You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life - Albert Camus

Government take-overs, green machines, and excuse making for obvious failures

by AlexinCT

When Obama, helped by the demcorat controlled congress, bought out GM for their Union buddies with tax payer money masquerading as stimulus funding or TARP bailouts - that line is blurry - I warned that the result of this would be disastrous. I warned that all that a government takeover of a car manufacturing company would lead to was the forced adoption of a car that would not be liked, used expensive green technology that was meaningless in the grand scheme of things, and in the end would cost orders of magnitude more to purchase than one was getting for it. Of course, the left pretended that wouldn’t be the case, and that now that government was in charge of GM’s strategy and direction, they would put out a dream car that would do the imposable and also save the environment and planet all in one swoop. GM would go into the business of making green transportation, and with the evil entities usually blamed by the combustion engine-haters unable to thwart GM’s efforts because of government protection, they would finally succeed! All the deniers and doubters were finally going to be shown how great that whole collectivist green stuff really was. It looks like I was right. Let me rub it in some.

GENERAL MOTORS introduced America to the Chevrolet Volt at the 2007 Detroit Auto Show as a low-slung concept car that would someday be the future of motorized transportation. It would go 40 miles on battery power alone, promised G.M., after which it would create its own electricity with a gas engine. Three and a half years — and one government-assisted bankruptcy later — G.M. is bringing a Volt to market that makes good on those two promises. The problem is, well, everything else.

For starters, G.M.’s vision turned into a car that costs $41,000 before relevant tax breaks ... but after billions of dollars of government loans and grants for the Volt’s development and production. And instead of the sleek coupe of 2007, it looks suspiciously similar to a Toyota Prius. It also requires premium gasoline, seats only four people (the battery runs down the center of the car, preventing a rear bench) and has less head and leg room than the $17,000 Chevrolet Cruze, which is more or less the non-electric version of the Volt.

So this collectivist’s green dream car basically costs $41K and delivers for that hefty price tag nothing more than a $17K combustion engine car would? WTF? Maybe you should just go buy a Mercedes or some such other luxury car instead of this boondoggle. Talk about getting screwed twice. It is apparent that not only did we tax payers get reamed by these bastards, all so their union buddies could keep their gold plated bennies and jobs, but that they now expect people to pay an arm and a leg for something that’s not all that to begin with. Bravo NYT for coming clean on the obvious!

Of course, the NYT could not just point out the obvious inherent ideological failure caused by those that want to use the power of government to thwart the mechanics of real world, and leave it at that. Nope, they had to go make excuses about why this failure isn’t really the fault of the inherent stupidity in that ideology. Right after acknowledging that the Volt turned out to be exactly what we told you would end up happening, we get a mountain of excuses.

Unfortunately for this theory, G.M. was already committed to the Volt when it entered bankruptcy.

Well, DUH! Making stupid decisions like this one is PRECISELY why GM was on the verge of imploding. When you add on one dumb decision after another, you should go the way of the T-Rex. GM is the company that allowed its unions to negotiate those golden packages that were draining all their income. GM is the company that decided a car that costs $17K with a combustion engine would be a viable product that could make them money if they plopped in an expensive electric motor, only to then find out that at $41K, only stupid people or government agencies are going to ever buy this junk.

And the dumb doesn’t end there. There were some fun doozies like this one:

Nor did the government or G.M. decide to sell the Volt at a loss, which, paradoxically, might have been the best hope for making it profitable.

Forget the inherent flaw here that the financial loss that the NYT is pining for here will be incurred yet again by us tax payers. Is this dumb assertion based on that idiotic concept of selling something at a loss, and making the loss up on volume? I am intimately familiar with the concept that the “per unit cost” goes down with volume. But I find it laughable that there ever will be enough sales of this vehicle to make that the case. And want to see the thing that gave me the biggest laugh?

If G.M. were honest, it would market the car as a personal donation for, and vote of confidence in, the auto bailout. Unfortunately, that’s not the kind of cross-branding that will make the Volt a runaway success.

What’s honest about an attempt to pretend GM was pushing this piece of crap to consumers to thank them for a bailout at the tax payer’s expense? WTF? In fact, if GM was honest it would be admitting this boondoggle is what you get when you marry government with business. Pretzel much? And I have always expected the combination of “GM’s Volt” and “runaway success” in the same sentence to also include something like “no way in hell” or “here comes a lame joke”. This is sad, but don’t worry. GM’s next success will be an $80K electric car that can be bought with a combustion engine for $25K! That’s a step in the right direction.

UPDATE: I think the Volt, in a nut shell, is the perfect illustration of the green world the left so pines for: you will pay oodles more, get a lot less in return for it, making some government agency more powerful in the process, and think this was somehow a good thing. Basically it illustrates the whole concept of “failure is a great success” that seems to be the MO of the left, by applying it to the real world in a practical manner.

Comments

Posted by on 07/30/10 at 01:20 PM from

An “electric car” fails on more than just being overpriced and not usable for anything other than short commuting, but the greens conveniently forget to mention that transforming the world’s vehicles to require being charged up regularly means that electricity generation capability and distribution infrastructure must be dramatically increased and improved upon.

The net result is that instead of emissions from gasoline power engines you have emissions from coal-fired generating plants.  It’s a wash - except for the trillions of dollars spent for no reason.

Posted by on 07/30/10 at 02:06 PM from

Tesla motors will be coming out with a better car up to 300 miles per charge. It costs a little more, but if we’re going to go green like Obama wants, there is already companies like Tesla doing it. There was no need to keep GM around to start going green. I don’t have an issue with electric cars so much, but as SO points out, unless our electricity comes from a green source, it’s more about a feel good factor than accomplishing anything of substance. Plus they’ll need to start building more in the way of places to swap your battery so you can actually get somewhere beyond the super market and back. Maybe BP can use it as a marketing opportunity and set up battery swap sections in some of their gas stations.

Posted by on 07/30/10 at 02:26 PM from

Don’t give the NYT too much credit here, this was a guest editorial from a blogger at TTAC.

This never would have come from an in house writer.

Posted by on 07/31/10 at 11:57 PM from

The net result is that instead of emissions from gasoline power engines you have emissions from coal-fired generating plants.  It’s a wash - except for the trillions of dollars spent for no reason

It’s not a wash for two reasons:
1) Coal pollutes more than oil
2) Inefficiency over distance

Scenario One:
Coal burns transforming chemical energy into heat.  Heat energy is transformed into kinetic energy via steam turning a turbine.  Kinetic energy is transformed into electricity.  Electricity is transferred over many miles to Volt owner’s house and then stored in battery (which is really converting it to chemical energy of some sort right??).  Battery powers motor transforming electricity into kinetic energy turning wheels on car.

Scenario Two: 
Oil burns-chemical energy is transformed into kinetic energy-expanding gases drive pistons that turn wheel on car. 

Which one is more efficient?  At every step of each process above you lose some energy by having it converted into non-useful energy (for example, electrical wires heat up-some of the energy passing through them is lost as heat).  Adding steps means less energy is delivered to the wheels as useful kinetic energy.

Posted by on 08/01/10 at 08:21 AM from

The whole electric car thing reminds me of that little video of the moron wanting to buy an iPhone 4: he must have one because “it’s an iPhone”, regardless of the fact that the competing product is obviously superior. 

To every point made by the salesman on why the other product is better, the response is “I don’t care”. That is the true core of green ideology.

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