Obama Success Story - The Chevy Volt

[CuteOldGuy]

Obama's version of the Volkswagen, except the VW was popular and inexpensive. Despite all the incentives, the Volt is still a failure.

From the article:

When government tries to steer consumers into buying certain products or services, it can waste taxpayer money and create distortions, regardless of how well intentioned the policies. And as we’ve seen, government-directed projects often fail.

Free market projects fail as well. However, one important difference between the two scenarios is that in the free market, individuals voluntarily launch projects to meet consumer wants and needs. In doing so, they assume the risks—and consequences—of failure. Conversely, when government projects fail, the cost is borne by taxpayers who didn’t know the risks and didn’t voluntarily decide to undertake the project.

http://www.economicfreedom.org/2012/...t-good-enough/

[IIFFOFRDB]

1/2 of us heard you COG and agree. The other 1/2 blame Bush and think it is tax payer responsibilities.

[Dawgs]

Originally Posted by IIFFOFRDB

1/2 of us heard you COG and agree. The other 1/2 blame Bush and think it is tax payer responsibilities.

Damn, you hit that one on the head!!

[Munchmasterman]

Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

Obama's version of the Volkswagen, except the VW was popular and inexpensive. Despite all the incentives, the Volt is still a failure.

From the article:

When government tries to steer consumers into buying certain products or services, it can waste taxpayer money and create distortions, regardless of how well intentioned the policies. And as we’ve seen, government-directed projects often fail.

Free market projects fail as well. However, one important difference between the two scenarios is that in the free market, individuals voluntarily launch projects to meet consumer wants and needs. In doing so, they assume the risks—and consequences—of failure. Conversely, when government projects fail, the cost is borne by taxpayers who didn’t know the risks and didn’t voluntarily decide to undertake the project.

http://www.economicfreedom.org/2012/...t-good-enough/

3 fires out of all the Volts manufactured. Your knoweledge is underwhelming.

Originally Posted by IIFFOFRDB

1/2 of us heard you COG and agree. The other 1/2 blame Bush and think it is tax payer responsibilities.

Wrong again.
The same people who agree with cog are the project and deflect gang, the sky-is-falling gang, and the can't-think-for-themselves gang.
All collectively known as the douche-bag brigade.

As for Bush, he gets no credit for helping to use American technology to lessen our dependency on foreign oil.

You and your fellow brigade members love subservience to people with money.
In our country you would give a 2% tax rate to those who send jobs overseas and bring profits back in.
Overseas you keep your faces in the laps of those who pump more than oil into your mouths.

[i'va biggen]

Wonder how many times you will bring this up? Well if it worked once why not...

[CuteOldGuy]

So Munchie, how do you like your Volt?

[JD Barleycorn]

3 fires out of how many volts? a thousand, two thousand, five thousand? Not a very good record. And don't they run about 130,000 dollars a copy? Of course the owners only pay about 40,000 dollars each and the tax payers kick in the rest.

[tttalinky]

I agree COG, President Obama should be given the same amount of credit he was given when he received the Nobel Peace Prize after being in office one whole month. Or after taking charge of the Gulf Oil Spill fiasco after leaving it in the hands of the "Galactic incompetent BP Oil" for three months. This President takes credit for everything he does or doesn't do that goes his way......but anything that goes south somehow gets blamed on President Bush. President Obama needs to start taking ownership for the terrible situation America is in.

[Sensia]

Cog these are some snippets from some books I have read concerning the electric car. Did you ever read "Who killed the Electric Car"? Very good reading I highly recommend if your interested.

Here is a lengthy post on the subject of the electric car and how big oil and other interests sabotage the electric cars on purpose. Lengthy but well worth reading.
--------------------
The closest we came to an alternative to the gas-powered car was the electric car. As described in Chris Paine’s 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car?, electric vehicles were popular at the beginning of the twentieth century. They were quiet, they produced no pollution, and you didn’t have to crank the engine. But once the gas car became dominant, no electric car was marketed for almost a century. Then in 1987 General Motors got some welcome publicity when its team of innovators won the world solar race with an experimental electric car. Chairman Roger Smith started an initiative for the company to build an electric car for sale to the public. It sounded like a win-win venture: General Motors would get a new product to sell, the EV1, not to mention the public relations value of being a successful innovator with its eyes on the future. Consumers would get a quiet, clean vehicle that needed no engine tune-ups and could get a gallon’s worth of driving from sixty cents’ worth of electricity. They could plug it into a wall outlet at home to recharge. As the new cars became available for lease, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), a state regulatory agency, became interested in the EV1. The board was looking for solutions to the ongoing health crisis from smog: at that time, one out of four young people in Los Angeles County suffered from severe lung lesions and chronic respiratory disease. Inspired by the EV1, in 1990 the board passed the Zero Emissions Mandate. The mandate would mean that any company selling cars in California would have at least 2 percent of their vehicles be zero-emissions cars by 1998. The minimum would then rise to 5 percent in 2001 and 10 percent in 2003. GM offered the EV1 through its Saturn dealerships and launched the car with a memorable Super Bowl advertisement that showed toasters, blenders, and other electric household appliances walking out of their suburban homes to meet the EV1 in the driveway. Waiting lists for the new vehicles began to grow. Not wanting to be left behind, Toyota, Honda, Ford, Nissan, and Chrysler all began manufacturing electric cars. For the first time in nearly a century, there were nonpolluting, moderately priced, domestically sourced alternatives to gasoline-powered cars. What had been a mere concept and a PR coup for GM had become a practical alternative to feeding the greedy bastards in oil. How did this happen?

Then the Western States Petroleum Association, a lobbying group for the oil industry, began working in secret to oppose the Zero Emissions Mandate, which had required greater transparency and
integrity regarding the hidden costs of gas-powered transportation. The association funded fake consumer groups with fraudulent lists of sponsors to protest CARB’s efforts to build public car-charging stations, damaging the integrity of the political process. GM itself began petitioning CARB to reverse the Zero Emissions Mandate, arguing that there was no consumer demand for the electric car. The car company launched a new ad campaign, supposedly intended to market the EV1, which showed the car in blighted landscapes suggesting the end of civilization. Potential customers, even well-known movie stars, were required to provide extensive personal information as part of an increasingly difficult “application” for the privilege of leasing an electric car. GM employees even began calling potential customers on its waiting lists to “inform” them of the potential drawbacks of the EV1. In all these ways, the movie suggests, GM deliberately worked to reduce visibility and intentionally confuse consumers about the choice of an electric car, in order to sabotage its prospects. In 2002, the Bush administration joined a lawsuit against California’s mandate. Around the same time, the White House announced a $ 1.2 billion grant to develop hydrogen fuel cells in cars. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger of California toured the state in a hydrogen-powered Hummer to raise awareness of the potential of hydrogen fuel cells, but no hydrogen-fueled cars were ever offered to the public because hydrogen technology was still at an early, exploratory stage. (The cost for the infrastructure to make hydrogen cars practical across the country would top $ 400 million, according to hydrogen energy expert Dr. Venki Raman.) A speculative, hypothetical alternative fuel was being offered in place of a proven technology already on the roads. Finally, Dr. Alan Lloyd, the chair of CARB, who had defended the Zero Emissions Mandate for twelve years, accepted an additional post as the director of the new California Fuel Cell Partnership— a new prohydrogen organization! He then agreed to reverse most of CARB’s zero emissions mandate. What happened to the cars themselves? Almost five thousand electric cars had been manufactured for leasing to California, including the EV1, the Toyota RAV4 EV, and the Honda EV Plus. When drivers tried to renew their leases, the requests were denied. Owners who did not return their cars to the dealerships were threatened with legal action. A group of activists pledged nearly $ 2 million to buy eighty-two remaining EV1s, but its offer was refused. Nearly all of the vehicles were recalled and crushed. The new consumer choice was gone.

In this story, you can see the techniques by which the unholy alliance of business and state keeps vampire industries in power: pressuring, enticing, and bribing politicians to change the rules to benefit the vampire industry, using force to overcome free-market competition, and the media sideshow that amuses and distracts— in this case, the photogenic Governor Schwarzenegger stepping out of an impractical, unripe new technology, the hydrogen Hummer. What did American automakers do after engineering the death of the electric car? They again used their influence in government, which again rewrote the rules to afford them easier and more oil-industry-friendly ways to make money. As described in High and Mighty: SUVs— The World’s Most Dangerous Vehicles and How They Got That Way by Keith Bradsher, American Motors Corporation lobbied the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for a waiver of the Clean Air Act of 1963, to allow it to market sport-utility vehicles as “light trucks.” This would exempt AMC from fuel efficiency requirements. The favor from the federal government made selling inefficient, polluting SUVs dramatically more profitable than efficient, greener cars. As Bradsher notes, for example, each sale of an Excursion SUV earned Ford a profit of $ 18,000, while the Ford Focus, a compact car that met federal fuel-efficiency guidelines, earned no profit at all unless the buyer bought optional features. All of the Big Three automakers now funnel their ingenuity and their marketing dollars into selling these profitable, polluting gasguzzlers.

[CuteOldGuy]

Sensia, are you saying that government and business work together to control the market and thwart the development of alternative energy sources and products to line their own pockets? I'm shocked!

Electric cars are not a bad idea. The Volt is a bad idea for the reasons Sensia stated. It won't get anywhere as long as Big Oil has a stranglehold on the market. There is no reason why the market wouldn't support inexpensive, alternative fuel cars if the oil companies, auto companies and government would abandon their unholy alliance and let the market work.

[Dawgs]

The Government Motors Chevy Volt is still not viable, you still need a place to plug it in to recharge which is probably coal, natural gas, or nuclear. It is not a green car with what it takes to make the batteries and then when they are done, dispose of.
Me personally I would not own one just because of who makes it.

[CuteOldGuy]

It was designed to fail.

[nevergaveitathought]

i just have an aversion to anything GM because of obama and how he strong-armed the bond holders and gave the unions the company.

the stock of GM will be forever depressed because of the government stock overhang

[FU]

Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

Sensia, are you saying that government and business work together to control the market and thwart the development of alternative energy sources and products to line their own pockets? I'm shocked!

Electric cars are not a bad idea. The Volt is a bad idea for the reasons Sensia stated. It won't get anywhere as long as Big Oil has a stranglehold on the market. There is no reason why the market wouldn't support inexpensive, alternative fuel cars if the oil companies, auto companies and government would abandon their unholy alliance and let the market work.

Until, an alternative energy sources can create as many jobs as the oil industry.... alternative energy will never win against Big Oil

[JD Barleycorn]

Sensia in an earlier life I was an electrician. The US does not have the grid to support millions of electric cars. Unlike gasoline which you can store in a tank until you need it and only use what you need, electricity has to be made continuously and so much is "wasted" in heat and noise.

You can get around in your car with a smart parking spot. Just imbed one half of a transformer in the pavement or garage and the other half on a gimbel in the car. Park the car over the transformer and the gimbel will move the secondary side to get maximum EMF transfer within a few cms. You don't hear anyone talking about this because they are not really serious.

A few years ago Greensburg, Ks was literally wiped out by a T5 tornado. They decided to rebuild using green technology only. I lobbied for setting up a as a test platform parking spots for electric cars and getting the car companies to donate vehicles to the town for testing. I figured that this would be a great publicitiy idea...if it worked. They did neither one, they were not interested in proving themselves to the world.