An Electric, or at least Hybrid Mess

The Obama administration has never been confused for the Bush administration when it comes to energy policy.    Even as a presidential candidate, Senator Obama told reporters that under his policy, "electricity prices would necessarily skyrocket."  Now this is not like the Sarah Palin "quote" that she could see Russia from her front porch.  That was actually Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live spoofing Palin, although you couldn't convince thousands of Palin-haters of that fact.  Senator/candidate Obama actually said his plan would cause the cost of energy for every American, no matter what their income, to "necessarily skyrocket."  And no news organization or "journalist" asked him about this plan, before or after the the election.  In fact, outside of a few conservative radio talk show hosts, you will never hear anything at all about this plan.


All right, the president plans to make our electricity rates skyrocket.  Surely he won't mess with our other energy costs too, right?  What is the president's plan to reduce the emissions from our cars?  Well, first of all he had to takeover a car maker - GM.  Then he had to force GM to manufacture a car that the American buyer didn't want or need and that GM was not ready to manufacture, the all-electric Volt.  Now the Volt may be the "car of the future," as the president of GM - Barack Obama claimed.  But as one reviewer said, "only if your future is 40 miles away.  Actually 20 if you want to get back home again."  That's right, the Volt has a range of 40 miles in its all-electric version.  After these horrible reviews, Chevrolet announced that the Volt now has a greatly improved range.  They basically turned it into a hybrid.  You know the kind of car that Honda, Toyota, and Nissan have been producing for years.  Only it's smaller and not as reliable as the Honda, Toyota, or Nissan.  Oh yeah, it's more expensive too.  Only $40,000 for a subcompact car.  Who doesn't want to pay $40,000 for a Cavalier or Focus?  American car buyers, apparently.  In January and February combined Chevrolet sold 602 Volts, up from its double digit sales from each of the previous four months.  This incredible increase proved that Americans were starting to warm up to the idea of an overpriced, unreliable clown car, right?  Well not exactly.  They also announced sales of over 5,000 Tahoes.  If you are not familiar with the Tahoe; and judging from the lack of sales by the company, most Americans are not, the Tahoe has enough space to haul everyone in my hometown of Graham, TX and their luggage on a two week vacation.  With enough room leftover to pick up a few souvenirs on the trip.  While that be a slight exaggeration, it would take the vacation budget of Graham to buy the fuel needed for a long trip.  The new fuel-efficient hybrid version of the Tahoe gets 20 miles per gallon!  So obviously gas mileage is not a major concern for the American car buyer. 

So what is the president of GM, Barack Obama, to do to encourage Americans to pay too much for a car they don't really want?  Go back to the engineering drawing board and design an electric car big enough, reliable enough, and efficient enough that the buyer will be happy to pay for it?  Don't know what country you're from, but that's not Barack Obama's America!  His plan is to take taxpayer money and give it to anyone who buys an all-electric car, in the form of a $7,500 tax credit to the buyer.  That would make the Volt a $32,500 embarrassment, rather than a $40,000 embarrassment.  Well, apparently, not enough people that pay enough taxes (49% pay nothing at all, but that's for another post) to make a $7500 credit worthwhile fell for the scam.  Those folks generally travel more than 40 miles per trip and carry cargo larger than a bag of M&M's, so the Volt isn't too practical.  Another slight glitch in the plan - to get anyone to buy the Volt at any price, with any incentive, Chevrolet had to go back to the 1990's hybrid technology.  So now the credit has been re-written to include hybrids.  And rather than a tax credit, the Obama administration is planning take the $7,500 straight out of the dealer's overflowing bank account and give it to anyone who buys a Volt.  The dealer is then responsible for filing for reimbursement from the similiarly overflowing vaults of the United States Treasury.  Most auto dealers who dealt with the government in the "cash for clunkers" scam will tell you how excited they are to participate in this plan.

What's the next step in getting the public to buy government-produced electric cars?  How about $4+ per gallon for gasoline.  I'll get to that in my next post.