Shut Down Strait of Hormuz, Raise Oil Prices, Boost Electric Vehicle Sales? Cool Plan, Except… Aluminum!

Now I get it! I understand the real objective of waging war against Iran. provoke a closure of the Strait of Hormuz that we can’t reopen, cause a lasting oil shortage, and boost electric vehicles:

…those high prices at the pump could lead more Americans to go electric, depending on how high prices go and how long they stay high, said Tim Levin, senior editor of the EV news publication InsideEVs.

Even if gas prices remain elevated, EVs face other “points of friction,” Levin said, that have always made them a tougher sell.

“People are worried about charging infrastructure. Not everybody has a home charger, which is where you’re going to get the best savings and the best convenience,” he said. “People are worried about range. The cost of these EVs is pretty high.”

But that last point, at least, appears to be changing a bit. Several car companies are rolling out models this year that are cheaper than previous generations of EVs. The Chevy Bolt, the Nissan Leaf, as well as new electric models from Toyota and Subaru all have sticker prices under $40,000 (the Bolt and Leaf are each under $30,000). That’s much lower than the average EV sale price of over $57,000 last year, per Kelley Blue Book.

Meanwhile, the market for used EVs is growing fast, driven by many electric models coming off three-year leases, Levin said.

“Just by virtue of the fact that a lot more EVs were sold in the last few years than they were before, you have a lot of really high quality, really well-priced, used EVs coming onto the market right now,” he said.

Dealership owner Alex Lawrence expects buyers will scoop these up, and said he’s seen an uptick in sales the last few weeks as gas prices have risen. He’s decided to bulk up his inventory of used electric vehicles by about a third, and he plans to open two new dealerships this year.

“I’m all in, I mean, I’m accelerator to the floor,” Lawrence said. “We’re not slowing down at all.”

Lawrence is betting gas prices will stay high for a while, he said, and more people just won’t want to deal with them anymore [Henry Epp, “Automakers Retracted from EVs. Then Gas Prices Hit $4 a Gallon,” Marketplace, 2026.03.31].

See? Trump never really hated electric cars. He just didn’t like Big Government picking winners with market-skewing subsidies and regulations. Besides, it’s more fun to go to war, kill people, break things, and let the survivors respond to the created crisis by buying affordable electric cars from China…

…except—oops!—electric vehicles require more aluminum, and lots of aluminum flows through the Strait of Hormuz:

Gulf smelters that supply Toyota, Nissan, BMW, parts makers for Mercedes-Benz, South Korea’s Hyundai Mobis and hundreds of other automotive customers worldwide are defaulting on contracts or closing down. The U.S.-Iran war has effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping, cutting off one of the largest flows of automotive-grade aluminum.

…The aluminum that gives electric vehicles their range is now stuck behind the same choke point as the oil they were built to replace.

…The Gulf produces about 9% of the world’s aluminum, a share that looms larger for EV makers, since an EV contains about 40% more aluminum than a gas or diesel-powered car, according to commodities researcher CRU Group [Indranil Ghosh, “EVs Were Meant to Bypass Oil. Now They’re Stuck at the Strait of Hormuz,” Rest of World, 2026.03.30].

There’s just no salvaging Trump’s policy decisions. He has no coherent strategy; he just wants to play tough, wreck things, and hoard all the gold he can while impoverishing everyone else.