Electric vehicles should stand on their own two legs now? EVs are still brand new. Last year was basically the first year they were available, and this year will be the first year they’re available (nearly) nationwide, like every other car. It’s unrealistic to think that a new technology can stand on its own immediately.

Traditional autos have been around for 100 years, and they still aren’t standing on their own. The government had to bailout a couple of the country’s largest automakers (who were deep in the red even before the 2008 financial crisis), and we provide billions in subsidies for oil companies per year.

If you look at the target demographic for current EVs (upper middle class or up), those people have a (taxpayer) share of the cost of our recent middle east wars equal to about $10k, over the last 10 years. Seeing as how the Afghanistan war, and the satellite wars in Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia, won’t be ending for years to come, and the after-war health care costs in the next 10 years will approach the direct costs to date (about a trillion dollars) … it’s pretty reasonable to say that the government is subsidizing internal combustion engine vehicles to the tune of about $10k per upper middle class taxpayer per 10 years. 10 years is about the lifetime of a car, so the EV subsidies are in fact pretty darn close to the same size as the subsidies the government provides for any other vehicle.

So, no, I don’t think it’s reasonable to give up on any of the existing EV programs. Given the opportunity, Republicans will kill them all, or whatever their oily overloads tell them to do.