Electric Car Follies: A Sad, but Predictable Tale of Government Stupidity

In President Obama’s 2011 State of the Union speech, he laid down an ambitious goal:

“We can replace our dependence on oil with biofuels and become the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015″ Obama said in January 2011.

CBS surveyed the market back in June and reported the bad news for Obama:

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To get to one million, the White House pinned its hopes on 11 models of electric vehicles – including the Karma. Our CBS News investigation found that six of the 11 — Ford Focus, Ford Transit Connect, Fisker Nina/Atlantic, Tesla Model S, Tesla Roadster and Think City — either haven’t made their first delivery, stopped production, or are already out of business.

Others aren’t even close to the government’s 2015 projections. For example, 36,000 Fisker Karmas and 505,000 Chevy Volts were supposed to be made. But current projections slash the Karma’s 2015 number in half to 18,000 and put the Volt at one-eighth of the goal at 62,000.

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One would think that an “exploding” market would mean sales considerably more than 10,000 units a year for the two largest car makers on the planet. But you and I aren’t in government and math is obviously not their best subject.

So maybe this will be the year that EV’s really take off? Alas, the signs are not good:

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Electric vehicles and plug-in electric hybrids are off to a tough start in January after a disappointing 2012.

General Motors Co., Toyota Motor Corp. and Nissan Motor Co. all reported much lower sales of EVs and plug-in hybrids in January over December, citing lower inventory and the decision of many customers to buy before the end of the tax year.

GM said sales of its plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt rose 89 percent to 1,140 over January 2012.

But that’s still much lower than recent months — including the 2,633 Volts sold in December. It’s the lowest number of Volts sold in a month since February 2012, when GM sold just 1,023.

GM spokeswoman Michele Malcho said low inventories in California crimped sales in January after a huge month in December. The company is working to replenish volume in California.

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Remember, we’re talking about a goal of a million EV’s on the road by 2015. And GM is talking about a monthly total of 1140?

Never fear, however. Obama wants to pour another $4.7 billion into companies that have little chance of becoming profitable. That should be good for a couple of hundred more EV’s on the road. This is in addition to the tens of billions in taxpayer-backed loans and outright grants to companies who are now either out of business, or performing so far below expectations as to be a joke.

When government tasks itself to pick winners and losers in the market, they invariably choose incorrectly. Electric cars will eventually become a viable product when someone invents a battery that won’t have to be recharged every 50 miles. But that day is far away, and is being pushed back by government interference.