Electric carmaker Tesla Motors warns it will miss sales expectations — ‘Tesla has lost $660 million in last 14 quarters’
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‘Record’ Volt Sales? Not Really — GM Counts $159 Leases for an $89,000 Car
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Consumer Reports: Fisker Karma the Worst Luxury Sedan — ‘Its been 6 months since taxpayer-subsidized ($193 million) Fisker Karma broke down at the test facilities of Consumer Reports’
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Electric Car Verdict: Another Government-Subsidized Bust: ‘When govt tries to pick losers & winners, it typically picks losers’
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It’s Official: Electric Car Subsidies Are A Waste Of Money
Reprinted from The Global Warming Policy Foundation:
CCNet – 25 September 2012
The Climate Policy Network
Who Is Killing The Electric Car? (LINK)
It’s Official: Electric Car Subsidies Are A Waste Of Money
And that’s the real problem with electric cars: So far, not too many consumers are lining up to buy them. That means electric cars might be doomed — no matter how much the Department of Energy wants to see them happen. –John Rosevear, Daily Finance, 17 September 2012
Who killed the electric car? This time round, Toyota did. It said today it will not release its proposed mass-market mini e-car, the eQ. The reason: there’s no demand for it, not while battery technology is failing to provide comparable range to a tank of petrol. The natural gas boom in the US has seen prices of the fuel plummet, in turn reducing the cost of electricity generated by burning it. The Japanese car maker said today it will release 21 hybrid gas-electric models in its line-up by 2015. –Tony Smith, Hardware, 24 September 2012
Toyota Motor Corp has scrapped plans for widespread sales of a new all-electric minicar, saying it had misread the market and the ability of still-emerging battery technology to meet consumer demands. “The current capabilities of electric vehicles do not meet society’s needs, whether it may be the distance the cars can run, or the costs, or how it takes a long time to charge,” said, Uchiyamada, who spearheaded Toyota’s development of the Prius hybrid in the 1990s. –Yoko Kubota, Reuters, 24 September 2012
The Chevy Volt, once touted as the company’s Great Green Future, needs thousands and thousands worth of incentives to move a unit … and even at that, is selling so few that they’ve temporarily shut down the assembly line where they’re made. The company’s stock price has been stuck in the low twenties for months–which means, for those following along at home, that if the government sold its GM shares today, taxpayers would lock in a $15 billion loss on the money we gave them. –Megan McArdle, The Daily Beat, 24 September 2012
I think incentives for electric-vehicle buyers are dumb. New reports from the U.S. and U.K. back that view. Two non-partisan government agencies — the Congressional Budget Office in Washington, D.C. and Parliament’s Select Transport Committee — conclude that during the next decade at least, the …
Taxpayer-Funded EV Company Abandons IPO It Thought Would Save It: ‘Failing British electric vehicle comp. pretended to become American in order to save its U.K. investors’
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Heavy discounts only way to sell Chevy Volts: ‘GM’s discounts on the Volt are more than four times the industry’s per-vehicle avg.’
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Toyota drops plan for widespread sales of electric car: Admits it ‘misread the market and the ability of still-emerging battery technology to meet consumer demands’
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Flashback: Neil Cavuto of Fox News credits Climate Depot with exposing electric car failures: ‘Thank you Marc. You were way ahead of this young man’
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Congressional Budget Office: Electric Cars Are A Waste Of Money: ‘Existing tax credits do not fully offset the higher lifetime costs of an electric vehicle’
Via Business Insider 9/24/12:The CBO has concluded that electric cars are not a “smart” choice for consumers. From the report:
Because of differences in vehicle design and technology, electric vehicles cost thousands of dollars more to purchase than conventional vehicles of comparable size and performance.
Okay, the cars cost too much. What does the government do? It subsidizes the inefficiency. It pays a cash incentive for each vehicle sold. The subsidy is based on the size of the battery; it ranges from $2,500 to $7,500. But the subsidy is still not enough to make electric cars competitive:
Given current prices for vehicles and fuel, in most cases the existing tax credits do not fully offset the higher lifetime costs of an electric vehicle compared with those of an equivalent conventional vehicle or traditional hybrid.
CBO concluded:
The tax credits would still need to be about 50 percent higher than they are now to fully offset the higher lifetime costs of an all-electric vehicle.
I know that someone is thinking that gas prices are going up, and when they do, electric cars will prove to be a smart thing. I’m not so sure. The CBO provided a breakeven on this line of thinking. If gas prices go north of $6, electric starts to make sense. When gas goes to $10, all of the vehicles break even to conventional autos. The problem I have with this line of reasoning is that if gas were to go to $8, the US economy (and the rest of the world) would come to an economic halt. In that environment a fellow would be grinning if he had an electric car, but he would probably be out of work, and most of the stores he would want to drive to would be closed. What good does the electric car create for him if things go very bad? Not much.
There is a final argument that could be put forward in support for the mega investment the taxpayers are making in electric vehicles. The environment. Electric cars are “good” for the environment because they don’t produce CO2 gases, right? Actually, that’s wrong. The conclusion from the CBO:
· In the short term, the tax credits are likely to have little or no impact on total gasoline consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.
· In the long term, the credits might decrease gasoline use and emissions, but how …