subject: Volting Development [print this page] Well, the news is in on the new Chevrolet Volt, and its not pretty. Government Motors (GM) has announced the sticker price for the new plug-in hybrid at $41,000, a price, as I wrote earlier, that analysts believe will have GM losing money with each car they sell. Of course, they might not sell that many. An admittedly non-scientific poll of Washington Post readers suggests that only about 8 percent of the public says it would buy a Volt. A full 74 percent answered No way to the question of, Would you pay $41,000 for an electric car?
So now that we have a fixed price, lets recap the subsidy math. The president has bludgeoned state-owned GM to put out a plug-in hybrid vehicle that is, according to the Post, more than twice as expensive as a comparable gasoline-driven car. To entice motorists to buy these untested contraptions, the government will give each one a $7,500 subsidy, and another grand if they install their own charger at home (apartment owners of course, are out of luck, and get to subsidize homeowners with this one). President Obama wants a million electric cars on the road by 2015, and since vast cost-saving advances are unlikely to occur so quickly, its safe to assume the subsidy would remain, sucking only $8.5 billion dollars out of taxpayers coffers to subsidize people willing to buy a more expensive car than they actually need. Of course, GM isnt fully on board with Obamas vision, only planning to sell 40,000 Volts by 2013. So thats only $340 million being taken from low-end-car Peter to bribe high-end-shopper Paul.
Of course, thats only the direct subsidies. IBMs vice president for energy and utilities, Allan Schurr, estimates that 80 percent of vehicles arent parked in the garage of the person who owns them, which means there are going to have to be a lot of public charging stations built at taxpayer expense. And the gasoline that electric owners dont consume also takes tax revenue out of the Highway Trust Fund, meaning that if there is massive penetration of cars that dont use gasoline, some other way will have to be found to maintain transportation infrastructure.
Finally, theres also the safety and insurance questions. We know that it costs more to insure hybrids than it does regular cars, and that it costs more to insure small cars than large cars. What we dont know is: How much it will cost to insure an electric car that is small, quiet (making it harder for pedestrians to avoid), and laden with large batteries full of lithium such as IBM ThinkPad X60 Battery, IBM FRU 92P1167 Battery, IBM ThinkPad Z60t Battery, IBM ThinkPad Z61t Battery, IBM 40Y6793 Battery, IBM FRU 92P1125 Battery and IBM FRU 92P1121 Battery, a hazardous, flammable substance? As Wikipedia points out, Lithium batteries can provide extremely high currents and can discharge very rapidly when short-circuited. Although this is useful in applications where high currents are required, a too-rapid discharge of a lithium battery can result in overheating of the battery, rupture, and even explosion. Remember those pictures of laptop computers bursting into flames? Now imagine a car-sized battery. How much will it cost the public if a Hazmat team has to turn out for major traffic accidents involving the Volt?
It makes me glad I take the Metro, though of course we apartment-living train riders (who are, in theory, far greener than home-owning drivers) get the worst of the deal. We get to pay for the subsidies, but are almost certainly not going to be buying the Volt, nor would we have electrified parking spaces if we did. Definitely re-Volting.
