The Expert Podcast

So, we've seen electric vehicle demand collapse in the last 6 to 8 months. Is there more going on behind the scenes that doesn’t have to do just with electric vehicles but all cars in general? Follow me through this.

Here's an article from Portland, Oregon, where half the vehicles on the road have expired license plates. Imagine that—half the cars on the road haven’t renewed their license plates or their tags. That’s a pretty high number, but is this something that was unexpected? Maybe it was something that’s planned for.

One of the reasons why these tags are not renewed is, first of all, in Oregon, in Portland, there is an attitude of not prosecuting crime. In fact, some states have passed laws that say the police cannot pull over a vehicle just for expired tags. This has to do with equity and things like that. So if you don’t have any consequence of getting pulled over, why pay for your tags?

The first thing is, that’s creating a budget shortfall for the city of Portland. We’ll get to that in a minute, but at the same time, maybe this was something that was intentional. Go back seven years—this article was from 2017. There was a renewable energy website called "Renew Economy" that said by 2030, “You won’t own one,” meaning a car.

The death spiral of cars with expired tags might be part of that death spiral. So they predicted it. Maybe they intended it. Maybe they facilitated it. In between, what has happened? Well, in Portland, the same city, 8,000 cars were stolen, and most of them are left on the side of the road, stripped apart. Skyrocketing vehicle theft—what better way to get cars off the road than to steal them and strip them out? Because now, they can’t go back on the road, right?

Is there something coordinated with this? I’m not saying it’s nefarious or a conspiracy, but I’m sure there isn’t much effort to get vehicles to renew their tags or to keep cars from getting stolen if they want all cars on the road to be gone by 2030. I think that it’s possible electric vehicles were like a halfway house, meaning that they’re one step in between gas cars and no cars.

It’s not that they want to transition to electric vehicles because electric vehicles are terrible. They don’t go that far, they don’t last that long, and the batteries die. So maybe making a forced transition to electric vehicles by both manufacturers and consumers forces everybody to have their only option for a car be a terrible car—an electric vehicle, one nobody wants.

After a few years go by where all you can buy are electric vehicles, and nobody wants them, and you can’t use them, people might say, “Well, why bother having cars? Use mass transit.”

Is that too much of a stretch? Am I overthinking this? Cars are getting stolen, cars aren’t getting registered, and years ago, they were saying you won’t own a car. In the meantime, there’s a forced electric vehicle transition where some states pass laws saying you can’t buy a gas car after 2030—the only option being electric.

Maybe people aren’t going to want that. Again, am I reading too much into this? Am I connecting dots that shouldn’t be connected? I know you have an opinion about this. Put it in the comments. Let me know what you think.