A poll just finished by Consumer Reports shows that 7% of car buyers most likely to buy this year in the US would” very likely” purchase a plug in car right now. 2009, the worst year in actual numbers(not percent of population mind you) since 1982 saw approximately 11.5 Million cars sold in the US alone. We all know 2009 was a horible year but if the Chevy Volt hits 7% of that year it would sell 805,000 Volts. That’s just in the US! That’s a huge market. Some would even say GINORMUS! Multiply 805,000 by $30,000= $24,150,000,000! That’s over 24 BILLION dollars! Yeah I think GM wants some of that market. And remember that’s just in the US! What about the rest of world?

The only bad news here is I can’t go buy stock in GM.

Now, you seem to be OK with spending money on things like protecting ourselves, the military.

We’re spending billions upon billions in Iraq ($750 million a day?) and I doubt that many would argue that sending our military into that country was mostly about protecting “our” oil supplies. That’s the basic reason we have any involvement in the region – oil.

As oil gets more scarce, more expensive, we’re likely to be even more in the position of having to “protect our interests” in order to keep our cars running. Or we could get off oil.

Given that we know that we could generate all the electricity we need within our boarders, stop spending billions of dollars overseas to purchase oil, stop spending billions on maintaining military force in the region, and cut back on our CO2 emissions it makes sense to me to spend some of our money to jump start an replacement technology.

If we were to give the $7,500 supplement to 100,000 EV purchasers (probably a lot more than we need to hand out) we’d be investing $7.5 billion

What do we import a day in petroleum, 8-9 million barrels a day? $60 bucks a barrel, 9 million, and we’re shipping over a half billion of our dollars across our boarders every single day. In two weeks we spend that $7.5 on some black stuff that we just burn up and for which we get no residual value. (Or ten days in Iraq.)

Move from petroleum to electricity and each of our personal fuel costs drop to a quarter of what they now are and what money we spend to ‘tank up’ stays in the country. It creates jobs here manufacturing. installing, and maintaining renewable energy systems.

And it makes us more self-reliant. We wouldn’t have to kiss up to people we don’t like simply because we need their oil to keep ourselves moving.

You are proving my point. We’ve spent so much of other people’s money on other people – when it comes to fire departments and the like – that some municipalities are going broke!
http://www.muninetguide.com/articles/Vallejo-Bankruptcy-Filing-Garner-282.php
http://www.bondbuyer.com/issues/118_88/-303206-1.html
http://tinyurl.com/y9mbbos

And don’t get me started on the State of California budget “crisis”! The point is that there are limits.

“Roads, airports, trains, ports, and on and on. We at time pool our money to create services and infrastructure.” Yes, I agree, but I don’t think we are talking about infrastructure, we are talking about cars. Which people like me may or may not buy – the point of the article. Unless the end point of all of this is for the government to mandate the use of EV’s and to force people to buy them, whether they want them or not.

I’m not saying that government (taxpayer) spending doesn’t have a role, just recognize the consequences and ask if we really need to go there. One could argue that it is a public good to have Local taxpayer spending on Local fire departments, even if there is some inefficiency. But would you want the much farther removed and more distant Federal government dictating how Your money is spent on Your fire department? And some people think all the taxpayer forced spending on highways in Los Angeles killed a popular mass transit system and replaced it with cars and smog. So now the solution is more government intervention to replace gasoline cars – which are becoming more efficient, economical and less polluting – I like hybrid cars – with an EV solution that may become practical someday – with enough taxpayer money – as long as we can find enough lithium to to keep building them…?

I’m leery of central planning and I feel warm and fuzzy toward personal liberty. We may need to strike a balance between the two upon occasion, but central planning is an evil that we should avoid unless absolutely necessary. And that’s the issue I have with the current $Billions in taxpayer debt spending on electric cars. So that may be the point upon which we agree to disagree.

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Gas is not as ubiquitous as electricity, in my experience. I’ve lived in a lot of houses around the country over my many years (and many moves) and I’ve owned several rental houses. I’d guess that less than 50% had gas available. All had electricity.

“Massive government intervention can create (distort) a market, but will we be happy with the result? And the cost? If I spend Your money on Other People, I probably won’t care how much money I spend or the results. However, if I spend My money on My needs, I’ll probably spend less money and get closer to the result I want. If I was in the EV business, I guess I would be very happy to take Your money and spend it on Me!”

How do you fell about police and fire departments? Think we should do away with them and each of us establish our own services? We could design our own uniforms if we don’t like the police blue used today….

Roads, airports, trains, ports, and on and on. We at time pool our money to create services and infrastructure. You want to build your own so that you get the result you want?

Now, it’s pretty clear that we have a looming oil supply problem. We’ve already used the easiest to extract and highest quality oil on the planet. And we’ve got millions of new automobile owners coming to our world’s roads. I don’t think anyone can make a case for the price of oil not greatly increasing in the near future.

So why not spend some pooled money now so that when gas rises above $5 a gallon we (each) have the option of buying an affordable car that we can plug in at night and fuel our next days driving for less than a buck rather than $6.85 for gas.

That make sense to you?

The infrastructure for natural gas is as ubiquitous as electricity. Almost every home has natural gas. There may be a cautionary lesson here – if we couldn’t get a compressed NG car in 100,000 homes per year, how will we get 1.2 millon EV cars in homes per year? I guess we just needed more government incentives. But if we’d been successful on that, or on hydrogen fuel cell cars, then we would have had a huge disincentive against moving to EV’s. I’m just leery of politicians picking the winners based on the current fads.

Massive government intervention can create (distort) a market, but will we be happy with the result? And the cost? If I spend Your money on Other People, I probably won’t care how much money I spend or the results. However, if I spend My money on My needs, I’ll probably spend less money and get closer to the result I want. If I was in the EV business, I guess I would be very happy to take Your money and spend it on Me!

1) I’m an Enthusiast. The only sporty EV is 2 seater (both of them). One is horribly expensive, the other is limited supply and expensive for what your getting, not value at all.

Major Industry long bypassed cars as the main source of emissions.

2) Because of this why get a boring penalty box? The Volt is cool, I like it, it should be very preppy and with the rumored sport package be darn sporty for a EV sedan, but how much will that cost $45k? See reason #1

3) I’m a die hard Enthusiast. The internal combustion engine has a long life ahead of it. Cars are running cleaner than ever, the problem is mostly what it runs on, its dirty. Because of this my next new car is likely to be Flex-Fuel, not pure Electric.

4) Because I have started my “life” late, likely won’t have my first child until I’m maybe 40-42 years old (39 now), the cost of having children in the Untied States, when Health Care Reform won’t kick in in earnest until 2014? Sorry getting another gas burner!

5) Greenies need to focus on coal!

And keep on logging those Sun Miles!

Cost of running a car on gasoline. Using the US average mileage of 24 MPG and $3 gas, the cost per mile $0.125 plus other costs which are higher for ICE vehicles (oil changes, filters, more frequent brake repairs).

When we return to $5 gas the cost of running a 24 MPG car will rise to $0.208 per mile.

Natural gas. I don’t know a mileage cost, but from what I understand the cost of installing a natural gas infrastructure would be extremely expensive.

You might want to look at how Utah has handled this fuel, they do have some of their vehicles using NG.

BTW, Panasonic has just announced a new battery which will boost range a bit over 50%, giving the Tesla Roadster a 340 mile range, the Model S a 470 mile range and the Nissan Leaf a 155 mile range.

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And on the computer issue, no, the government gave us the money for the purpose of creating a market for mini computers. We bought a PDP-8E with 16K of RAM, a teletype input and data storage was on punched paper tape.

We had exactly no reason to request one. Once we had it then we had to invent ways to use it. Our department got a dozen or so and all of us sat around scratching our heads wondering what use we could make of them.

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There is an immense amount of private (corporate) money being invested in EVs and batteries. But there is a cost problem, an economy of scale problem with batteries.

Car frames/bodies/running gear and electric motors are old hat. We can pop them out at competitive price. But energy compact batteries are a new technology and can’t be made cheaply when you’ve got to set up a factory, create a lot of expensive machinery, carry out a testing program, and create a supply stream.

This is where the government is stepping in. The federal government and some state governments are offering subsidies to buyers to help offset the very high price of batteries.

Most manufacturers state that once manufacturing volumes hit 100,000 per year costs will drop to 50% of what they now are. What the government is doing is helping to build that volume to the point where normal market forces can carry the load.