And strangely, for a car no one wants to have:
If you've been revolted by the fact that every $40,000 electric Chevy Volt sold by Government Motors enjoys a $7,500 rebate at the expense of taxpayers, then better have some Dramamine before you read any further. James Hohman of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy has calculated that the total subsidies—direct and indirect, federal and state—poured into this white elephant could add up to $3 billion or $250,000 for every Volt sold to date. And this is not counting the 26 percent ownership that Uncle Sam still has in the company.
Government has no business in business. But they could waste billions and billions and never lear
Comments
Not only is the public not buying them, of the paltry number of sales made, the majority are to governmental agencies or municipalities.
This the Obama Administrations "bone you" trifecta. Our federal tax dollars had to buy the damn company to build the damn thing, our federal tax dollars have to kick in another $7500 to get the public to buy the damn thing, Or our fed, state or local taxes have to pickup the whole tab again to buy the damn thing.
One would certainly think even Democrats could see how stoooopid this is but to no avail.
If $3 billion is 1/4 million per car, they've sold 12,000 so far. They only planned production of 10,000 cars this year, and they were requiring that dealers keep a demo on hand to be allowed to sell them. Most had only that one car; it's hard to sell from an empty cart. So I don't think it's fair to say nobody wants them.
I'd kinda like one. No trouble starting it in -20F weather, and electric vehicles have kick-ass acceleration, but I only buy used cars, and my '95 minivan only has 90,000 miles. I won't be ready to buy anything for the next 15 years, barring an accident.
Next year, they plan to build 45,000, and I expect they'll sell. Talking about the investment per car is like comparing the first month's earnings with an MD license, with the cost of college and med school, and deciding it's a bad move. If you look at the per-copy cost of collecting and printing a newspaper when the press is just starting to roll and there've been 12 copies printed, that's a real eye-opener.
I'm not saying government should be in business, only saying that your argument is lame. On the other hand, spending $3 billion to put the US back in manufacturing is probably a better waste than spending $1 trillion to lose a war in Iraq; that war cost us $20 billion per year just for air conditioning. We could have come home 9 days earlier and saved $3 billion.
Electric vehicles may or may not turn out to be a good idea, but for now they suffer from a chicken-or-egg problem. Given their limited range, why would you own one until there's a recharging (or battery-swap) station every few miles? And who would build such stations until there are significant numbers of electric vehicles on the road? Even that leaves another problem: Battery technology just isn't up to the job. Sufficient electrical power is very heavy and very expensive. Technological advances may well fix that problem, but until then it makes more sense to drive an conventional, reasonably economical vehicle. Electric cars are a good idea whose time has not yet come.
The Chevy Volt has an onboard generator, which gives you a range of 375 miles before you need to buy more gas - but strictly as a plug-in vehicle, you get 35 miles. If you live in Roanoke and build tires in Woodburn, it wouldn't be too practical but for most people in most communities, a van for taking the family on trips plus a Volt you plug in at night would be quite satisfactory for driving to the office.