

Chevrolet Volt

Ford Focus Electric

Hyundai Sonata Hybrid

Honda CR-Z Hybrid


I. Hybrid/EV Outlook -- Not Good?





II. Too Expensive?






III. Small Vehicle Sales Up








IV. Clean Diesel, Where Art Thou?




Comments     Threshold


RE: Can this be true...
By Iaiken on 4/28/2011 12:09:01 PM , Rating: 2
The U.S. is a free market system and if consumers are happy to stand by and get "screwed" at the pump (in your words), the oil companies will be more than happy to oblige.

People who are too lazy to do their research and make informed decisions deserve what they get and have no ground to stand on when they complain. Seriously, the math isn't hard and there are even total cost of ownership calculators out there where you can figure out which car is the most affordable.

reduce our dependance on foreign oil

Simply switching to more fuel efficient cars isn't going to have a a significant impact as people will only swap when it becomes too painful to keep their fuel-chuggin SUVs. Any switch at this time simply prolongs that situation and won't bring the price of gasoline down in any meaningful way.

The only real way to do reduce that dependence is to transition to alternative fuels and electricity, but that has numerous hurdles in it's path as well. For electricity you have a non-existent charging infrastructure, range issues, electricity grid load issues etc.

Then there is the grand daddy of electric car issues: limited installed capacity. There simply isn't enough electricity as it is and looking at the plans for future installations show a massive disparity in the amount of electricity to be added to the grid vs the amount to be lost to the decommissioning of old plants. Factor in the rate at which consumption is growing even without throwing millions of cars into the picture and the fact that the electricity system simply will not be able to cope becomes obvious. You will simply trade that $240 gas bill for a similar increase to your electricity bill.

If we are going to push EV's as a solution then doors need to be opened, loans need to be made and red tape removed so that we can start breaking ground on new power generation. This all falls under the role of the state governments and even if the federal government tried to make a move on it, they would meet with staunch resistance from the states as well as from anti-federalists in the house/congress.

Good luck!

