Vroom Vroom!

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

So, last March, I posted about electric vehicles, specifically about by position on the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt. Many of you were correct, however, in that I may have been premature in my evaluations. Among the most relevant data shared was the Volt "selling every one [they could] make" and 20k preorders for the Leaf, and that it was a deliberately slow rollout. The consensus, at least at the time, appeared to be that we needed to have a year under our belt to really get a good grasp on the situation.

So what do we know now in 2012 that we didn't in 2011?

* GM predicted at least 10k Volts sold in 2010, and didn't even come close to that number, missing it by nearly 2400 cars, spurred in part by an allowance to sell the existing demo models. Inexplicably, GM intends to produce 60k of them this year even though demand has not been high. Granted: the Volt only reached nationwide status in the fourth quarter, but that did not seem to show significantly more demand.

* If the Chevy Volt isn't winning over hearts and minds, the Nissan Leaf isn't faring much better. It had higher sales year-long than the Volt, coming in at 9600 sold in the US. The Leaf, however, saw its sales peak over the summer and has mostly seen a precipitous decline from its height.

The issue with electric cars remains the same: they're expensive, they don't go far, and they cost too much to the taxpayer. A Volt costs the taxpayer $250k per vehicle sold on top of the ticket cost to the consumer - no wonder you have to be fairly affluent to drive one. The Volt runs for a whopping 40 miles on electricity (and then another 340 per tank on premium gas), the Leaf a significantly-better-yet-still-sad 110 miles at best, probably closer to 75 - I drove more than that to visit my friend last weekend. With the price tag in the high $20s-low $30s even with tax credits, it's not likely to find many more adopters, etiher - catching only 2% of the market overall isn't much of a splash for an industry with high expectations it set for itself, never mind what the rest of the people who supposedly know what they're doing thought. But, to be fair, even the execs are only thinking 6% market share 13 years from now.

The Jalopnik post above says it best, to me:

I can't look someone in the eye who's about to buy their first car and say, "Look, buy this electric vehicle. It's not very fun. It's not what you want. You can't really haul anything. It's very likely not any better for the environment. But it is very, very quiet. Especially for the hours and hours it takes to charge."

The reality is that we will see viable alternative energy vehicles sooner rather than later. I think, given what we know about the electric options available and the options coming down the turnpike, that electric vehicles are not ready for prime time, and perhaps aren't actually the answer at all. I could still be proven wrong on this, but when we sink literally billions of taxpayer dollars into a technology that so few people want or need, it may be time to say "enough is enough" on the electric car experiment. We now know who killed the electric car - the consumer.

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I'm familiar with the reality that Russia's nuclear bombers were sometimes badly designed and that at least one of them *did* blow up if it was a breezy, not even windy, day. I'm also quite familiar with the reality that the only timely developed US air plane by the private sector since WWII was one bomber back in the 1960s and that US private-sector airplanes tend to be relatively shoddily designed as a rule.

And frankly it's no good to design an airplane more technologically complex if it always breaks down. I might note, however, that using the Wright Brothers is very simply countered as I've tried to do repeatedly to no avail thus far by asking why privatized attempts to develop canals and railroads failed repeatedly in the South but the Federal government's involvement worked in the North *and* in the South? If private sector goods can develop technology, why does the government invariably always play a role in that technology's evolution? To me the answer's simple in that new technology, especially with long-term benefits, is too risky a financial investment for a profit-concerned entity while government has less tying its hands with such projects, and this is not a bad thing, just business avoiding trying to be a government.

[mrbogey.livejournal.com]

Only with you does a discussion on airplanes turn into a discussion of the American Civil War.

"Let's talk about Campbell's Soup... it's the best soup akin to the tactics used by Sherman in his march on Atlanta. You see General Xiang Kai Shek understood that carrots are crucial to a hearty broth. Something that Neocons fail to grasp. Partly why Hitler had no chance against Stalin was due to the underappreciation of salt in solution in a healthy diet."

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Only in discussions with you does an argument over government development of technology wind up being associated with airplanes to the overt exclusion of any other topic, no matter how germane, and only you can claim civilized debate by virtue of personal attacks. That's fine and all, but I take it by this that you've not one refutation to any of my points and are covering up for it as usual by trying to stir up a hornet's nest of lies, personal insults, and the assumption that in referencing building canals and railroads in the antebellum and post-Civil War era that I'm referring to that war. My statement references things like the Erie Canal, the Transcontinental Railroad and development policies pursued before the war, and the grand growth in Southern industry around WWII and later when the Feds put money into it because the local governments were too busy allowing mob rule and tyranny to do anything other than accept murder on their own territory..

But hey, go on, do attack my person and by so doing expose that when it comes to discussions of topics you begin there's no means this discussion that starts on an issue will end with anything other than a personal attack. I'll give you credit for one thing: you can in fact do so in more than one sentence, with legible paragraphs and a good comprehension of syntax and morphology.

Unless you're willing to discuss these examples, or the TVA as another example of how private industry utterly fails at quite a bit of things except when greedy types defraud people with the aiding and abetting of libertarian-ideologues, or alternately examples such as the development of technology from the space age, all counterexamples to your and the OP's concepts of technological development that fly in the face of facts, then I'll simply let you have the last word about how utterly awesome you are and how stupid everyone else, who are all out to get you and all other suffering libertarians oppressed in this great, grand, evil Gulag of fascist schoolmarms hugging people. Go ahead. I won't stop you.