Tuesday 14 February 2012

Change!


From the Seatte Times (the walking dead of the newspaper world):
Electric cars, no longer an oddity, make few inroads on market
It's a long feature article that tries to put a brave, green face on the situation, but when it's boiled down it's prety simple:  Due to US subsidies, mandates, regulations, nationalisation and outright blackmail, car makers are cranking out electric cars, but consumers people aren't daft, so they won't buy the wretched things.

Liberty's a pain, isn't it, Mr Soetoro?

3 comments:

Cthel said...

I for one will happily switch to an electric vehicle - just as soon as Obama takes the lead and replaces the presidential limo with an electrically powered vehicle.

eon said...

Cthel;

More likely, The One will mandate electric-only vehicles for everybody else. (Including the military; imagine an all-electric M1A3, if you will.)

He may also solve the sales problem by mandating that you buy a Volt from GM, the same way He will mandate that you buy medical insurance from an "approved vendor" under O-Care. ("Approved vendor" = Somebody who makes all the right political contributions.)

He may even have said Volt delivered to you, whether you ordered it or not. Along with the bill for same.

Since He has already stated that "electric costs will necessarily skyrocket" under His Enlightened Rule, most likely most of us will not be able to afford to charge up such a vehicle anyway.

(Especially since He remains determined to "look at" nuclear power, while not actually permitting any new nuclear plants to be built and accelerating the dismantling of existing ones. Ditto hydroelectric dams.)

So, we end up on public transportation, going where and when He wants us to, with security cameras watching us to make sure we're perusing "The Utne Reader" or "The New Yorker", as opposed to "The Weekly Standard". (Thoughtcrime!)

Electric cars or the (electric) bus. Either way, He Wins.

cheers

eon

Neil A Russell said...

A lot of the comments following the article talk about "once the technology ramps up, the price will come down", and I've heard that nonsense a lot.

Electrics are anything but new tech, just look at that Baker Electric car in the picture.
Add that to decades of electric truck, train, and even golf cart development and then explain how much more technological improvement and mass production is required to "bring down the price".

If mass production were the answer then wouldn't catalytic converters be cheaper now than ever?

Right, there's that pesky utilization of resources thing to contend with.

Buyer resistance and the availablity of a superior product, the internal combustion engine, will keep the electric car as an oddity until we all meet the realization of the president's slogan of "yes you will".