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The Spectacle Blog

Electric Cars: Paying More for Less Performance

By Doug Bandow on 1.29.11 @ 7:31AM

The big-spending Michigan brothers Rep. Sander M. Levin and Sen. Carl. M. Levin want to increase subsidies for uneconomic electric cars. They would double existing tax incentives, costing a couple billion dollars a year. Even today that's still a lot of money.

Rep. Levin admitted as much, but opined that if Americans took the tax break "it means that the program worked." Worked to allow Uncle Sam to reallocate economic activity, anyway.

Unfortunately, as is typical when people spend other people's money to "invest" in their preferred inventions, politicians have come up with a product which no one wants to buy unless paid to do so. The most obvious short-coming with electric cars, other than their high cost, is their limited range.

Winter exacerbates this problem. Which means that, unless global warming really accelerates, anyone living anywhere that temperatures drop below the temperate risks getting stuck with a dead battery.

The latest debilitating snowstorm in Washington, D.C. caused Washington Post columnist Charles Lane to remind readers that cold weather runs down batteries more quickly. And in a storm like that in Washington, the result could be really ugly. Lane observed:

Plenty of motorists ran out of fuel in Wednesday night's mega-jam. But my hunch is that electrics would faced similar problems or worse. And many electric-car drivers who did manage to limp home Wednesday would have been out of options the next day: You can't recharge if you don't have electricity, and hundreds of thousands of customers were blacked out Thursday from the snow. The Post reports that this will be the case for many of them for days.

The answer is to have what one manufacturer calls a "cold weather package." Like a back-up internal combustion engine. However, as Lane observes, "Of course, burning gas rather defeats the "green" purpose of the $41,000 (before federal tax rebate) four-seat car. But at least you won't die of exposure on the road."

The House Republicans want to cut the budget. A good place to start would be wasteful subsidies for uneconomic energy alternatives, such as electric cars.

View all comments (7) | Leave a comment

Al Adab| 1.29.11 @ 11:48AM

Add ethanol subsidies to your list as well. Fifty cents per gallon and damage to our engines. Tell me though, where will we build the new power plants necessary to generate the electricity to recharge the cars? What will power those plants? We can't use oil, or nuclear and certainly not hydro dams, or coal. What does that leave?

Lullabys, Legends and Lies| 1.29.11 @ 3:49PM

Al: We can use the cadavers, from all the electric car drivers that freeze to death when they lose their charge on their long drive home in the snow. I've heard you can get as much as 50 MPC (miles per cadaver), but that all depends on if they subscribed to Michelle Obama's childhood obesity program or not.

Pelligrino| 1.30.11 @ 12:52AM

LL&L, you win "Best post of the day!" Al is runner up.

But I think that FLOTUS is after us larger, adult 'cadavers' (oops, scratch that) people too.

You'll be glad to know: Got 67 MPCs in my Honda Insight just yesterday. Really! Okay, I'll fess up. That was purely highway miles, flat terrain. And tailwind.

Groad | 1.31.11 @ 8:47PM

Look to personal methane reclamation and cow flatulance.

bobmontgomery| 1.29.11 @ 1:28PM

And crappy solar panels, and crappy windmills, and crappy lightbulbs, and crappy 'light rail' trains, and crappy Chinese diets,and crappy Muslim outreach and crappy "undocumented worker" support programs.

jgo| 1.30.11 @ 2:36PM

High cost.
Short range.
Long recharge times.
High battery replacement cost and hassle after only a year or two.

But at least they have a couple speedy models.

Conservat1ve| 1.30.11 @ 4:42PM

Agree totally, bobmontgomery. Stop ALL government funding of corporations, foreign governments, illegal immigrants, the UN, special interest groups, union thugs, and the myriad useless agencies of the Federal gubmint, period. I and millions of Americans like me never authorized all this frivolous spending on stuff that has absolutely no benefit for the average, nose-to-the-grindstone American citizen.

Right now, the last thing we need as a country is legislation to subsidize the production of over-priced golf carts. The city I live in has some of the worst driving conditions in the world due to snow, ice, prevailing winds that gust to hurricane force quite frequently, many unimproved roads, darkness much of the winter, and large numbers of urban wildlife. I live high in the mountains, so many times between November and March we have to put tire chains on just to make it out of our driveway and down the road a mile (as well as to make it home again). Four wheel drive, self-reliance, and good driving skills are essential. No battery-powered vehicle would provide enough horsepower, durability or safety for my needs!

No, the Levin brothers are sadly mistaken if they think that most Americans want what they are proposing. Elections have consequences, remember? Instead of the jackboot of tyranny on our necks, how about using some good old-fashioned common sense and relieve businesses of a majority of the stringent gubmint regulations (repealing Obamacare would be the best start). Allow the engine of freedom, which is the American free enterprise system, to get cranking again. Hiring freezes will thaw, unemployment will return to more acceptable levels, and prosperity will abound if we shrink the Federal government size and scope, hack down the seemingly unmitigated underbrush of the Federal budget, and stop all the WASTEFUL SPENDING...in short, get the heck out of our capitalist way, freakin' no-mind *$@-ers.