President Joe Biden jokingly offered onlookers a ride back from the Detroit Auto Show to Washington, DC, in an electric vehicle on Tuesday — the high-end Cadillac Lyriq, which retails above $61,795 for the 2023 model year.
In a video obtained by Breitbart News, Biden is seen driving slowly across the carpet inside the Cadillac in a convention hall before calling out: “Anyone want a ride to Washington?”
That ride would take longer than a drive in a conventional, gas-powered vehicle — and might not save more than a few dollars. Earlier this year, after Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) boasted of driving her electric Chevy Bolt from Michigan to Washington, DC, Henry Payne of the Detroit Free Press did the calculations:
Over the course of her journey, ABRP [the A Better Route Planner app] calculates that the Bolt EUV used almost 200 kWh of energy at a cost of $80. Electrify America charging rates across Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania are a uniform 43 cents per kWh (like gas stations, EA also has discount rates with member programs, and some manufacturers are offering free charging with purchase of an EV).
That compares to $88 if she had driven a comparable, gas-powered Trailblazer SUV, which gets 33 mpg on the highway. That’s a savings of $8 for the 600-mile trip at $5-a-gallon gas.
That savings comes at a price in time. Stabenow’s charging stops added nearly three hours to the 9 hour, 30-minute Lansing-to-D.C. road trip (13 hours, 9 minutes total) compared to a single, 5-minute stop in the Trailblazer to fill up. There are other variables as well, depending on which app you use to plan your trip.
Another app, Chargeway, suggested that Stabenow’s trip would have taken even longer: 15 hours, 35 minutes.
Biden signed the so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” last month, which offered thousands of dollars in tax credits toward the purchase of electric vehicles. The manufacturers promptly raised the prices of their electric vehicles by comparable amounts.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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