Obama Bolsters U.S. Hybrid Auto Sales

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Ready2plugin

Well-known member
Joined
Jul 27, 2010
Messages
672
Interesting article from Bloomberg News this morning that the U.S. Government is responsible for one in four of all hybrid sales.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-23/obama-bolsters-u-s-hybrid-auto-sales-in-waning-consumer-market.html
 
And why not? Even the government has to buy gas. In wa, the state mandated that alternative fuel vehicles be used in all stat fleets whenever possible. By far the# 1 choice is the Prius. There was an article in the paper a few years ago where a state manager stated that running a dozen Priusez saved enough money to hire another full time employee.

I would imagine now the the Prius is saving someone their job right now
 
I think that the government spending money on hybrids and electrics is a good thing. We are nowhere near the six figure true EV commitments made by the French government (especially if scaled to population). However, I think the government needs to encourage competition. Set some standards and award the contracts to the companies that do the best job meeting them. Buying mediocre products like the Malibu hybrid is like automotive welfare enabling uncompetitive vehicles.

Same plug-in tax credits-- we should make them competitive. Take the money from the program and hand it out first-come, first-served to the cars being sold, rather than "every automaker gets 200,000 credits". And eliminate the cap GM lobbied to put on it at 16kWh to give themselves a competitive advantage. We should be encouraging larger battery capacity in these vehicles.
 
larger battery packs with the current technology may not be the best option. i think the charging network is the way to go. if we could charge EVERY where we parked, we would hardly need more than L 1 charging.

we leave home with a 100 mile range. drive 15 miles. stop plug in, recoup 5 miles. drive another 15 miles plug in. recoup another 5 miles. drive 10 and plug in, recouping only 5 miles at a time. we could make 5 stops, go home and have "half a tank" left.

sure some will need faster charging, larger packs, but most of us wont and i am betting the "wont" crowd is over 90%.

the validity of building the infrastructure hinges on one question; is electric vehicles a flash in the pan? will hydrogen make them obsolete or undesirable? .

imm, even if hydrogen came out tomorrow, electrics will still have a market.

so why not build the charging infrastructure? we will be using it until the flux capacitor is perfected and that wont be for another 47 years
 
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