ford Edsel sedan, which was heralded as the hot new car in the late 1950s.
All the automotive experts and Ford executives said it was a can’t miss. Henry Ford (the car was named after his son) guaranteed hundreds of thousands of sales. But one big thing went wrong. Nobody ever bothered to ask car buyers what THEY thought of the new car. (RELATED: DAVID BLACKMON: Energy Companies Are Laughing At Predictions Of ‘Peak Oil’)
Turns out: they hated it. So instead of sales of 400,000 Americans bought 10,000 and the model was embarrassingly discontinued.
The obvious lesson for the industry: you can’t bribe Americans to buy cars they don’t want. Given the all-in approach mentality for EVs at Ford and GM, it’s clear that Detroit never got this message.
Last week, Honda and General Motors announced an end to their two-year collaboration in building a platform for lower-cost EVs. Honda execs said it was “too hard.”
Amazingly, less than 10% of all new car sales are EVs over the last two years. This despite the fact that the U.S. government is writing a $7,500 check to people for buying an EV and some states are kicking in $5,000 more.
The Texas Policy Foundation calculates that all-in EV subsidies can reach $40,000 per vehicle. It would practically be cheaper for the government to purchase a new gas vehicle for every American car-buyer.
Meanwhile, the news is even worse for wind and solar power. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that “clean energy” investment funds are tanking with some down as much as 70% in recent months. Solar has been one of the worst performing industry stocks this year.
This collapse is happening right when Exxon and Chevron have engineered a combined $110 mega — acquisitions to expand oil and gas drilling in the Permian Basin in Texas — one of the biggest oil fields in the world. They both just reported their largest profits ever.
They and their investors are looking at the real world data not green energy propaganda. In 2023 the world has used more fossil fuels than any time in human history even as the developed countries spend hundreds of billions of dollars trying to stop oil, gas and coal.
All of this is to say that there in NO “global energy transition” going on. If there is one, it’s away from green energy, not toward it.
Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and chief economist at Freedom Works.
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