Chevy Volt a Failure - GM to Layoff 1,300

Once more, no one is rooting for any company to fail. We're rooting for the government to stay the hell out of it and let companies succeed by selling products people want to buy instead of throwing taxpayer money at companies making products very, very few people are buying.

If GM wants to take a huge loss on the Volt because it believes eventually it will sell millions of them, that's great. But finance it by convincing investors it's a good idea just waiting to explode, not by taking a government bailout because you were failing in the first place. If Tesla can get people to give it money to develop the S, fantastic. Making a political donation in exchange for a half a billion dollar check isn't exactly the same thing.

 

I'm a big fan of government intervention, but the recent trend of liberals wanting to defend it at all costs is annoying. When you are circumventing the corrective nature of the market, you need strict discipline and oversight to make sure what you are paying is worth what you are getting. We could dump a trillion dollars on a program that creates 20 jobs, and today's liberals would cry "scoreboard" on the job creation.

 

Except, this isn't really a "jobs" program despite the fact that it does help create some. When the government (and I believe wisely) under George Bush decided to offer a low-interest loan program to help jump-start an industry with high entry barriers yet strong alignment with our national interest, it clearly understood going in that every investment wasn't going to yield fruit and that some, if not most, of the program's benefits wouldn't be realized for decades. I applaud the program for it's progressive and long-term vision.

 

Amid all the keyboard diarrhea I've seem on a scan of this thread, of all the in-the-tankedness to big business I've seen, Bamadog's assertion that we should hang on to our dependence on petroleum and even expand it is the most laughable. I thought that issue was settled decades ago. Does he want scrubbers taken out of smokestacks, too?

 

Apple creates quality products that sell.

If you actually drive a car everyday, or leave the inner-city bubble, you would know there is an incredible demand for transportation that does not cost $250 a month to run.

The screech fest is missing the point that there is a huge demand for these vehicles. As a business, I would want to tap into that demand long before my competition. So even if the Volt is a "failure" at first, the technology and knowledge gained from it is priceless when the majority of consumers are buying electric cars.

"Stupid" is not seeing past this year's ledger or tomorrow's stock price.

 

TINSTAAFL.

Electric cars aren't the way to transportation that doesn't cost $250/month. It may shift the costs and it may make things cleaner for the environment, but it's not making the actual cost go down.

 

The way I understand it, we are using tax dollars to keep the cost down so we don't have $8 a gallon gas ($2 a litre) like they have in Europe. We are also fighting a war in the Middle East that could possibly have its origins in protecting oil interests and many, many drivers are paying hundreds more each just to operate these oil vehicles. That's a lot of money.

Plus, there is always the possibility that these catastrophic hurricanes that keep slamming into our coasts could be an offshoot of these cars and global warming.

 

We're up to (I think) 1,100 miles on our Volt in about a month, having used 1.9 gallons of gas.

That's $6.84 in gas, and $42.90 in electricity. My wife's explorer would have cost $226 to drive the same 1,100 miles. A 40 mpg car would have cost $90 in gas.

So yeah, given the correct driving conditions, an electric car can substantially reduce operating costs (and settle down folks - I understand I haven't factored in the cost of the car; we were only talking about operating costs).

 

As we've been talking about in this thread, just because *you* are paying $226/month in operating costs doesn't mean that's what it costs. Many of the costs have been shifted elsewhere.

 

More than what we put into to keep the price of gas where it is?

 

I'm not going to pretend to be qualified to answer that. The number of things that go into the price of both is pretty enormous.

I'll go with "probably close to the same."

 

The only way the operating costs are the same is if you consider the long-term price of the battery and the initial price of the car along with operating costs.

And as electric cars become more prevalent, I'm confident the life of batteries and the price of cars will come down .... but the only way they become more prevalent is by some initial investment.

Ragu's argument - an argument I respect - is who should be making that initial investment in growing the technology. I don't mind seeing our government participate in that; he does. It's a philosophical difference, but it doesn't make him a bad guy.