Vermont develops a sudden case of EV sanity

The home State of Crazy Bernie Sanders, has found some sanity.  It has decided not to kill off the economy of the State by forcing people to buy EV’s.  Why is this important?  Vermont has lots of cold weather—EV’s do not operate well in very cold weather, now or give good mileage in those conditions.  For some reasons the government of Vermont wanted to be like California.  Now, they want to go back being Vermont.

“*1000-pound batteries wear out expensive tires at incredible rates.

*Range is always less than the EPA and manufacturers claim. Public chargers are few and far between and often don’t work.

*EVs are much more expensive than comparable conventional vehicles.

*Parts are scarce and insurance and repair costs outlandish.

*They lose value at incredible rates and there is virtually no used EV market.

*They tend to spontaneously combust and since they make their own oxygen when on fire, are virtually impossible to extinguish.”

California continues to live in a fantasy world—maybe it is the drugs talking in Sacramento?

Vermont develops a sudden case of EV sanity

By Mike McDaniel, American Thinker,  5/25/25  https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/05/vermont_develops_a_sudden_case_of_ev_sanity.html

In February of this year, I wrote Trump imposes sanity on a green EV market. In that article I noted these characteristics of the rapidly closing electric vehicle—EV—doom loop:

*1000-pound batteries wear out expensive tires at incredible rates.

*Range is always less than the EPA and manufacturers claim. Public chargers are few and far between and often don’t work.

*EVs are much more expensive than comparable conventional vehicles.

*Parts are scarce and insurance and repair costs outlandish.

*They lose value at incredible rates and there is virtually no used EV market.

*They tend to spontaneously combust and since they make their own oxygen when on fire, are virtually impossible to extinguish.

*They’re bought almost exclusively by the top 7% of households in income.

Experience has added these facts:

*Americans don’t want EVs. They’re too expensive and can’t meet their needs.

*Government attempts to build a nationwide charger network have worked as well as most government projects: they’re a pathetic, grossly expensive and wasteful failure.

*With the second Trump Administration, which is working to end all EV financial incentives, manufacturers are “postponing” their previously lofty EV production goals.

*Ford lost at least $9.8 billion on EVs in 2023-2024 and is projecting another $5.5 billion loss in 2025, so Ford’s CEO Jim Farley is reportedly planning to somehow stop the bleeding, probably before Ford stockholders lynch him.

*Democrats, who previously loved Elon Musk and Tesla, are now calling Musk a Nazi because he’s helping end hundreds of billions in government fraud and waste, so Dems are intent on torching Teslas and bankrupting the company.

*Numerous EV start up manufacturers of recent years have gone bankrupt, many of them taking taxpayers billions with them.

*Hertz, which invested heavily in EVs, is offloading them as fast as they can. 

*And Dodge, which was going to replace its V-8 Challenger and Charger muscle cars with EV versions with stereos that made V-8 noises and software that interrupted power delivery to simulate shifting, hasn’t quite admitted they’re abandoning those plans, but has announced they’re retooling to build V-8s again. It turns out muscle car fans will spend plenty for V-8 muscle but little for software tweaks.

Absent government mandates, the free market prevails, and in the free market EVs are fringe products, suitable only for a small portion of the population mostly in coastal, warm climates.

But not long ago, California, which mandates every really bad idea first, talked several East Coast states into following its EV lead into disaster. Connecticut, Maryland, Virginia and Vermont were going full California—never go full California—for EVs. By the end of 2024, Connecticut and Virginia saw the light before green mandates extinguished it. They ended their EV lunacy. In April, 2025, Maryland did the same. And now Vermont Governor Phil Scott has ended Vermont’s mandate:

Vermont is one of 11 states including New York, Maryland and Massachusetts that have adopted California’s zero-emission vehicle rules, which seek to end the sale of gasoline-only vehicles by 2035. California’s rules require 35% of light-duty vehicles in the 2026 model year to be zero-emission models.

Scott cited warnings from automakers that they could limit supply of gas-powered vehicles to dealers in the state because of the EV rules.

“It’s clear we don’t have anywhere near enough charging infrastructure and insufficient technological advances in heavy-duty vehicles to meet current goals,” said Scott.

Maybe the fact EV makers aren’t going to make enough to meet that mandate had some impact on Scott’s thinking. Perhaps the fact that EV heavy truck manufacturers are also going out of business, and EV long-haul trucking was always a fanciful notion—they just don’t have the range or the chargers—also leaked into Scott’s leaky consciousness.

It’s important to note that according to an analysis by Here Technologies and SBD Automotive, Vermont has one of the more favorable EV charging networks in the country, with a +1.3 charger-to-electric-vehicle ratio. That means if the mandate can’t work there, it won’t be working anywhere…and that includes California.

Who knows? Maybe Scott even listened to reality:

Matt Cota, with the Vermont Vehicle and Automotive Distributors Association, said that demand for those EVs doesn’t yet exist in Vermont (about 14% of new cars registered in Vermont last year were zero emission). [skip]

“In a way, if you don’t create the demand of electric vehicles, all you’re doing with this regulation — you’re not putting more electric vehicles on the road, you’re harming the local businesses that sell vehicles of all types,” Cota said.

Not that that sort of reality would bother greenie true believers, but reality does seem, for the moment, to have caught up with Vermont. True belief dies hard in the Blue East Coast.

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger.