The electric Jeep: A casualty of Communist Central Planning

By Robert M. Levy

“Stellantis” is not a “ household name.” However, most Americans readily recognize the products Stellantis produces: Dodge cars, Ram trucks, Jeep sport and recreational vehicles. The multi-national company now controls what we used to call Chrysler.

Car companies like Stellantis generally don’t make the news unless they announce a new sexy car driven by a rock star which is now being offered to the general public for $1000 per month on a 72 month contract. But this week Stellantis ( Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge) made news for a different reason. The company declared that it lost $26 billion on its U.S. government mandated electric vehicle business. And the American people lost, too.

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The $26 billion was a “charge against earnings.” That meant Stellantis will pay the American people less in taxes. In turn, the federal government will have to borrow more money from China. At least that will maintain the Minnesota, California and other Democrat fraud so necessary to the homeless, the poor and the well connected “non-profit” organizations which rely on tax funding.

But I digress…. The point of this story has nothing to do with welfare fraud or even global warming. It has to do with the tendency of the American government to embrace the Marxist theory of a centrally planned government economy. The Losses taken by Stellantis are directly related to such requirements. In this case, centrally planned EV auto production mandates were grounded in that communist orthodoxy.

The theory of communism is that a free market economy is oppressive to the great majority of the population. It is organized to serve those who own the factories and other “means of production.“ As such, the people or what communists call “the workers” become “slaves” to those who own the means of production.

The goal of communism, albeit misplaced, is to redirect the economy for the “benefit the people.” In order to do that, communists require a “centrally planed economy.” In other words, the government decides what is to be produced, how it is to be produced, and for whom it is to be produced. In essence, communists believe that there are only two alternatives for economic control: the “capitalists parasites” or the communist government. That turns out to be a false duality. And that is the reason why Karl Marx was both the world‘s most influential and by far the world’s “lousiest“ economist ever.

The term “capitalist” is a misunderstanding of how a non-communist or a domestic free market works. A free market economy, what communists call a “capitalist economy,” is actually controlled by average consumers, not rich “capitalists.” In other words, there was no “capitalist” caveman. There was perhaps a caveman, perhaps the founder of PITA, who made “really good” clubs. Yet, he hated to club and kill animals. Still, the cave man needed to eat and he was not a vegetarian. He also knew it was both more efficient and more humane to quickly kill animals with good clubs he made rather killing animals slowly with the mediocre clubs made by others. In essence, the club maker caveman recognized the consumer demand for clubs which killed more animals with less suffering while creating more food more efficiently. The club maker was paid with the surplus food produced with his clubs. Eventually, he gave part of the food he earned to workers he hired to make more clubs. Everyone produced more and everyone profited more. There was even a bonus when the club maker bartered food for a woolly mammoth fur coat. He gave the coat to his wife on their 10th anniversary.

Our mythical cave entrepreneur is what communists erroneously call a “capitalist,”; but, he is really an example of a smart person, creating wealth from fulfilling consumer demand. The economy our mythical caveman created was successful because it was controlled neither by any capitalist nor any government. It (like ours should be) was rightfully controlled by consumers.

That brings us back to Stellantis. The job of Stellantis is to make cars that consumers want. If they want a sexy new vehicle driven by a rock star and want to pay $1000 per month for the privilege, Stellantis will build it and will make a profit in the process. Stellantis will also share the profit by paying its stockholders, its suppliers and its workers. They, in turn, will buy houses, groceries and other consumer items with that money. Everyone will profit.

But if the government centrally plans industry, decides what Stellantis produces and if no one buys the product, no one will profit. That is why Stellantis lost $26 billion on its EV’s and why the public lost the benefit created by that profit. The government told the people what they should have rather than the people telling industry what they wanted. Our mythical caveman would never have made his club if he had to wait for the leader of his tribe to be bribed and approve the club as being in the best interest of both “the masses” and the leader himself.

EV mandates are just one example of the expensive foolishness inherent in a centrally planned economy. Marxism was the theory that created EV mandates. The theory dictated what the government wanted consumers to have. The government then tried to “ram it down their throats.” The consumers gagged and the result was that everyone lost money.

Stellantis was not alone. Last Tuesday, General Motors announced an EV loss of $7 billion. In December, Ford, trying to save money on its 2025 taxes, wrote off $19.5 billion in EV losses.

In the 100 years between about1876 and about 1976, the United States became the undisputed economic powerhouse of the world. It did so not because the “robber barons” of industry profited from the “life blood of the working class.” It was because industry provided what consumers wanted. This included everything from cars to toasters to televisions. Yet, for far too many years now, especially Democrats demanded that government, not individuals, determine much of what consumers were allowed to buy. Government demanded the production of dishwashers that don’t clean dishes, electric automobiles that don’t work in cold weather and toilets that never save water because they have to be flushed at least twice… three times by fat people. Central planning means that both consumers and industry pile up losses. Government piles up debt. Besides making Jeeps more expensive, a centrally planned economy is the shortest route to national poverty.

Robert M. Levy PsyschodadRobert@gmail.com Subscribe Free at RLevy.Substack.com

Robert M. Levy grew up in Moore County and graduated from Pinecrest High School. He earned a BA in history and sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where his honors thesis on the Wilmington Rebellion of 1898 became part of the university’s library collection.

Admitted to the California State Bar in 1978, Levy practiced law for 40 years in California and Maryland, focusing on family and criminal law, including work with juvenile offenders and abused children. His writing on affirmative action appeared in the San Fernando Valley Law Review, and he authored Divorce: A Cynical Experience. He later earned a North Carolina teaching certificate from UNC Charlotte and taught high school social studies across Moore County.

Levy has served as chairman of the Moore County School Board, president of the North Carolina Electoral College, chairman of the Moore County Republican Party, and a columnist for The Pilot in Southern Pines. He lives in Pinehurst with his wife, Linda, and they have three children and four grandchildren.

Feb. 8, 2026

Republished with permission.

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