If I drive 40 miles a day and recharge at night how much will my electric bill go up? Since in California they charge sales tax on gasoline they will have to start charging sales tax on electricity. Likewise for the feds. They are going to need their highway taxes. So who can explain the cost benefit to going electric.

Today a service station owner might sell an average of 12 gallons of gas per transaction, if that drops to 5 gallons he will either have to charge a lot more for gas or go out of business. If he does you may need the 40 miles to find a service station to buy your 5 gallons of gas. So if the service station owner goes out of business he can get another business, recycling batteries maybe. I would bet that the auto makers will have a lock on that business. This also means that the generation it will take to turnover the domestic fleet the older cars will be paying through the nose for fuel. The greens will say “good, an incentive to buy an electric vehicle.” The poor will say “I can’t afford to buy one.”

In my opinion this will only work if electricity can be generated extremely cheaply, cleanly and quickly. The greens will say “Not so fast we need to study the environment for the next 10 years.”

I am sure that I am not the only person thinking about this but I have zero confidence in Washington. They never think beyond the next election.

Unless they fast track the building of alternative fuel power plants in parallel with electric car development it is doomed to failure.

If I go under financially, Ford is not going to write me a check and GM is not going to give me a “hardship” discount. I won’t be driving a new Chevy, I’ll be walking in old shoes.

I will learn from my mistakes and move on. Or I will starve. That is the way things work.

Add some tax incentives from the government and vehicle import tariffs and you have the makings of a real bailout for middle America. I really hope to see some progress after the 8 years of torture this economy has weathered.

I have to disagree with that viewpoint. I think that Detroit has made some reasonably good vehicles in the last decade or so (albeit there have been some stinkers too). Now, I would have wholeheartedly agreed with that statement in the 70’s and 80’s but they did learn some things about quality after getting smoked by the Japanese, plus from some of the European companies they invested in.

Now that is aside from poor management decisions, and investing in product lines such as the SUV’s mentioned or the really big kicker is the pinch that all of the UAW concessions over the years has put them in.

Regardless, it’s not pretty…

People are clamoring that there is not enough clean energy available. At nigh the cars can be charged, Yes the coal buring or gas burning plants will increase CO2 but then there will be a real reason to start nuclear plant construction.