Biden's and California's electric truck fantasy will bring back the Pony Express.

Welcome back the supply chain shortages

Our Future?

Persons of a woke mindset will need to have the Pony Express explained to them because it isn’t a part of their “correct” history.

Until the mid-1860s, before transcontinental telegraph or rail service, communication from America’s East and West took weeks or more. The Pony Express shortened that to eight day by using a relay of riders to get a fresh horse every 10 to 15 miles or so.

Obviously, the Pony Express won’t return in the same way. But truck transportation will have to revert to a form of it with the implementation of its new “green” electric truck rules. Under them, all new cars and trucks must be zero-emission in just a decade. Say goodbye to the fossil-fuel trucks that now transport roughly 73 percent of the nation’s freight by weight.

Unless there’s a revolution in battery technology, the switch to all-electric vehicles is a risky dream. Problems with long waits to recharge, insufficient battery storage capacity for long-haul trucks, scarcity and cost of rare materials for the batteries, and, not the least, the huge pollution problem when so many batteries have exceeded their life span and need to be dumped somewhere. Or reconstituted chemically into safer materials.

It all got me imaging about what will happen when fossil-powered trucks no longer are allowed to operate. Which got me thinking about the Pony Express.

Electric charging stations are in short supply and building enough throughout America to power fleets of trucks and cars will be costly, if possible. How better to illustrate the seriousness of the problem than Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm’s recent multi-state trip in a fleet of electric vehicles. The caravan was supposed to be a show-case, but it turned into an embarrassing bust. The fleet had to wait hours for electric charging stations to open up. Even then, recharging the fleet required long, long waits.

Which brings me to the Pony Express. Instead of over-the-road semi-trailer trucks needing to getting recharged every so many miles, the cabs will be replaced by previously recharged ones. A Houston to Chicago truck run, for example, might have to have five cab changes. A relay of fully charge cabs waiting at every stop. Imagine if you can the cost. Imagine the time wasted.

Even if electric vehicle technology miraculously becomes advanced enough in the short time before the new regulations kick in, the problems won’t go away. Has anyone seriously calculated the real cost of creating a huge network of recharging stations? How about the cost of the electricity? Will solar and wind energy be sufficien? It staggers the mind.

Oh, and be mindful that the Pony Express went bankrupt in less than two years.