When your lefty friends or family mention "electric vehicles", scrunch up your face like you don't understand what they are talking about and ask (as earnestly as possible), "What do you mean by electric vehicle? What is that?".
When they sigh heavily and start talking about Tesla, get this look of sudden understanding on your face and say, "Oh! You mean those COAL powered vehicles! Ok, go on..."
You'll get one of two reactions. They'll either argue with you that "Teslas are not coal powered!", or they'll get confused and ask, "What do you mean, coal powered?"
Then, educate them. It's been working well for me so far.
You could bring up Steam powered vehicles as a viable alternative. They are actively being used in other countries.
Explanation: in 2000, I was selected to go to North Korea for humanitarian MIA/POW recovery mission. We were located approximately 10Km (6 miles) south of the Korean-China border.
Before we were transfered to the work site, we were housed in a hotel. During this time our crew were witness to the transportation methods used by the hard working farming communities. There were occassional diesel truck, but the majority of equipment used were steam powered. Tractors & dump trucks were chugging along in both directions on the road across the river from our hotel. There was a water tower and a stock of cord wood at the ready. I watched several times vehicles stop and replenish and once the fly wheel got up to speed, off they went chugging again.
They made it work. Maybe our liberal socialist loving citizens should join in and enjoy the fruits of communism??
BTW.. We recovered 9 American remains and re-patrioted them on American soil.