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Electric Car Subsidies As Handouts For the Rich
Atypical Geek writes "Charles Lane, writing for Slate, argues that subsidies for electric cars are an example of 'limousine liberalism' — a lavish gift for well-off Americans to buy expensive cars for the sake of appearing green. From the article: 'How rarefied is the electric-car demographic? When Deloitte Consulting interviewed industry experts and 2,000 potential buyers, it found that from now until 2020, only "young, very high income individuals" — from households making more than $200,000 a year — would even be interested in plug-in hybrids or all-electric cars.'
Lane also takes issue with the billions of dollars in subsidies offered to automakers for the manufacture of batteries, arguing that research (warning, PDF) concludes that the money will not help in jump-starting the economies of scale that will drive down prices. At least, not as much or as quickly as the President has argued."
The thing really needed is more research, which hopefully will *really* drive down prices.
You mean like the DOE program for battery R&D? Granted it is only a third of a billion per year, but it's not like they're not funding R&D. Besides, if the DOE does it, the car companies won't have to do as much redundant R&D.
The Nissan Leaf is scheduled to debut with the price tag of around $32,000. I wouldn't call it cheap but I wouldn't call it a prohibitive luxury good. With federal and state tax subsidies, it makes it cheaper and a working incentive to go electric
Meanwhile a Civic will cost you around $20k and can drive more than 100 miles without waiting hours to refuel.
Even if you don't need to travel long distances, $12k will buy you a lot of gas.
Lets run some number. At $4 a gallon, $12,000 will by you 3000 gallons. At 30 miles per gallon that will get you 90,000 miles. So you will need to drive a Nissan Leaf for 90,000 miles to break even and that's not including the cost of electricity to recharge it, the cost to replace the batteries after they lose their capacity or the cost of rental cars when you need to make trips beyond the 100 mile range of the leaf.
That nugget is probably never mentioned because it should EMBARRASS anyone that tries to use it as an excuse.
You included.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
"In California, where something like 90% of electricity is generated from burning natural gas, electric vehicles in California would essentially be running on natural gas."
Umm, no.
http://energyalmanac.ca.gov/overview/energy_sources.html
Natural Gas 46.5%
Nuclear 14.9%
Large Hydro 9.6%
Coal* 15.5%
Renewable 13.5%
Where California's NG comes from
In State 12.9%
Canada 22.1%
Rockies 24.2%
Southwest 40.8%