FT: EV subsidies a waste

Yesterday's Financial Times had a great companion piece to the idiocy in today Post. The UK announced a £5000 incentive for EV beginning in 2011. After recognizing that the intent of such a subsidy is to "encourage early adopters of the technology, helping electric car manufacturers achieve economies of scale," author Richard Pike suggests a reason to oppose it is that "it would cost more than £150bn to subsidize Britain’s entire car fleet," a proposal no one has made.

Read it here.

WashPost: Volt Caused GM's woes

Charles Lane is a member of the editorial page staff of the Washington Post. Here are some gems from his screed against the Volt, and electric cars in general, in today's paper:

"GM wouldn't be in quite so deep a hole if it had not sunk a billion dollars, and much of its corporate reputation, into a not-very-realistic plug-in electric hybrid vehicle known as the Chevrolet Volt."

"Unless and until gas prices shoot up, you'd be crazy to buy one of these much-ballyhooed vehicles..."

"To be sure, the green-leaning Obama administration has not ruled out allowing a restructured GM to continue pouring (federal) money into the Volt. But I hope it won't. The Volt and other electric vehicles could gobble up more subsidies than ethanol."

"Indeed, to the extent that we use more electric cars, we reduce the demand for petroleum, which drives down the price of petroleum, which makes electric cars less competitive with gas-burning ones."

Essentially he saying that even the success of the electric car ensures its failure. Wow.

Read the entire (hit) piece here.