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Not everyone in the liberal media has bought into President Obama’s electric car scam.
From the Boston Globe
DASHING HOPES that GM’s new electric car will jolt the American auto industry into a greener era, the new vehicle’s $41,000 price tag is a shocking disappointment. When visiting Michigan last week to tout the success of the auto industry bailout, President Obama drove the new Chevrolet Volt a few feet and proclaimed, “This car right here doesn’t need a sip of gasoline for 40 miles and then keeps on going after that.’’
But who will drive the Volt out of showrooms in late 2011? It will be $8,000 more costly than Nissan’s Leaf electric car, more than twice the price of conventional compact cars — and even more expensive than an entry-level Mercedes, BMW, or Audi. Leasing costs for the Volt are somewhat more competitive. But if General Motors wants the Volt to catch on, the purchase price must come down quickly.
The offerings from Chevrolet and Nissan are quite different: The Leaf is electric only, with a range of 100 miles. The Volt switches to gasoline after its 40 miles of electric charge are used up and supposedly can go for another 300. But both vehicles are targeted to environmental-minded buyers, and both qualify for a federal $7,500 tax credit.
GM hopes to sell 10,000 Volts next year and 45,000 in 2012. That’s a far cry from Obama’s goal of 1 million electric cars on the road by 2015. After being on the roads for a decade, the hybrid Toyota Prius is only now closing in on its millionth car in the United States — and that was after Toyota, by many accounts, initially priced the car below its cost.
After years of troubles, GM is making money again on its conventional vehicles, partly because of strong sales in car-hungry China, so the company has more room to be farsighted. Its most innovative vehicle deserves to find a place in the market, and that means keeping the sticker price down.
It’s not just the sticker price that makes this car a taxpayer funded lemon. With a short driving range, lack of charging stations and the 8 to 12 hours it will take to charge the battery at home without special equipment the market for these cars will be limited.
The electric car sounds green as it will reduce gas use though only nominally at the current range, but it will also increase electricity use and many electric power plants are powered by coal which has been targeted by environmentalists for years as contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.
Exactly what is the carbon footprint of the Volt again?
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About the author
Don Irvine is Chairman of Accuracy in Media. He is active on Facebook and Twitter. You can follow him @donirvine to read his latest thoughts.
2 Comments for Boston Globe Doesn’t Get A Charge Out of Chevy Volt
Actually the “well-to-wheels” carbon footprint of plug-in vehicles in the U.S. has been extensively studied.
The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the research arm of the electric utility industry, partnered with the Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC), to issue a landmark two-volume report in 2007 on the emissions and grid implications of driving on electricity from the wall socket rather than gasoline.
The short answer to your question at the end: A mile driven on grid power always has a lower “wells-to-wheels” carbon profile compared to a 25-mpg gasoline car. (25 mpg is slightly higher than the national vehicle average right now.)
When you up to the comparison to a 50-mpg gasoline car (the combined EPA rating of the MOST efficient car sold today, the 2010 Toyota Prius), then you have a few edge cases with the very dirtiest grids (e.g. North Dakota). In those states, it’s marginally lower on carbon to burn the gasoline rather than plug in the car.
But for the U.S. grid average as a whole, you’d have to get up to something like 70 mpg before parity. And California, where many of the early plug-ins will be sold, has a grid cleaner than the U.S. average, so you need to average around 100 mpg for all cars on the road before the plug-ins stop being better.
Here’s the link to download Volumes 1 and 2 of the EPRI-NRDC study. You don’t have to read the whole thing; the executive summaries are fine.
So in other words, the Volt’s carbon profile is *always* better than the average U.S. gasoline car’s when it’s running on grid power. (It’s expected to get between 30 and 40 mpg when it’s running on the gasoline range-extending engine.)
Hope this is helpful.
I wish the government would just do the job they are supposed to do, and then get out of the way. Does the con man know that he is ruining, what was once a great country? But that’s a stupid question, because that was his intent all along.