The Myth of the Electric Car

GM has missed it's annual sales goal for the Chevy Volt by 4,000 cars. That may not seem like a lot, but when you consider that the sales goal was only 10,000 and that several of cars that were sold were "fleet" sales (Municipalities, corporations, etc.) the numbers don't look good for the Volt. See the report below.



I understand the desire to go electric. I don't like paying $3.00 a gallon for gas any more than the next person. The problem is that the auto industry just cannot build an affordable electric car that the normal person will want to buy. There was a fad in marketing a couple of years ago about "going green". It was believed that if you marketed something as "green" that you could charge a little more and people would still want to buy it because the majority of Americans wanted to "save the planet" and they would buy the "green" item versus the "non-green" item to look good in front of their friends.

The problem with that, though, is that the American consumer is a lot smarter that the average marketing strategist will give them credit for. In the case of the Chevy Volt, GM honestly thought that there was such an environmental panic among the American people that they would hit a home run by producing a $41,000 electric car that would keep the planet from dying.

$41,000 is way too much to pay for a car for the average American. The only people that are going to buy this thing are wealthy people, government agencies, and corporations. The few individuals that are buying this car are doing in for vanity purposes. They want to look good in front of their friends. "Hey, is that a Chevy Volt you're driving?" "Yeah, I'm just doing my part to save the environment".

This way of thinking is so misguided. Where do you think the electricity comes from? Guess what -- 70% of the electricity created in the United States comes from fossil fuels. Another 20% comes from nuclear power, a source generally regarded as environmentally "unfriendly", thanks to The Simpsons.

So, when you buy your all-electric car and you're plugging into the grid to charge that puppy to travel a whole 50 miles, and you're thinking to yourself how much good you're doing for the planet, just think about that coal-fired plant giving Mother Earth lung cancer or that nuclear plant causing three-eyed fish or those windmills that kill thousands of defenseless birds each year. Is it really better for the planet if you plug you car in to go 50 miles or to buy a couple gallons of gas?