The White House’s green technology revolution is sitting in an auto lot in Butler, Pa., and nobody is buying.
“Nobody comes in to ask, nobody comes in to look … The American people are smarter than the government — they’re not buying that car,” said Republican Rep. Mike Kelly, who owns the auto lot where one of General Motors’ combined electric-and-gasoline powered Volt autos sits unwanted, unsold and unused.
The Chevy Volt would cost its buyer almost $40,000 — even after a $7,500 federal check — and that’s more than twice the price of a comparable Chevy Cruze, Kelly told The Daily Caller. “I just pay interest on it, insure it, and in another week or month, we’ll scrape snow off it.” (SEE ALSO: Obama to go around Congress on ‘regular basis’ to ‘heal the economy’)
His lonely Volt, however, isn’t truly alone. There are 3,370 Volts sitting in auto lots around the country, up from 2,600 on Oct. 3, according to cars.com, one of the nation’s largest automotive classified sites.
The Chevy Volt was to be a centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s green technology industrial revolution, and of his 2012 re-election campaign.
It, and similar green technology products, were expected to employ up to two million people by 2010, according to Obama’s economic advisers. The electric car boosters at the Department of Energy, for example, predicted production of up to 120,000 Volts per year from 2012 onwards, according to a Feb. 2011 update of the DOE’s ambitious report, “One Million Electric Vehicles By 2015.”
The car is the “flagship model of the government-industrial complex,” said Patrick Michaels, a senior research fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute. But sales data shows “this thing is not selling like they thought it would.”
The car is now being promoted by GM as a ‘loss-leader,’ an experiment that will goose future sales of other cars by boosting the brand. “It is an assertion of leadership — there is nothing else like it on the road,” said company spokesman Greg Martin. By pushing ahead with the car, and using it to help develop a wide variety of alternative power plants, “we’re exercising some vision and leadership that people have accused of of not exercising in the past,” he told TheDC.
But that’s not what company officials said earlier. In May, GM CEO Dan Akerson envisaged production of 25,000 Volts this year, and 100,000 per year afterwards. These days, cautious company officials talk of 16,000 Volt sales this year, and 60,000 new Volts next year, for U.S. and overseas markets.
True. The status of the Chevy Volt is as toy for those who can afford it. But, that’s the story for all revolutionary products, e.g., the color television and the computer. However, interest in electric vehicles continues to grow—Nissan, Mitsubishi, BMW, among others, have announced there own electric models.
However, there are many changes in technologies that need to be overcome before this type of automation becomes acceptable—from building of charging stations throughout the nation, to improving our electric grid system to accommodate the increase in electric usage that will accompany automotive use. As I understand, in one town in Tennessee, home of a Mitsubishi electric auto plant, charging stations are being located throughout the township to accommodate customer purchase and use of the vehicles.
Until these kind of incremental changes—including lowering of initial cost of the product—are made on a large scale, electric cars will never be popular. But, these results will never have the chance to occur, unless a start is begun. And, they may never be successful—that’s the chance entrepreneurs are taking, as with all experiments with all alternative fuel sources. Without these grand experiments, no progress will be made.
@Liberal1 (objectivity), #1:
A agree. Within a decade, hybrids and electric cars will be common. They make far more sense than internal combustion engines for people whose driving is mostly short distance and urban.
“Free market” forces don’t always produce the best results, or even the results that consumers want. Just look at how a very promising electric car’s development in California was deliberately killed by a combination of corporate special interests and republican government forces a few years back. They pulled back electric lease cars that consumers loved and desperately wanted to keep, and sent them and hundreds of brand new electric vehicles that were still sitting on dealer lots to the crushers. The preferred to destroy what people wanted to buy, just to keep the trend from taking hold.
@Liberal1 (objectivity): The Volt is the Poster Child of 0-bama’s failed policies. Buying union votes with his GM debacle, Green Jobs that neve materialized, and no one wants these stupid cars. What amazes me is then the useful liberal idiots look at it and say what a great job and how revolutionary. Hang on the revolution DID start last November as America historically moved Republicans into the House and will continue next November as the Whitehouse is returned to adults. The MSM and all the Kool Aid in the world can’t hide the absolute disaster this President is. No surprise and America got exactly what they voted for. Now it’s time to stop this disaster. Hopefully there will be a country left to repair.
It would be nice if the Repubicans in congress would take a stand against SOMETHING like this waste. They easily could eliminate the $7,000+ deduction from the tax-code on this waste, but they don’t.
They don’t do anything worthy of being called an opposition party.
@Common Sense, #3:
Through last year and through the most recently closed quarter of this year, GM has been reporting healthy quarterly profits.
Without the bail-out there probably wouldn’t be a GM at this point. GM employees and employees of all of the companies dependent on GM as a major customer would be out of work.
I guess republicans and democrats have different opinions concerning which of the above outcomes should be considered a “disaster”.
Only dolts like Volts, these guys fall into the fallacy concocted as “Economics of Scale” as if the Volt replicated to the millions will asimilate the calculus of pharmaceuticals or newspapers as volume increases; as if, the making of this automobile model can be measured as the making and re-making of the Model A by Ford. That would be like a case of comparing apples and eggs, there is no common measurement. The problem is desirability because there is little there making the transition worthwhile to discerning customers. EnviroMonsters are attempting every means possible modeling the Tesla and other nifty sports roadster models trying to make serious buyers salivate but besides the stream lined designs and rich interiors those duds are designed just for dolts. “Mister, can we pop the hood (“bonnet”) and turn her over so I can listen too the roar and hum.” In 1900 there was an electric motored cabriolet known as “The Whisper” designed to replace the horse that had rings at the front chassis so the auto could be drawn home by a horse especially when the batts died in cold weather.
The problem here is government interference by pushing a technology into to the market before it’s ready. Building an electric car is easy… but storing enough power onboard to run it is not. When battery or fuel cell technology gets to the point where it’s practical, there will be a market… unless people have been so turned off (so to speak) by the cars pushed out prematurely by a meddling government.
@jim s:
Great point, jim s.
I recently read that the oldest electric car in a museum was charged up and managed to get the exact same range per charge (with +100-year-old technology) as the newest one we make!
In August Chevy reported only 125 Volts were sold in all of July.
The only hope for the Chevy Volt is Obama ordering a fleet of them for gov’t workers.
Or GE’s Obama buddy Jeffery Immelt buying some for show.
And I wouldn’t put it past them to do just that.
I know California’s moonbeam gov. is ripe for such stuff.
@Nan G:
I think Jay Leno has a couple of those early electric cars in his Garage as well. The electric motor has been around longer than the internal combustion engine.
Pushing technology out into the market early is a problem for infrastructure too. Until we know what tech ends up powering electric cars, we will not know what infrastructure to build. If it turns out some sort of advanced rechargeable battery is the winner, then the grid and generation will have to be updated… But if it turns out fuel cells become practical, then we’d need some sort of hydrogen (or maybe LNG) infrastructure.
The Volt doesn’t make much difference, since it can recharge itself using the existing gas infrastructure.
@jim s:
Good point.
Israel (which is a small country) has opted to keep all batteries identical and to interchange them at stations.
That way your recharge stop is short, like a gas fill-up.
You pop out the near-dead battery and pop in a fresh one and go on with your journey.
Of course here, where private property is idealized, this might not be practical.
People would rather sit overnight than trade in the one they bought for a used-but-recharged one.
We’ll see.
@Greg: Greg, you are correct when you guess that Republicans have a different opinion but not the one you would like to think. The Republican opinion is one Democrats struggle with, it’s called fairness.
@Nan G:
I think I’d be a bit reluctant to drive out of the dealership with a new electric, and then swap out the very expensive new battery pack at the first “fill up”. We need a battery that can drive a good sized car at least 400 miles, then be recharged in less than 10 minutes… or a fuel cell that doesn’t need enough platinum to keep Tiffany’s stocked for a week. 😉