Do not think about, write about or deal with human behavior without determining the effects of incentives.
This subsidy nonsense will end when money gets too expensive for the government to borrow. This stuff is so nonsensical that words fail me, so I refer to this indictment of the electric car. I don’t know why, but I don’t feel special living in a failed state even when I get to constantly say, “I told you so.”
The Voltswagen: The people’s car the people pay for
"Ontario taxpayers should be grateful that the Chevy Volt is not due to appear in the province until next year. Put together a $10,000-per-car provincial subsidy with ultra high-cost solar electricity foisted on the public via feed-in tariffs and you have a level of economic insanity it would be hard to match. Indeed, perhaps the Volt should be renamed “The McGuinty” for the Canadian market. It would take the pressure off the memory of poor Edsel Ford, who gave his name to a tail-finned lemon.
GM announced this week that the Volt, as expected, would cost US$41,000, more than a loaded Cadillac. It will still lose money. GM’s marketing chief, Joel Ewanick, when revealing the price, said the Volt was “starting the world on a different path.” Would that be The Road to Serfdom? But let’s not go over the top. The Volt will collapse under the weight of its own pointless non-viability. GM’s future lies with new conventional fuel-powered models such as the Buick Regal, which by all accounts is a terrific car. The Volt is pure politics."
GM this week started taking orders for the Volt, the purchase of which will attract a subsidy of US$7,500 from the U.S. government, plus another couple of thousand bucks in California. The phones are unlikely to be ringing off the hook. In fact, the number of Volts sold will likely be so small as to represent a mere drop in the bucket of fiscal fecklessness that is the Obama administration.
Electric vehicles have been around for more than 100 years. The remarkable thing about them is the lack of advances in battery technology. What jolted this zombie back to life was environmental legislation in California — which is in the vanguard of most bad environmental ideas — dictating that a portion of vehicle fleets should be “zero emission.” This inevitably became mixed up with notions of “energy independence,” plus the scientific and ideological morass of catastrophic man-made global warming."
The car companies pursued what was accused of being a schizophrenic approach. On the one hand they fought legislation in the courts. On the other they set about making zeroemission vehicles. The problem was that the technology of the internal combustion engine was light years ahead of ZEVs in every department except tailpipe emissions, most of the noxious elements of which had in fact been removed by technologies such as the catalytic converter. Carbon dioxide is plant food."
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Cheerio and ttfn,
Grant Coulson
Cui Bono–Cherchez les Contingencies
