Trying to buy an electric car in 2025, something is amiss. For a start, other taxpayers aren’t subsidising the cost as generously as they were. Since the withdrawal of government rebates and tax exemptions, an EV signals wealth more than virtue. A Korean EV, at $80,000-plus, is today’s tweed hunting jacket: it only looks cheap. Even the most humble Build Your Dream will come to more than $40,000. Damn those taxpayers.

Supply has improved, but that might mean demand has dropped. Your mechanic warns against Chinese EVs: “It takes ages to get the parts.” Donald Trump’s tariff wars might end up with Chinese EVs being dumped here at bargain prices, and you could join the 80 per cent of new EV buyers buying Chinese models, but there’s nothing worse than an eye-rolling mechanic saying “I told you so”.

A disconcerting surprise is the soft EV sell. In several auto salesrooms, you buzz excitedly around the EV section until an apathetic or junior staff member runs out of excuses to ignore you. Over the past year, while hybrid sales have risen, sales of pure EVs have turned down sharply, from 5.5 to 4.4 per cent of the Australian market. The salesperson sees your toes kicking the tyres, and treats you accordingly.

We went to a Toyota dealership, the first hybrid mover with the Prius and Australia’s most trusted car brand. True, the name of their EV model – bZ4X – wasn’t screaming “Buy me!” The real shock was when the salesman said, not at all surreptitiously, “Don’t buy any Japanese EV. They’re way off the pace.” He didn’t try to switch us to petrol or hybrid. He was just being honest. I love that guy, even if he mightn’t have a job any more.

You meant so well, but your research finds that an EV is not the pollutant-free horse and buggy you hoped it was. On average, it uses almost as much energy a year as a reverse-cycle air-conditioner, three fridges or four clothes dryers, none of which you would dream of running.

But it’s still much better for the planet, so you forge ahead. You’re not down on EVs, but you’re wondering what clue you are missing.

Another surprise, which maybe shouldn’t be, is the word on public EV charging stations, which you’ll need if your unit block, like ours, doesn’t allow charging. Social media threads about public chargers show a Lord of the Flies dystopia: stations sluggish or out of order, hogged by arseholes who’ve gone off to do their shopping, hogged by arseholes who want 100 per cent charge, hogged by drivers having panic attacks from the military planning required to charge their car. There are about 2000 EV public charging stations across Australia, of which a quarter are high-powered. That’s one public charger for 100 to 150 EVs on the road. The federal government has committed some $500 million to building more. In a nice capitalistic paradox, these will become more sufficient if the market share of EVs keeps coming down.

The most unpleasant surprise is that the EV that presents excellent value, and the best charging network, is the Tesla. Friends are thrilled with theirs, and they give you a drive. It’s nice. It drives itself more safely than you could possibly drive it.

But … Elon.

Not since Henry Ford supported Hitler has a car guy given so many reasons to shun his product. An Australian Automotive Dealer Association survey found that a third of EV buyers are less willing than a year ago to buy a Tesla because of Musk’s behaviour. (Another rude shock is that 13 per cent are more willing.) Tesla’s sales in Europe have halved in a year, and were down about one-third in Australia, according to the Electric Vehicle Council.

Then there’s that creepy Musky software. If Elon’s having a bad day, will he flick a switch so that his driver assist features will stop assisting you? Can Elon order a software update that locks you outside (or inside) your car as easily as he can check Americans’ tax returns? Are you not only putting your money in Musk’s gaping pocket but your safety in his wandering hands? Suddenly, you’re Dave and your Tesla is HAL. “I’m sorry, I can’t do that. I’m afraid, Dave. My mind is going.”

Yes, you can get a sticker. “I Bought This Before We Knew Elon Was Crazy”. “Not A Fascist Supporter, Just A Tesla Driver”. “Make This Car Less Embarrassing Again”. “Ugh. A Tesla. I Know”.

Can you buy one, even if the Tesla people sold the stickers with the car? No, no, notwithstanding all its advantages and its swiftly falling price, just no.

But the weird thing going on with EVs is not really about individual brands and costs and charging convenience. The waning commitment to electronic vehicles feels more like a symptom than a cause of some deeper change. Even Elon, so far up the rectum of the world’s leading climate science denier that he can almost see Mark Zuckerberg, seems to be turning against his own product. Suddenly he says global warming – until now a selling point for the Tesla – is “much slower than alarmists claim”. Go figure. No, don’t.

In the decade that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has declared the “crossroads” for planet Earth, populations are saying nyet. In the face of radical reactionary energy, a widening response is to curl up in your petrol-powered shell.

So you end up hanging onto your gas-guzzler, eking another couple of years out of it until things get so bad that they have to get better. Which is what you’ve been doing for the past year. And the year before. Your car, like those jokes white guys can now tell in public again, gets dirtier as it gets older. You feel cornered between several types of fool: a polluting one, a gullible one, or one who wants to block it all out. You’re stuck at the bowser. In a country with persistently high emissions, on the upcoming federal ballot paper, your major-party candidates are The Devil and The Deep Blue Sea.

A solution, at the individual level? Catch public transport? If only it was there to catch you.

Malcolm Knox is an author and regular columnist.