Stabenow's Out of Touch Quip About Her Electric Car

Worried about high gas prices? You should have thought about that before being poor.

That’s what Senator Debbie Stabenow seems to convey in her latest comments. The senior Democrat from Michigan wants you to drive an electric vehicle, like she does.  Who cares whether you can afford it? The senator knows best.

In a moment reminiscent of the infamous “let them eat cake” line, Stabenow’s comments came during a June 7 Senate Finance Committee meeting on inflation with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. She proudly stated that higher gas prices haven’t fazed her: “On the issue of gas prices, after waiting for a long time to have enough chips in this country to finally get my electric vehicle, I got it and drove it from Michigan to here last weekend and went by every gas station and it didn’t matter how high it was.”

Maybe Sen. Stabenow didn’t think through all the implications of her comments. But millions of Michiganders who don’t have electric vehicles are certainly feeling the pain. Average gas prices in Michigan jumped nearly 40 cents in the last week, putting the average price for gas at over $5.20 a gallon on June 8. Yet instead of suggesting solutions that will make gas prices lower, Stabenow simply wants her state’s citizens to follow her example.

But most can’t. According to Kelley Blue Book, the average cost of an electric vehicle clocks in at around $56,000. The average household salary in Michigan? $59,584. Federal and state tax credits could lower the cost by at least $7,500. Yet even then, most electric vehicle buyers come from wealthier backgrounds. They’re university educated, earning 6-figures, and better equipped than the rest of us to add a second or third car to their lineup. Even then, fewer than half a percent of car owners in the state own an electric vehicle, in large part because affordability is a major concern.

Reliability is another issue. A Wall Street Journal reporter recently described her road trip from New Orleans to Chicago and back in an EV. Over the course of her four-day, 2,000-mile trip, she spent 18 hours waiting for the vehicle to charge. Spending absurd amounts of time waiting for vehicles to charge simply isn’t realistic for most families.

Stabenow’s initial comment made her look out of touch. Yet her follow-up comment makes her look uninformed. She said she’s “looking forward to moving to vehicles that aren’t going to be dependent on the whims of oil companies and the international market.” But that ignores the reality of the EV global supply chain.

The United States is almost completely dependent on international markets for the very materials that produce EVs. The rare earth minerals that are necessary for EV magnets and batteries are sourced in China. Those same batteries also use cobalt, which is primarily mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The chips that control both EVs and internal combustion engine vehicles are manufactured in Taiwan.

While Stabenow is focused on getting Michiganders to buy electric vehicles, she’s ignoring a much more pressing energy crisis in the state. Michigan’s electrical grid is already stressed to its limits. There are warnings of impending blackouts coming from regulators – and that’s before more EVs start drawing power from the grid. It’s questionable whether the grid has the capacity to handle an electric vehicle revolution.

And that’s before the electric grid gets even more unstable. The Palisades nuclear plant permanently closed last month. The Michigan Public Service Commission is also considering a proposal to shut down the state’s remaining coal plants in the next three years. The Commission may also target the closure of most natural gas plants by 2040. These changes will leave Michigan with much less reliable energy, drawn increasingly from wind and solar power, making it even harder to have millions more electric vehicles on the road.

These are the problems Stabenow and other elected officials should be trying to solve. She should also be pushing for real policies that make gas prices lower, benefitting the millions of Michiganders who need relief immediately. She wonders why people aren't buying more electric vehicles. But no one in Michigan should buy what she's selling.

Holly Wetzel is the director of public relations at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free-market research and educational institute in Midland, Michigan.