If you thought that the subcompact electric Chevy Colt was overpriced at an MSRP of $40,000 — which after a point-of-sale tax credit comes to $32,500 — you haven’t seen anything yet. According to a Mackinac Center study of government subsidies throughout the manufacturing and distribution chain, the actual cost of the vehicle is almost $300,000 — with a quarter-million dollars of taxpayer subsidies going into every vehicle (via the Drudge Report and David Freddoso):
Each Chevy Volt sold thus far may have as much as $250,000 in state and federal dollars in incentives behind it – a total of $3 billion altogether, according to an analysis by James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
Hohman looked at total state and federal assistance offered for the development and production of the Chevy Volt, General Motors’ plug-in hybrid electric vehicle. His analysis included 18 government deals that included loans, rebates, grants and tax credits. The amount of government assistance does not include the fact that General Motors is currently 26 percent owned by the federal government. …
GM has estimated they’ve sold 6,000 Volts so far. That would mean each of the 6,000 Volts sold would be subsidized between $50,000 and $250,000, depending on how many government subsidy milestones are realized.
If battery manufacturers awarded incentives to produce batteries the Volt may use are included in the analysis, the potential government subsidy per Volt increases to $256,824. For example, A123 Systems has received extensive state and federal support, and bid to be a supplier to the Volt, but the deal instead went to Compact Power. The $256,824 figure includes adding up the subsidies to both companies.
The $3 billion total subsidy figure includes $690.4 million offered by the state of Michigan and $2.3 billion in federal money. That’s enough to purchase 75,222 Volts with a sticker price of $39,828.
One would expect that the per-unit cost of the subsidies would decrease significantly if the car began selling in large numbers. Unfortunately for GM and the Obama administration (a redundancy these days), USA Today reports this morning that the Volt has fizzled, as has the enthusiasm for electric cars in general:
Obviously should be recouped from IAW union pension funds — boycot GM
I’m surprised that only 6,000 Volts have been sold so far.
I was under the impression that Obama was going to foist tens of thousands of them onto the federal auto fleet.
I wonder what happened?
Maybe now that Obama is forcing the closure of so many coal-powered electric plants he realizes that the federal gov’t wouldn’t have a dependable energy source for their Volts.
I purchased my last Chevy in 2008, and will never consider another GM vehicle again after the bailout. I used to try and buy American, but have found over the years the quality is not there, as they need to pay the mindless robots working for the unions, with minimal abilities and education, the equivalent of what many college educated and hard working people earn. What really gets me is I own a Nissan, built in Tennesee, and a chevy built in Korea. Unions have killed the quality of their products and destroyed their own industry. Now I look for the union label and put it back.
There are also additional costs of state and local gov’t a$$kissers kissing up to the feds by installing charging stations at tax payer expense all over cities and up and down the interstates. It has not been ballyhooed much recently but there were/are? plans to put them in at (I believe) all the rest stops along I-5 from Canada to Mexico — as well as quite a few around Seattle — I saw several in parking garage at Sea-Tac airport a couple years ago — of course not being used.
@TruePatriot57: #3
There wasn’t an American made car in ANY major rating organization for many years, so I bought foreign, since I keep a car until I NEED to get another one. Ford has gotten in the top ten ratings now, so, now that I need a pickup, it will be a Ford, because of the quality, and because they didn’t take Obama’s bailout money.
A few years ago a radio talk show host said that the nickle for the battery for the Prius came from Canada. It is sent to England. They use the nickle to make batteries. The batteries are sent to Japan and put in the Prius. The Prius is sent to the USA. Then the host said that it takes more energy to build a Prius than to build a Hummer.