The auto lobby spent millions on media manipulation | Hacker News Reader

The auto lobby spent millions on media manipulation

impuls.news

31 pointsrobtherobber14 comments

In 2006 there was the documentary, “Who killed the electric car?” about the GM EV1 vehicle and the lobby to limit the adoption of this tech.

Among other topics, the film covers the zev mandate and its reversal after pressure from the industry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F

It's also a biased, lopsided report. Guy I know who was an EV pioneer in California said it was so bad that, even though his career consisted of promoting EVs, he told people to avoid watching it because it presents such a skewed picture. Imagine it's been made by Michael Moore to put it into perspective. From what I can remember, and this was 20 years ago, his summary was that the EV1 was introduced purely to meet the ZEV mandate but in practice the vehicles were "saleproof" (his words). There wasn't any conspiracy to kill them.

An inconvenient truth is a very large fraction of Americans dislike EVs and are ideologically/culturally married to ICEVs as part of their "culture"/"identity", and don't care about ecology or climate change. Manufactured consent probably has something to do with it. It's irrational because the TCO of EVs is obviously cheaper than ICEVs.

The TCO of a slim Jim is less than the TCO of a steak dinner, too.

The dumbest red herring ever.

Advertising is propaganda. And it uses emotions to elicit people to respond in certain ways.

The ad industry likes to say that they're in the business of informing people so they can make better decisions. Whereas they make sure you're uninformed so you can make worse decisions.

I belive you are describing the the article quite aptly.

The average age of an EV on the road is less than four years, compared to over 12 years for hybrids and ICE vehicles. I'm not suggesting an EV can't also last that long, but it feels premature to say anything is "obvious" about TCO when they are such a new product category

Bothsidesism is bunk nonsense. TCO is measured per year, but it goes down with age. Many EVs are already far cheaper to own than ICEVs.

The article is incoherent.

They better get refund because most people would still get an EV if they can afford one.

EVs are some of the cheapest cars you can get. All of the American manufacturers sell them at a huge loss, due to government regulations around average mpg for their lineups, etc

Another data point that the auto industry is prioritizing protecting the status quo and profits over electrification.

It's also part of the US national policy to prefer fossil fuels and oil. The US has become the world's largest petrostate.

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