Chevy Volt: An electric Edsel
THE DAILY BLADE: The 2004 Toyota Prius gas-electric hybrid was a sensation – with 54,000 sold in the U.S. alone. Customers – including The Stiletto – willingly endured being placed on a waiting list for up to a year for the privilege of driving one off the dealer’s lot.
And some enterprising folks were reportedly selling their spots on eBay for $500 to those who wanted to jump a few places ahead on the line. But that extra expense to get their hands on the hottest car on the market sooner than their friends and neighbors was more than offset by a temporary $2,000 federal tax credit the Bush administration gave Prius buyers for going green.
The stakes are higher now. Rather than incentivizing consumers to buy a green car, President Barack Hussein Obama is trying to jumpstart a domestic green car industry with a $5 billion infusion of taxpayer funds to electric car and battery manufacturers, along with an eye-popping $7,500 tax credit for buying a Chevy Volt.
Continuing a disturbing pattern by this administration to throw taxpayer funds at unproven green technologies, plug-in electric cars are now the only alternative fuel cars being subsidized with federal tax dollars. The gas-electric Prius and other hybrid vehicles that run on “clean diesel” and compressed natural gas became ineligible for tax credits as soon as 60,000 hybrid or clean-tech of each model were sold, which some believe was meant to blunt Japanese dominance of the hybrid market in the U.S. In contrast, Chevy Volt purchasers can continue to claim their tax credit until 200,000 are sold.
Even so, General Motors will sell only 7,000 Volts in the U.S. this year – 38 percent below its sales target. Apparently, a 19 percent taxpayer-funded discount off the $40,280 base price wasn’t enough of an incentive to most Americans – 38 percent of whom are at least somewhat concerned about the safety of the car, after reports that the Volt’s lithium ion battery pack burst into flames several days after side-impact crash testing (related article, sixth item on the page). According to the Rassmussen Reports national telephone survey of 1,000 adults, 16 percent said they are “very concerned” about the car’s safety.
Perhaps inadvertently, General Motors reinforced the impression that Volt owners have something to worry about by offering them the use of a non-electric GM loaner car until the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concludes its formal investigation into the incident, USA Today reports. At one point, the company’s CEO Dan Akerson even considered a buyback program (as an aside, the question immediately arose whether the IRS would insist on a claw back of the tax credit).
But wait – it gets worse. There is evidence that GM knew about the safety issue back in June, AutoGuide.com reports:
Joan Claybrook, a former administrator at NHTSA believes part of the reason for the delay was the “fragility of Volt sales.” Yet she also believes that “NHTSA could have put out a consumer alert, not to tell them [customers] for six months makes no sense to me.”
And now, Congress wants answers, Agence France-Presse reports:
Republican Representative Darrell Issa, who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, and two colleagues pressed GM CEO Daniel Akerson in a letter to address their concerns by December 21.
"In light of recent reports about the lithium-ion battery system of the Chevrolet Volt, we write with serious questions about the safety of the Volt and the advanced technology developed by General Motors (GM)," they said.
The lawmakers called it "alarming" that GM officials knew of the problems in June but made no comment on the incidents until media reports detailed them in November.
"GM continued to market and sell Chevrolet Volts to American consumers, fully aware of potentially serious safety deficiencies affecting the vehicle's battery system. GM took no steps to notify consumers or the public in general of this problem," they wrote.
The lawmakers pressed GM to say when it first learned of potential safety issues with the Volt's batteries, whether and when it notified regulators about the problem, and how it addressed the issue with Volt owners.
And they asked whether any aide to President Barack Obama, whose administration has touted the Volt as an example of promising technology that will help battle global warming, pressured the firm to delay disclosing the issues.
The failure of the Volt to electrify car buyers, as well as the possible cover-up of a serious safety issue by GM and the federal government – the car company’s largest shareholder – are a microcosm of “troubles in the electric-car sector [that] pose a potential new political problem” for the Obama administration, which “invested” $257 million in public money into Volt battery production. As with Solyndra, some green car manufacturers and suppliers receiving the administration’s largesse “had investors who were also important Obama campaign donors” and as with the green energy industry, green cars will not create thousands of new U.S. jobs as Obama predicted.
Sales of the top seven electric vehicles – including Chevrolet Volts and Nissan Leafs – combined are a hair under 17,000 this year. Not only that’s just two-tenths of 1 percent of 2011 domestic auto sales, it’s only one-quarter of the number of Prius hybrids that Toyota sold in 2004.
Toyota will begin U.S. sales of its own plug-in Prius in January 2012. To date, Toyota has sold two million Prius models using its standard gas-electric drive train. It will be interesting to see how sales of the plug-in version will compare. Despite the Obama administration’s best efforts to coerce people into buying or not buying specific products, the consumer is the final arbiter of success or failure in the marketplace.
The Stiletto Scoops Politico
Liberal pundits flatter Obama by calling him “professorial” because he was a lecturer (not actually a professor, by the way) teaching constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, but Gingrich truly deserves that description. Obama’s handlers will not be able to prepare him to debate Gingrich because they won’t be able to predict where his nimble mind will take him. But the flip side of nimbleness is lack of focus and discipline and Gingrich’s worst enemy will be his tendency to put his foot in his mouth.
- CNBC debate reveals the only Republican challenger Obama can’t talk his way past, The Stiletto Blog, November 10, 2011
Gingrich’s liabilities are ample and amply documented. There’s the infamous lack of personal or professional discipline, the absence of campaign infrastructure, the marital infidelities and political intemperance ... But if Romney is a conventional enemy, Gingrich poses an asymmetrical threat: He’s simply a more dangerous, talented and unpredictable political actor than Romney. ... [O]n any given issue, he might know more than the president himself.
- Why Obama should worry about Newt, Politico, December 16, 2011
In Memoriam
Christopher Hitchens, April 13, 1949 – December 15, 2011
Vaclav Havel, October 5, 1936 – December 18, 2011
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