I had just gotten off the phone with state Sen. Edward Durr when my dog Sheila made it plain she needed to go for a walk.
At the end of my driveway sat my Thursday Star-Ledger. On the front page was this headline:
“Murphy looks to drive up EV sales: Gov.’s plan sets timetable to phase out market for new gas-powered cars.”
So why did Gov. Phil Murphy just buy eight gas-guzzling Chevy Suburbans?
That was the question Durr had brought up during our chat.
The senator from Salem County was referring to a post on the Politico website stating that the eight Suburbans would be purchased with $521,783 in leftover federal COVID aid and used “for the security and transportation of State officials, including the Governor and Lieutenant Governor.”
“The Murphy administration has no bounds when it comes to hypocrisy” said Durr. “How can someone tell other people they need to move away from gas vehicles while they purchase SUVs on COVID money that could have been used for other purposes?”
Good question.
I sent Murphy spokesman Bailey Lawrence an email asking him just that.
Lawrence replied with one of those “Thanks for reaching out” emails, and deflected me to the State Police for comment. But the State Police don’t set policy. The governor does.
“This is not what you’d call leading by example,” said Durr, a Republican who’s
known as “Trucker Ed” because he drives tractor-trailers for a living.
There’s a move afoot to electrify the entire trucking fleet, but Durr said he’s skeptical.
“I would like to see when they build that EV semi that’s going to pull an 80,000-pound load up the West Virginia mountains,” he said.
That’s the problem with these sweeping mandates. They sweep too far.
But as it happens, this one has a loophole big enough to drive a truck through – or at least an SUV.
The standards that Murphy wants New Jersey to adopt, called Advanced Clean Cars II, originated in California. And somewhere in there someone with common sense inserted a section that defines plug-in hybrids as electric vehicles.
Strictly speaking, they’re not. A plug-in hybrid has a gas engine as well as a battery. You can go 40 to 50 miles on electricity and then the engine cuts in seamlessly. (That’s valuable in a state where charging stations are few.)
This technology already exists and it works fine, says my sailing buddy the Captain. He recently bought a Toyota RAV4 plug-in hybrid.
“It’s a great machine,” said the Captain.
He plugs it in overnight and it has enough of a battery charge to go 50 miles or so. Then the engine kicks in and you can drive as far as you want on gas.
When I called him the other day, he was on a shopping expedition of about 30 miles. No gas needed.
Of late the folks at Toyota have been making the argument that plug-ins are a better use of scarce lithium than EVs.
A plug-in hybrid battery requires just one-sixth the lithium of a fully-electric car’s battery. Lithium is scarce, so using it in plug-in hybrids represents the best use of resources, Toyota argues.
Consumers seem to agree. The Wall Street Journal reported the other day that while EVs are backing up on dealers’ lots, “Toyotas are in particularly short supply — under 30 days each for Prius and RAV4 hybrids and plug-in hybrids.”
Here, the Murphy administration is guilty of making the perfect the enemy of the good.
His office boasts, “Under Governor Murphy’s leadership and through the tireless work of the DEP, New Jersey is one step closer to turning our vision for a zero emission future into a reality.”
But he doesn’t seem to have read his own proposal. Those plug-in hybrids are great technology, but they’re not emissions-free.
Murphy’s clearly not a car guy. But if he checked with the car guys at the Top Speed website, he’d come across a post titled “10 Things That Make the Toyota RAV4 Prime Better than any EV.”
No. 1 is the obvious one: “The RAV4 Reduces Range Anxiety.”
That’s the scary feeling that you’re getting to the bottom of your battery capacity and need to find a place to plug in.
That’s why I would never buy a fully electric vehicle.
But if the Guv wants to tell me that by 2035 I might have to buy a plug-in hybrid, well that’s no big deal.
I might even forgive him for traveling in a convoy of Suburbans.
More: Recent Paul Mulshine columns.
Paul Mulshine may be reached at pmulshine@starledger.com.
Follow him on Twitter @Mulshine. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook and on Twitter
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