"Your Leaf Is Dirty" compared to Natural Gas, says Edmunds

[ERG4ALL]

However, with the push to bring the budget into balance my Congressman wrote back to me:

"I believe taxpayers should not be responsible for providing "subsidies" to any particular energy company. Energy subsidies distort markets, which ultimately create a false market that may or may not be sustainable. I believe the market is the best method to determine what alternative energy supplies will next be utilized. For too long, the federal government has been picking winners and losers."

Thus, there is a strong move in Congress to do away with any car and energy subsidies. Even as they embrace big oil, they seem to forget the long range goal of moving to renewables which need subsidies for the next 5 to 10 years.

 

[rainnw]

The public eats up headlines like this, it makes money (ad revenue).

Here are some money making headlines:

"Lithium Ion batteries really only last a year: LEAF owners wasted $35,000 on average"
"Explosive news: Lithium Ion batteries cause massive fire in car accident"
"Nissan LEAF has same emissions as 1 mpg diesel Ford F550, new garbage study shows"
"Electric cars really not very practical, study shows"
"Electric cars cause 109234092% more CO2 emissions than 1,000 gas cars on the road"
"From armchair car critics 'I told you so': electric cars are horrible"

These headlines would probably not make money:

"Nissan LEAF actually works just fine for 90% of public"
"Nissan LEAF batteries last a pretty long time, no drama discovered"
"Nissan LEAF cars in washington state during summer 2011 are practically zero emissions because even wind sites are forced to shutdown at night due to hydro power surplus"
"Non-shocker: All gas cars are complete energy hogs compared to an electric car"
"coal powered cars are probably better than funding terrorism"
"Coal powered cars erases trade deficit"

 

[DaveEV]

"I believe taxpayers should not be responsible for providing "subsidies" to any particular energy company. Energy subsidies distort markets, which ultimately create a false market that may or may not be sustainable. I believe the market is the best method to determine what alternative energy supplies will next be utilized. For too long, the federal government has been picking winners and losers."

Awesome. Ask him how the externalities of burning fossil fuels are currently being handled by the market.

Because right now there's a lot of people getting a lot of the side effects of pollution but no-one is paying them for those incurred costs. (See PM2.5 pollution and the resulting asthma and heart disease that affects people but isn't being paid for by the people creating that pollution, for example).