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White House Wants 1M Electric Cars By 2015
coondoggie writes "The White House has outlined a wide-ranging plan for putting one million of what it calls 'advanced technology vehicles' on the road by 2015. Most observers would say that is a good start, but is it reasonably doable? The next White House budget will include a number of investments and enticements to make the goal achievable in theory. Of course, not all of the provisions are likely to make the cut."
Ive seen the way people drive when they are constrained by gravity. I would hate to see the way people drive when they could drive anywhere they chose. Cars over your house, cars in the woods, cars over lakes. Nuhh huh, you can keep your flying cars.
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
A gallon of gas is equivalent to ~34kWh of electricity. At the relatively cheap rate of 10 cents per kWh, that means $3.40 in electricity costs to replace a gallon of gas. Plugging in seems to have no price advantage over filling up, and has the extra problems of range and charge time. That seems like a hard sell for the average driver. I'm certain in the future this will change, but pushing for volume before the tech and market conditions are ready may not be a good idea.
If it’s done right there would not be any strain.
You can have the car charge during off peak hours. i.e. at night. This would add little strain to the infrastructure. Electricity also tends to be cheaper then. [Once again, off peak hours]. You just need to make it easy for the consumer so the plug it in when they come home put it does not start charging until 2 a.m.
I think that Siemens even research using car batteries as a distributive back up power source. Now that would require some upgrades to our gird.
I just heard on the news in the break room, that while the US still just barely has the top credit rating...they tell us that if we don't get the deficit under control pronto, they're gonna drop our credit rating.
Man, you think things are bad now...wait till THAT shoe drops.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Or raise taxes.
We can only cut so much.
Shifting money around a thing we need to do right now, as well as take care of our deficit.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You describe Cash for Clunkers as "wildly successful." First, you do understand that this was Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood's characterization of the program, right? And that Ray LaHood is the political appointee with the single greatest interest in painting the program in a positive light?
Economists have a different understanding of Cash for Clunkers. It was "wildly successful" among the upper-middle-class types who actually used the program; and a raw deal for everyone else. Economists Amir Sufi (Cal Berkley) and Atif Mian (Chicago) studied the program extensively. They found that ultimately, the program simply accelerated the purchases of middle and upper class types who *would have soon purchased new vehicles anyway.*
The unintended side effect was taking hundreds of thousands of perfectly usable used vehicles off the market, decreasing supply and so increasing the price for people in the market for a used vehicle -- i.e., the poor. Used car prices went up an average of 10 percent.
And of course, the actual money used to subsidize the new vehicles didn't come from thin air: It was *taken from everyone else* -- i.e., other taxpayers.
Ultimately, it was Basqiat's Broken Window Fallacy writ large. *Destroying things* -- whether they be windows or old cars -- does not create wealth. All we did was destroy the value inherent in the used cars, then create the illusion of "wild success" by transferring some wealth from group A (public) to group B (program participants).
So the "wild success" thing is a tautology. Of COURSE it was successful -- among the people it benefited. That's like saying Jesse James' bank-robbery spree was "wildly successful." For Jesse, you bet. For the bank's customers, not so much.
- aj
"Can only cut so much"? In 2005, the US federal government spent $2.47 trillion. Today the figure is $3.72 trillion. The fed.gov. hasn't even tried to cut since Clinton left office. Bush II had a bad enough fiscal record but Obama's making him look like a piker.
"Cutting government spending basically means punching the economy in the nose."
Government does not create jobs nor grow the economy in any meaningful and lasting way.
Not in the long term particularly, but it absolutely does in the short term. Cutting government funding cuts jobs because it is employing people and that's all there is to it. Cutting jobs leads to less people with real income which leads to less spending. In the long term it might even out, but we don't have that luxury as we're starting to come out of a depression.
The only thing the government can do is impede job creation and economic growth, or get out of the way so the private sector can.
I wonder if your realize what you wrote. Only the government can impede job creation or let the private sector impede job creation?
The government absolutely can help job creation and often does.
Keynesian economics has been proven not to work. Even JFK understood this.
Modern descendants of Keynesian economics make up the most popular macroeconomic theories taught today. Oh, and citing JFK as your authority on the economy isn't exactly convincing.