Oil magnates create a group to attack electric vehicles

Electric cars are perhaps the main threat to the oil industry, and lately it looks more and more serious. Sales of electric cars are growing rapidly in many countries, including through government subsidy programs.

Oil industry giants and industry lobbyists are not going to be idle. They organized a new group with an annual budget of $ 10 million to attack the practice of state subsidies for electric vehicles and promote traditional fuels, reports The Huffington Post.

The group is headed by Koch Industries, the second largest private company in the United States, an energy and industrial conglomerate with an annual income of $ 115 billion. The company is managed by multi-billionaire brothers Charles and David Kohov (in the figure).

Negotiations on the creation of a new lobby group with the brothers Kochami are led by James Mahoney and corporate lobbyist Charlie Drevna. In January, they organized a meeting, which was attended by a number of executive directors of large energy companies.
')
If Koch Industries joins forces with Texas giants Valero Energy and Tesoro Corp., as well as other companies from the oil and gas production and refining sector, then the young electric vehicle industry is clearly not good. Tesla Motors looks like a little boy against the background of these mastodons.

According to experts, the new group will begin its work this spring or summer. She will have to push articles about the dangers of electric vehicles in the media on a paid and free basis. For example, it may be information about accidents, accidents involving them, as well as information about the dangers to the nature of lithium-ion batteries, information about the dangers of such vehicles for the US economy and so on. At the same time, the public will try to explain the benefits of fuel from hydrocarbons.

The source says that energy companies are very concerned about subsidies for electric cars at the federal and state levels. At this rate, environmentally friendly transport can win a significant market share for 20 years. Sales growth has reached an exponential curve, and when the number of electric vehicles reaches a critical mass, it can catch energy companies by surprise.

Now there are only 1% of them in the American market, about 400 thousand have already been sold, but the situation is changing rapidly, especially the Obama administration is proposing to introduce another new tax on the sale of gasoline: the so-called “tax of $ 10 per barrel of oil”.