Electric cars not electrifying drivers

Nov 29 - Evansville Courier & Press

 

For whatever reason, something within the U.S. government doesn't love gasoline-powered cars, but their owners have resisted efforts by well-meaning bureaucrats and environmentalists to get them to drive less or drive something else. The alternatives being pushed by the government are cars powered by ethanol or electricity.

Ethanol seems to be self-destructing as an alternative fuel. This year, corn-based ethanol proved to be peculiarly susceptible to a problem gas-powered cars are not: drought. The drought that afflicted the Corn Belt affected not only ethanol prices but the feed costs for livestock, distorting food prices.

Cheaper sugar-based ethanol could be bought from Brazil and one day in vast quantities from Cuba, but farm-state politics largely blocked both avenues.

For years, doomsayers have been saying we had to end our "addiction to oil" because we soon would run out and so would the Mideast. Instead, geologists keep finding huge new reservoirs of oil and natural gas. And who knows how much properly run Mexican and Venezuelan oil industries could produce?

That leaves EVs - electric vehicles - which, despite billions spent on research money, still have a major drawbacks. The batteries are expensive and need frequent recharging, a serious negative.

The cars are expensive: $39,995 for the Chevrolet Volt and $36,050 for the Nissan Leaf, both of them rather average-looking midsize sedans. The Volt comes with a $7,500 government subsidy some would like to see raised to $10,000 - in other words, offer motorists a large bribe to buy them.

Sales have been short of electrifying. According to USA Today, about 26,100 Volts and Leafs have been sold this year, about 0.2 percent of vehicle sales.

According to studies done for the industry, buyers of electric cars tend to be "very well-educated, upper-middle-class white men in their early 50s with ideal living situations for EV charging," meaning the owners have enclosed garages with the proper outlets.

This does not sound like the demographics of your average traffic jam. For the electric car to take off as everyday transportation for the masses, one of two things has to happen: Either the prices must fall precipitously, or the rest of us must become very well- educated, upper-middle-class white men in our early 50s.

USA Today reported last week electric cars will remain a small portion of the market unless automakers can figure out ways to cut prices and boost benefits, according to a new study by J. D. Power and Associates.

"The bottom line is that the price has to come down," says Neal Oddes, senior director of the green practice for J. D. Power. "There also needs to be an improvement in infrastructure, or the number of charging stations outside the home."

We're betting on the price coming down.

Originally published by Evansville Courier & Press.

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