Sunday, February 03, 2013

GEE, WHO COULDA PREDICTED IT? Sales of Electric Vehicles Collapse in January

Never mind that the United States sits on hundreds or thousands of years of fossil fuel supplies. Never mind that. The federal government wants you to drive electric cars. The problem is, you ain't buyin' em.

EV sales had shown minor signs of life in the last quarter of 2012, only to collapse sharply in January. “Sales of the Chevrolet Volt, the Toyota Prius Plug-In and Nissan Leaf each had deep dropoffs in January from December,” Reuters says.

“Even after accounting for the fact that January is one of the slowest months of the year for auto sales, the dropoff for plug-in electric cars was considerable,” Michelle Krebs of Edmunds told the wire. According to Krebs, consumers are opting instead for less-expensive standard hybrids, rather than plug-in electric cars. OEMS blame other factors, such as limited supply, model year changeovers, or changeovers from Japanese to U.S. production, as it is the case for the Nissan LEAF. GM says January sales were down for the Volt because people bought before the end of the year to gain the 2012 tax credit. Which may have been the power behind the last quarter rise of the still tiny segment...

Ain't central planning grand?

I mean, how many billions of dollars did this administration waste on electric cars and batteries when the technology just isn't ready? When the full history of the Obama green energy program is written (starting with Solyndra, Fisker, A123 Systems, Tesla, etc.), it will make the Teapot Dome Scandal look like a shoplifting incident.

Thanks to Chief Justice John Roberts' outrageous Obamacare decision, though, it would seem the federal government has the legal right to command you to buy electric vehicles. So we got that goin' for us.


Hat tip: BadBlue Car News.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The solution to this problem is simple.
Print dollars at a trillion per year for ?, and the price of gas will go up by ?
New problem.
About 14 coal fired power plants have been shut down in the last 6 months and the grid can't handle all the recharging cars.
The solution to this new problem is simple.
Print even more dollars at a new higher rate for ? years and buy wind mills.
New problem.
The inflation rate requires a person to use a wheelbarrow to move his money to the grocery store to buy bread.
The solution to this problem is simple.
The government will buy wheelbarrows.

The MUSEman said...

I'll bet a plot of wind turbines, passive solar, active solar, and photovoltaics would yield the same trend.

But, it's not like we've seen the collapse of alternative energy technologies once their government subsidies were reduced or eliminated.. oh, wait, yes we have:
http://reason.com/archives/2009/05/15/its-alive

Thanks for reading!

Jason in SD said...

Making the battery an integral part of the vehicle is a flaw. It forces the driver to own the time needed to recharge and marries the major wear item (effectively) permanently to the chassis. The company Better Place had the right idea with replaceable batteries but they're struggling to get market adoption.

If I could drive my car into Mobil or Shell or wherever and have somebody swap out a battery pack good for 300 miles I wouldn't notice that much difference from what I do now with a gasoline engine. If I could get the swap for around the same price as a tank of gas, even better.

Let the gas stations own the responsibility for inventory, infrastructure, and depreciation.