Free Republic

Incentives: Doubling down on industrial policy failure, the administration decides to bump up the taxpayer subsidy for Government Motors' touted electric car. Who said its range wasn't enough to drive us to the poor house? Tucked away in the recesses of President Obama's 2013 budget, a budget that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he will not bring to the Senate floor, is a nugget that speaks volumes about the troubles we're in: While delaying the Keystone XL pipeline, the administration plans to increase the subsidy for the Chevy Volt and other "new technology" vehicles to $10,000 per car. "We...

Won’t those tax-subsidized electric cars solve heaps of problems? Not exactly. There are two examples that run against the politically correct grain: . . .

Here’s a mind-boggling explanation of how the state government, setting out to manipulate private manufacturers into making electric cars, gets so tangled up in its special treatment for special constituents that its bureaucratic web ends up working against itself. The California Air Resources Board, second only to the federal EPA in government heavy-handedness, adopted rules ostensibly to cut down on smog and, of course, global warming. Tucked into the folds of this bureaucratic diktat is a provision that some call “a loophole.” Yes, we’re as shocked as you to find that the dictatorial among us would allow for exceptions to...

You may remember Fisker Automotive as the Goracle-connected company given a huge taxpayer loan to build its cars in Finland. (Politico) — In another setback for President Obama’s clean energy loan programs, the recipient of more than a half-billion dollars in federal loan guarantees is laying off workers at their Delaware and California operations. Delaware’s News Journal reports that Fisker Automotive, a California-based electric car start-up company, is laying off an undisclosed number of staff to try to reserve enough capital in order to qualify for more federal help from the Department of Energy, according to a Delaware state development official....

Call it global warming schizophrenia. It's the disconnect between what really is happening and what global warming alarmists demand must happen. For example, many government officials and government-paid scientists insist the world risks being incinerated because humans generate a little more carbon dioxide than they used to. But they completely ignore the reality that CO2 hasn't proved to be a threat, let alone the horrific danger they make it out to be. Why must they pretend this fiction to be true? Because so much rides on it.

Green Politics: Golden State regulators have passed sweeping emission standards requiring one in seven new cars sold in the state in 2025 be an electric or other zero-emission vehicle. What can go wrong? Plenty, for if we've learned anything in recent years, it's that industrial policy and telling consumers what they need and must have vs. what they want and find useful doesn't work. Only the marketplace can accurately pick winners and losers. The government, having no competition, usually picks losers. We have also learned that climate change is an overhyped fantasy based on ideology rather than science. Yet the...

Have you purchased your new, all electric car yet? Me neither. Of course, I can’t decide whether it’s because I hate the environment, hate America, or a result of my severe allergy to burning to death in a fiery roadside inferno. But we shouldn’t feel too alone. It seems that drivers have been rather cool on the idea all over the country. This is producing a significant impact on Indiana in particular. Reporting from Elkhart, Ind.— For politicians betting on electric vehicles to drive job growth, the view from inside Think City’s plant here is their worst nightmare: 100 unfinished...

With NHTSA's closure of the investigation into the Chevy Volt, General Motors is now trying to rebuild the plug-in hybrid's image . But a new stumbling block has appeared on the road to higher sales — dealers turning down Volts from GM. General Motors sold only 7,671 Volts in the United States in 2011, well short of its 10,000-unit target for the first year. GM spokespeople have attributed weakness in demand to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's investigation into the risk of fires in the car's battery pack. But I'm not entirely certain that can all be blamed...

DeLorean Motor Co., Inc. has unveiled the DeLorean EV, an electric car that marries the legendary Back to the Future DeLorean automobile of the 1980s with a lithium-ion-based, DC-powered, electric drivetrain of today. "It turns out the DeLorean is a perfect platform for electrification," noted Chris Anthony, CEO of Flux Power, Inc. and Epic Electric Vehicles, both of which worked with DeLorean Motors to develop the powertrain for the new vehicle. "It's well designed, it's lightweight, it never rusts, and it has a design aesthetic that's meant to blow you away." DeLorean's "new" EV maintains the look of the legendary...

Electric car enthusiasts – those who want someone else to subsidize their extravagances and then pretend that the electricity they use isn’t created with fossil fuel anyway – may at first find something to cheer about in this news from England. There are now more charging stations than electric vehicles on the road, reports the MailOnline. . . . But we need to read a bit more in that Mail story. The reason there are more electric charging stations than electric cars isn’t because there are so many stations. It’s because there are so few electric cars.

Electric car company that received a $529M federal loan recalls vehiclesBy Andrew Restuccia - 12/30/11 10:31 AM ET An electric vehicle manufacturer that received a $529 million loan from the Energy Department is recalling 239 vehicles. The Transportation Department’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said Thursday that the company, Fisker Automotive, will recall its Karma vehicles made between July 1, 2011, and Nov. 3, 2011, because of a faulty electric battery component that could cause a fire. “Within the high-voltage battery, certain hose clamps may have been positioned incorrectly during assembly. If positioned incorrectly, the batter compartment cover could...

Green Policy: A think tank crunches the subsidy and bailout dollars and puts the true cost of Government Motors' electric car at a cool quarter-million. And the few sold have been largely bought by the 1%. At a time when Democrats are blaming the GOP for blocking a payroll tax cut deal that will add $40 in the average paycheck, they have no problem taking that worker's tax dollars to make and subsidize what we once called an electric Edsel bought by a precious few with an average income of $170,000. "Each Chevy Volt sold thus far may have as...

Electric-car sales are on fire. Okay, well, only a few electric cars have actually gone up in smoke. But with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opening a formal safety investigation into fears about fires started by the much-hyped Chevrolet Volt, it’s become clear yet again that electric vehicles are The Next Big Thing — and they always will be. Safety questions are the last thing that the electric-vehicle market needs. Indeed, the U.S. already has a huge excess of electric-vehicle (EV) battery-production capacity. This month, A123 Systems, one of the country’s highest-profile battery makers for the EV market, cut...

Industrial Policy: The investigation into the safety of electric car batteries intensifies after additional fires involving the flagship of a proposed electric vehicle fleet. Central planning doesn't work for cars or insurance. When the Toyota Prius was being accused of having overlooked design flaws that were causing accelerators to get stuck with fatal results, the owners of Government Motors, a competitor, wasted little time pushing for a recall and congressional hearings while accusing Toyota of cutting corners for the sake of corporate profits. We wonder if the same sense of urgency will prevail in the wake of new safety tests...

Environmental Impacts: An investigation is launched into the possibility of battery fires occurring in crashes involving Government Motors' touted electric car. Industrial policy meets the law of unintended consequences. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has announced an investigation into the safety of electric cars using lithium batteries, particularly the Chevy Volt, after a battery fire occurred after a side-impact crash test. It has asked other manufacturers who make electric cars or that plan to do so for information on how they handle lithium-ion batteries. The request also includes recommendations for minimizing fire risk. The feds say this is only...

Industrial Policy: Not only do taxpayers subsidize failing green energy here, they may soon be on the hook for a Department of Energy loan to a firm owned by a Russian billionaire. Just say nyet. When a foreign firm wants to build a facility in the U.S. that hires American workers and pays American taxes, we welcome it. We'd prefer they do it with their own money, not rely on this administration's failed industrial policy to provide them with a huge taxpayer-backed loan — especially when it's owned by a billionaire who doesn't need the help. The administration's latest green...

SALT LAKE CITY -- A radically new way of moving people around on the University of Utah campus is about to become a reality, thanks to 2.7 million dollars in start-up funds from the federal government. A new transit route through the heart of the campus will feature a full-size city bus, operated with an electric motor. But it will never need to be plugged in. Instead, it will get its energy wirelessly thanks to a magnetic field emanating from the pavement. If it works, it's a significant step toward the so-called "Highway of the Future," a concept in which...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Despite proof now, despite evidence that global warming is a political issue, not a science issue, and that the science aspect of it is fraudulent and is a hoax, we have a story here from the French News Agency. "The World Has Five Years Now to Avoid Severe Warming." That's from the International Energy Agency. "The world has just five years to avoid being trapped in a scenario of perilous climate change and extreme weather events." Now, the IEA -- don't confuse it with the IAEA. That's the bunch that have been telling us for years that...

Yesterday, another shoe dropped in the chronicles of the Obama administration’s crony capitalism. A start-up electric car company with ties to Al Gore got a $529 million loan guarantee from Obama’s Department of Energy to build luxury electric cars...in Finland! Leaving aside the fact that to date only two of these $97,000 cars have been sold (one of them to a movie star), we might at least hope that this ridiculous exercise in the government picking winners minus any competitive, transparent process (Al Gore’s venture cap firm) and losers (the taxpayers subsidizing a car no one wants) would produce manufacturing jobs in the...

The Department of Energy is standing by a $529 million loan guarantee to a company building an electric car line in Finland. A department official, in a lengthy response posted on a government blog Thursday night, confirmed that the company Fisker is assembling its Karma electric car at its "overseas facility." The response comes after ABC News reported that the Obama administration gave the green light for the company to move the manufacturing to Finland two years after announcing the loan. The ABC News report noted the political connections enjoyed by Fisker and another company, Tesla Motors, which together received...

Figures show that only 106 electric cars were bought in 2011 third quarter through 'plugged-in car grant' scheme. Hopes that £5,000 government grants would make 2011 "remembered as the year the electric car took off" have been dashed with the release of new figures showing uptake of the greener cars has sputtered out. ... The number of electric vehicles in the UK stands at just 1,107, a tiny chunk of the country's 28.5m cars. But the government had hoped to incentivise take-up with the launch of grants of up to £5,000

ABC NEWS and iWATCH NEWS Today, 9:47 PM EDT With the approval of the Obama administration, an electric car company that received a $529 million federal government loan guarantee is assembling its first line of cars in Finland, saying it could not find a facility in the United States capable of doing the work. Vice President Joseph Biden heralded the Energy Department's $529 million loan to the start-up electric car company called Fisker as a bright new path to thousands of American manufacturing jobs. But two years after the loan was announced, the job has been outsourced to Finland.

Meet the Roberts electric car. Built in 1896, it gets a solid 40 miles to the charge — exactly the mileage Chevrolet advertises for the Volt, the highly touted $31,645 electric car General Motors CEO Dan Akerson called “not a step forward, but a leap forward.” Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2011/10/14/114-year-old-electric-car-gets-same-40-miles-to-the-charge-as-chevy-volt/#ixzz1aqdfxrZJ

General Motors Co and its Chinese partner SAIC Motor Corp signed an agreement on Tuesday to develop and build electric vehicles in the world's largest auto market. The agreement finalizes a nonbinding memorandum on cooperation for green-vehicle development SAIC and GM signed last November. At the time, SAIC agreed to buy a 1 percent stake in GM through an initial public offering held to make GM a public company again and cut the U.S. Treasury's stake in the company. The Shanghai GM joint venture builds Chevy, Buick and Cadillac vehicles in China.

Just when you thought crony handouts of taxpayer millions couldn’t get much worse than the White House managed Solyndra debacle, along comes the story of global warming shyster Al Gore and fledgling, plug-in hybrid car maker Fisker Automotive, Inc. In 2009, Gore happened to be at an event hosted by the California venture capital firm of Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield and Byers. Of course, Al happened to be there because he is a PARTNER in the firm. Well low and behold, Fisker CEO Henrik Fisker just happened to be there too and pitched Gore on the virtues of his 50 mile-per-battery-charged,...

Wouldn’t you love to have an electric car? They’re clean, green and righteous. And once we make the switch, we can pull the plug on fossil fuels, air pollution, imported oil and Middle Eastern autocrats, and create millions of green jobs into the bargain. No wonder progressive governments are so eager to plow money into electric cars. This week, Ontario’s McGuinty government (which likes to brag that Ontario is Canada’s greenest province) showered Magna International with nearly $50-million to develop new electric vehicle technologies. Magna, which is rolling in dough, admits it doesn’t need the money. But in a world...

A U.S. company says it is getting closer to putting prototype electric cars on the road that will be powered by the heavy-metal thorium (Steam Electric 250MW)... with prototype in two years....never needs refueled.

Who will own the electric car? A new report on electric cars released by The Greenlining Institute -- “Electric Vehicles: Who’s Left Stranded?” -- says the cost of the vehicles, plus the potential inconvenience of charging them, could keep these cars out of minority communities that have some of the worst smog problems in the state. “There’s the message and there’s the messenger,” said the Greenlining Institute’s C.C. Song, lead author on the report. “The marketing just doesn’t reach to these communities. People of color, growing up, the cool cars are the Mercedes, the Lexus,” she added. The report calls...

One of the biggest obstacles to the use of electric cars has been a lack of public places for drivers to charge their batteries. That's beginning to change. The number of charging stations is poised to make a surge. Fueled by millions in grant money first approved as part of the federal economic stimulus package, state, local governments and businesses are working at an accelerated pace to set up charging stations. By the end of the year, anyone with a chargeable vehicle will be able to drive an "electric highway" to Canada, Oregon or across Stevens Pass without having to...

SALINAS, Calif.- Green Vehicles is empty and it's doors are locked. The worst part, Salinas lost $540,000 in the closure and now it needs to find something else to hang its economic hat on. $240,000 the city paid and $300,000 came from a one-time grant for new tech jobs. Last year, Salinas mayor Dennis Donohue test drove one of the new green vehicle proto-types. Salinas was beyond excited when start up company "Green Vehicles" wanted to come to their city, but, "This is disappointing as all get out," said economic development director Jeff Weir. As of last week, and this...

A Salinas car manufacturing company that was expected to build environmentally friendly electric cars and create new jobs folded before almost any cars could run off the assembly line. The city of Salinas had invested more than half a million dollars in Green Vehicles, an electric car start-up company. All of that money is now gone, according to Green Vehicles President and Co-Founder Mike Ryan. The start-up company set up shop in Salinas in the summer of 2009 after the city gave Ryan a $300,000 community development grant. When the company still ran into financial trouble last year, the city...

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a column for The Week in which I questioned the notion of electric cars being a green option. My arguments got swift rebuttals from backers of electric cars, but a new study produced in partnership between the British government and the car industry shows just how correct I was. Not only do electric vehicles produce just as much carbon in their overall cycle as internal-combustion engines, the need to replace the batteries actually makes the less green than current technology (via Jeff Dunetz): ELECTRIC cars could produce higher emissions over their lifetimes than...

ELECTRIC cars could produce higher emissions over their lifetimes than petrol equivalents because of the energy consumed in making their batteries, a study has found. An electric car owner would have to drive at least 129,000km before producing a net saving in CO2. Many electric cars will not travel that far in their lifetime because they typically have a range of less than 145km on a single charge and are unsuitable for long trips. Even those driven 160,000km would save only about a tonne of CO2 over their lifetimes. The British study, which is the first analysis of the full...

In an attempt to go green, the U.S. government will be purchasing 116 new plug-in electric vehicles for use in the federal fleet — but according to The Detroit News, the majority of that order consists of 2012 Chevrolet Volts. By the start of 2012, the General Services Administration, which oversees the purchase of two-thirds of the federal fleet, will take delivery of 101 new Volts, 10 Nissan Leafs, and five Think City EV plug-in electric vehicles. While the purchase will help to reduce the agency’s carbon footprint, it will not increase the size of the federal fleet, as the...

President Obama’s plan to put one million electric cars on American roads by 2015 is a boon for makers of expensive advanced batteries—especially in Korea and Japan. Although U.S. researchers have developed advanced battery designs, the U.S. has lacked manufacturers who can produce them. That situation is changing thanks to a stimulus-funded initiative to build battery plants in Michigan, but the change has been slow—and battery manufacturers in Korea and Japan are not sitting idly by. “The Asians are ramping up the capability to produce batteries at a scary rate, actually,” said Mark Peters, Argonne National Laboratory’s deputy director for...

PARIS (AFP) – Charging electric cars at night eases a smog problem caused by fossil-fuel plants which provide the power for these vehicles, researchers reported on Tuesday. Plug-in cars are viewed as a key tool in the fight for a cleaner planet as they do not emit tailpipe pollution when they run on electricity. But they contribute indirectly to pollution, as well as global warming, if their electricity comes from a power station that runs on coal, oil or gas. In a study published in a British journal, scientists in the United States simulated the local impact from "plug-in hybrid...

Since December, John Duncan's daily commute from Wilsonville to Portland has been like something from a sci-fi movie. He's a solitary eco-driver -- the first and only owner of Nissan's futuristic all-electric LEAF in Oregon -- who knows his day of reckoning is just down the road. "I figured the state would find a way to get the gas taxes that I'm no longer paying," said the Portland Community College theater arts teacher. "But I'm hearing about a new tax that will be something like $1.43 a mile. Really? Wow!" Yep. Wow! Of course, that's not exactly accurate. Oregon lawmakers...

Wash. Senate approves $100 fee for electric cars...The state Senate approved several bills Tuesday, including a measure to impose a $100 annual fee on electric cars to make up for lost gas tax revenue, and a bill that eases the transition to a new statewide high school math assessment. The Washington State Department of Transportation estimates that drivers with gasoline-powered vehicles pay about $200 a year in gas tax. The state gas tax is 37.5 cents per gallon. The bill now moves to the House for approval. The Senate also passed a bill that would ease the transition into new...

PARIS (AFP) – Renault publicly apologised on Monday to three top managers it fired for allegedly selling key electric car secrets to China after it emerged the French automaker may have been the victim of fraud. Boss Carlos Ghosn went on prime time television to apologise "personally and in Renault's name", but said he had turned down an offer by his number two, operations chief Patrick Pelata, to resign over the debacle. Renault officials quickly sacked the three managers in January, saying publicly they had proof they had been selling secrets on the electric technology which is expected to change...

Peruse Chevrolet's February sales release, and you'll notice one number that's blatantly missing: the number of Chevy Volts sold. The number – a very modest 281 – is available in the company's detailed data (PDF), but it certainly isn't something that GM wants to highlight, apparently. Keeping the number quiet is a bit understandable, since it's lower than the 321 that Chevy sold in January. Nissan doesn't have anything to brag about here, either (and it didn't avoiding any mention of the Leaf sales in its press release). Why? Well, back in January, the company sold 87 Leafs. In February?...

Austin City Council members this week will consider charging Austin electric car drivers $50 a year to boot up their batteries from any Austin Energy plug-in. The proposed rate would apply to Austin Energy's "Plug-in Everywhere" program — a network of public charging stations for electric vehicles. The city would offer a $25 six-month subscription for unlimited service, including sales tax. Without the subscription, it would cost about $2 per hour of charging. Austin Energy is installing more than 100 public charging stations throughout the city by the end of this summer. The Coulomb Technologies Inc. stations are being paid...

(CNN) -- President Barack Obama's goal of putting 1 million electric cars on U.S. roads by 2015 could run into a huge roadblock -- the American consumer. According to a report released Wednesday by researchers at Indiana University, automakers are unlikely to manufacture enough cars to reach the president's goal because of a potential lack of buyer demand. Nissan and General Motors, makers of the Leaf and Volt, respectively, already have the capacity to produce enough cars to meet the goal. Serious questions remain, however, about the level of desire among potential buyers worried about cost, ease of use and...

<p>I counted my blessings. The situation could have been worse, I realized: My fellow commuters and I could have been trying to make it home in electric cars, like the ones President Obama is constantly promoting, most recently in his State of the Union address.</p>

Accolades keep pouring in for the Chevy Volt, the electric car darling of the 2011 Detroit auto show, including the show's North American Car of the Year award this week from a jury of swooning auto journalists. In his corny acceptance speech, General Motors vice-chairman Tom Stephens' thanked "all of the jurors who Volted, or voted, for the Chevrolet Volt," a plug-in electric hybrid with gas backup. Its all-electric rival, the Nissan Leaf, was a runner-up. But public acceptance, pricier sticker numbers, charging challenges, and a willingness to break old driving habits (goodbye to pedal to the metal) will determine...

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, Wash. – The lack sales for Byron Holcomb's new business hasn't clouded his vision. "This is the future right here," he said, leaning against a four-wheel drive battery-powered buggy. "The electric car is coming and it's going to be the dominant means of transportation in the U.S." Holcomb, a retired attorney, opened Go Green, Bainbridge Island's one-and-only car dealership, in October. And in true Bainbridge style, all the cars are electric, and the showroom is a slick little Winslow storefront that could have just as easily been an art gallery. Actually, it's that too. Abstract originals adorn the...

Environmentalism: Sales of those planet-killing SUVs and trucks are rising while sales of "all-electric" vehicles are slower than expected. Saving the planet takes a back seat to safety and comfort. Ever since the first Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards were enacted, Americans have consistently rejected efforts by government and environmentalists to force them to drive what many deride as "clown cars." They've opted instead for full-size cars, SUVs and trucks that can actually carry a family and all its stuff in comfort and safety. The auto industry was particularly hard hit during this recession, so it's interesting to learn...

First Nissan Leaf delivery happening today, but are there major delays nationwide? The first Nissan Leaf destined for a customer's driveway will be delivered today in California. If you can't be there, you can participate digitally by tuning in to the Nissan Leaf page on Facebook at 1:30 p.m. PST (4:30 EST) today and watch the press conference live from San Francisco. Twitter fans can also get updates from @NissanLEAF and the hashtag #firstLEAF. By the looks of things, the owner has arrived and has checked out the car already. This doesn't mean that everything is going according to plan...

    Promises of Electric Vehicles?  Vlado BevcSynergy Research Institute, P.O.Box 561, San Ramon, California 94583  The promotion of General Motors Chevy Volt by three mayors (Contra Costa Times, November 6, 1010) merits some mundane evaluation from the energy standpoint. Electric vehicles –with an internal combustion engine assist – are compared to a “typical car” using 13 cents of $3.00/gallon gasoline per mile, that is one that makes 23 miles per gallon. (13/300 = 0.0433 gallon/mile) In a conventional car 25 percent of 37 kWh from a gallon of gasoline gets into traction (because of losses in the engine and drive train)....

Practitioners of the green religion are ecstatic over last week's Environmental Protection Agency decision to award the new Nissan Leaf an official "99 miles-per-gallon" rating for use on the showroom floor. This is a rather curious claim for a battery-powered vehicle that uses no gasoline. Federal officials intend to subtly imply with this "equivalent" mileage figure that the Leaf is three to four times better than ordinary, gas-powered automobiles.There's more than just deceptive government gimmicks at play, as the left has been using cars like the Leaf to make an all-out assault on our wallets. The Department of Energy,...

Houston?! Why Houston? That was the question last week, when NRG Energy announced its plans to make our city home to the nation's largest network of charging stations for electric cars. To put it kindly, our sprawling megalopolis doesn't strike the rest of the world as a leader in greening the planet. "Are you taunting the oil industry?" a Dallas Morning News reporter asked David Crane, NRG's chief executive, during the conference call in which he announced the plan. Crane laughed. "Let me state for the record," he replied, "we're not taunting the oil industry." Instead, it turns out that...