You may recall that I am of the opinion that EVs are not partisan. Cars aren’t liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican.
They’re cars.
Be that as it may, in the era of culture clash politics, each end of the political spectrum is gearing up for a battle over EVs in Texas. Here is a portion of the 2024 Interim Legislative Charges, issued by the office of the Lieutenant Governor, that concern EVs:
For those of you unfamiliar with Texas politics, our Lieutenant Governor is a very conservative Republican. The highlighted text of the charges seems to indicate that the conservatives are putting together a case against EVs for our state.
Here’s a little graphic data to illustrate what’s going on.
The underlying maps and data come from the DFW Clean Cities EV adoption web page. DFW Clean Cities is a U.S. Department of Energy program. It is part of the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) and its Regional Transportation Council. Here’s a look at the NCTCOG, home to 8.25 million people. The map below shows Republican-led State Senate Districts, in the NCTCOG in red, and Democratic-led State Senate Districts in blue. First, a look at the political map of Texas Senate representation in the NCTCOG:
Based on the current political thought that EVs are somehow liberal, you’d expect the highest levels of EV adoption to be in the Democratically led (blue) districts. In this case, the two Democratic districts are Districts 16 and 23, in Dallas County. Those two districts, as well as Districts 9 are relatively small, geographically speaking, because their populations are so dense. Conversely, Districts 2, 8, 10, 12, 22 and 30 extend well beyond the boundaries of the NCTCOG to bring their total population levels close to the population levels of the smaller, more densely populated Districts. The rapid EV adoption in the more populous areas of Districts 2, 8, 10, 12, 22 and 30 could potentially put those districts into play, politically speaking, in a very few election cycles.
Here’s actual EV adoption in the Texas’ Senate Districts of NCTCOG:
I kept the two Democratic districts tinted blue to differentiate. The background map is a map of zip codes, color coded to show EV adoption. Areas of this highest EV adoption are dark red, fading to a light tan in the lightest adoption. The white zip codes have no registered EVs. Just to the left of Dallas County, is Tarrant County, home of Fort Worth. As can be seen, EV adoption is low at both city centers. However, as you move west of downtown Fort Worth and north of both cities, EV adoption (and wealth) become more common.
Let’s take a look at Texas, as a whole:
Texas’ Democratic Party controls Senate districts that include the city centers of the four most populous cities: Houston, San Antonio, Dallas and Austin (the state capitol) as well as the Rio Grande valley to the southwest. The Republican Party controls the Senate districts including the fifth-largest city of Fort Worth and rural Texas.
While there are definitely hot spots of EV registration in the Democratic districts shown above, those hot spots also correlate with large urban populations, where EVs (just like cell phones) would be expected to proliferate first, due to shorter daily driving distances, more public charging infrastructure, etc.
Just look at all that red in the image above! Those red areas indicate high EV registrations in those zip codes and those zip codes elected Republican State Senators to lead their districts.
I have read several articles lately that indicate people are starting to recognize the divergence of their elected officials’ opinions of electric vehicles versus their constituents’ opinions of electric vehicles. Here’s an article from Politico and another from Reuters, regarding the issue.
In this election cycle, some conservatives have decided that being anti-EV is a political advantage. Like many states, Texas has benefitted greatly from the Inflation Reduction Act, The Infrastructure Act and the Chips Act. Factories have moved here, jobs created and private investment levels in these areas have increased dramatically, spurred on by the government programs. In Austin, HEB was replaced as the number one employer by Tesla.
While the disinformation campaign may play well to rural voters that haven’t been exposed to electric vehicles, its effectiveness won’t last long. As Consumer Reports’ annual vehicle owners survey pointed out, bias against EVs drops from 40% of Americans to only 4%, once they’re exposed to them and have unbiased information with which to evaluate them. Being against EVs today will be seen similar to being against the iPhone in 2007 or the Internet in 1990.
The map above shows the political risk. Rural districts, without larger cities, are geographically huge, but the populations of all districts are supposed to be roughly equivalent. That means that most of the voters in the rural districts, that abut large cities, are actually urban voters from those large cities. In fact, since the rural district boundaries rarely make it all the way to a large city’s center, those urban voters are actually suburban voters, located where EV adoption is happening very quickly!
Oops.
This is also something the media should be a little more concerned about. Constantly bashing EVs will eventually cost them viewers, as those viewers get real world experience behind the wheel of an EV. I started noticing the EV bashing back in 2012-2013 when Rush Limbaugh constantly derided the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid. I knew, from my personal experience driving the Volt, that the things he was saying were obvious lies.
So, what happens when the voters find out you’ve been misleading them? The map below shows the current Republican Senate districts which also have at least one zip code whose EV adoption is at the highest level in purple. If the upcoming Texas Legislature goes aggressively against EVs, just four of those districts flipping party affiliation would change control of the Texas Senate to the Democrats. The four most obvious candidate districts for switching parties would be the 7th, 8th, 9th and 12th. Three of those districts are up for reelection this November. Impossible, you say? Those 4 districts have huge EV adoption tracts at the highest level and are located adjacent to Democratically-controlled districts with similarly large EV adoption numbers. The areas in each of these districts, with the highest EV adoption rates, are also where the majority of the district’s population is located. Most importantly though is that the total number of purple districts in the image is 16. In other words, only 1/4 of the districts would have to flip party affiliation to change control of the Texas Senate.
This is why personal EV-angelism is so important.
Got a plug-in vehicle? Take coworkers to lunch in your EV and show them how great it is. Join in at festivals (like Earth Day, EarthX, National Drive Electric Week or TxETRA’s EV Road Trips) by bringing your EV with you and offering to take people on drives at the gathering. The more we share our real world experiences with others, the faster this revolution will occur.
One last thing: Don’t get caught in the “argument trap.” Some people will just want to argue. You aren’t going to open their eyes. Shake their hand and part as friends. There are others with open minds with whom you can share your EV experiences.
Don’t Debate. Demonstrate!
