"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
Attributed to Sigmund Freud
Words, objects, actions have cultural meanings and associations that are both literal and symbolic. Learning those is what makes us linguistically and culturally competent.
An electric vehicle is just a vehicle, but like cigars, they have "baggage." Ten years ago a Tesla in the garage signified a prosperous, highly-educated, modern, early-adopter owner. The car represented virtue. There were no tailpipe emissions, they didn't use petroleum fuel, they were more crash-worthy, and they came loaded with accident-avoidance technology. Plus they were sleek and cool. The cultural meaning of the Tesla brand has since muddled. Elon Musk's controversial purchase and re-direction of Twitter, now X, moved his personal brand from "innovator wunderkind genius" into an "overly-entitled and willful bad-boy weirdo genius," and he has dragged Tesla along.
But Teslas, and EVs generally, still represent modern luxury.
Democrats back electric vehicles as part of their green energy climate-saving agenda. The idea-baggage of electric cars is that they are climate-virtuous, but the reality is more complex. They can be powered by electricity generated by renewable energy sources. The Pacific Northwest has a great deal of hydropower, which has its own problems for rivers and salmon, but they are carbon free. Good. In some parts of the country electricity is mostly generated by fossil fuels including coal -- not so good -- but that is changing. Good, except in the minds of people from coal-producing states.
Political opponents of electric cars -- a group that overlaps Republicans, people representing fossil-fuel producing states, and people culturally opposed to the high-tech elitist liberal baggage vibe of electric cars -- point out the non-virtuous sourcing of materials in the battery. For them, electric cars are another iteration of liberal hypocrisy, with liberals pretending they are the good guys while people toil in dangerous misery mining rare earth metals in Africa and arch-rival China.
Electric cars have become center stage in politics due to the United Auto Workers strike. The primary issue is wages, but a subtext of the strike is that that legacy American auto manufacturers with union workforces have been slow to adopt electric car technology and that electric cars have fewer parts and will employ fewer people to assemble them. President Biden is famously pro-union, but Trump saw an opening that combined the specifics of the UAW labor action with the partisan sorting and cultural baggage of EVs. This pits climate-protecting Democrats against down-home blue collar working people who don't think there is anything wrong with the climate or with their gasoline and diesel vehicles -- except that liberals have raised the price of gasoline too high by their anti-drilling policies.
Teslas are assembled in a non-union factory in Fremont, California and workers there are paid substantially less than the current UAW employees. Teslas and electric cars represent a threat to the UAW. Trump announced a trip to support the UAW workers. Biden scrambled and scheduled a visit to come the day before Trump's. Biden will likely enjoy the public support of the union leadership. Trump may get the support of the members.
Trump just put up a radio ad that positions him as pro-worker and anti EV:
"They're American auto workers. They helped build our country and keep us on the move. We've always been able to count on them in times of war, peace, prosperity, and tough times. Yet all they've every wanted is to compete fairly worldwide, and get their fair share of the American dream. Donald Trump calls them great Americans, and has always had their backs, from tax cuts for their families to playing hardball with China. Biden? He's turned his back on the auto workers by cutting a deal that uses American tax dollars to fund China's electric car business. That's a stake in the heart for American auto workers, and they can count on President Trump to change that."
The cultural meaning of electric vehicles continues the conversation between myself and Herb Rothschild in the past two days of posts. I have argued that Democrats can be "right on climate" but wrong on the politics getting votes from working-class Americans. Democratic policies to reduce CO2 risk being read as elitist and hostile to working people. Trump is overtly pushing that message. Democrats need policies and messages that demonstrate that green energy is made in America by American workers.
I have seen ads of American workers installing solar panels and wind turbines. I have seen ads of well dressed professionals in shiny cars enjoying the luxury and quiet of an EV. I have not yet seen ads for electric vehicles that show blue collar men in rough clothes driving home from a productive day of work in an EV, but I hope to, and soon.
Climate change and its solutions are complex. A more substantive approach to transitioning workers in affected industries is desperately needed. I wish such approaches would come from the Democrats. There is much upheaval in the change from fossil fuels.