EVs Have Gotten Too Powerful

It’s difficult to imagine it happening now, but cars have in the past seriously triggered politicians. Australia’s predilection for big, bluff muscle sedans prompted the so-called “supercar scare” in the early ’70s, when various state ministers of transport united in calling for a nationwide ban on what one called “bullets on wheels.” The carmakers backed down.

Fast forward 20 years and the UK’s House of Commons found itself debating the Lotus Carlton, in very many ways the successor to those Antipodean bruisers. An outrageous reimagining of a competent but far from stellar Opel/Vauxhall sedan (it was badged the latter in the UK), the Daily Mail decided the nation’s moral well-being was imperiled by its very existence.

The Association of Chief Police Officers, meanwhile, had more tangible reasons for wanting the thing banned: It was popular with ram raiders—another ’90s ...