Electric Cars Found Wanting

GM will halt production of the Chevy Volt for five weeks due to a lack of demand. A company which makes batteries for electric cars lost around $258 million dollars. Electric cars aren't selling, and even hybrids aren't doing all that well, despite gasoline being at around four bucks a gallon in most of the country. What does it tells us?

For starters, nobody wants the stupid things. Secondly, no amount of government cajoling will make people buy them. Thirdly, everyone knows that the environment is both resilient and not nearly so bad off as the liberal environmentalists claim. When you top it all off with the fact that electric cars and hybrids cost more than traditional gasoline vehicles, and it's no wonder Volts don't sell. Such is not a, ahem, good climate in which you can influence people to buy what you want them to buy. The consumer wants what he wants.

Just give electric cars time, supporters say. But why? Essentially for the same reasons we have already listed, and likely a few more. Outside of a lack of options, you cannot make folks spend money on what they don't want.

You want to spread the purchase and use of electric vehicles? Burn the gas until there's no option but to use hybrids and the like. And get the government out of the car business while you're at it.

The consumers, as we've said, can see through all that. Consumers will not buy because of government pressure, outside of lacking other options. Necessity being the mother of invention, people aren't going to buy nontraditional vehicles without having to. Only when car makers are completely free to produce what they know the consumers want, which means they'll find a way to produce cheaper electric cars and hybrids when it pays them, will such cars become dominant. Before that, we simply have our tax dollars spent unwisely, with automakers forced to spend cash on things which they would rather not. Cash which could be used towards making better gasoline driven vehicles.

Let the market determine what we drive. Anything short of that, or short of absolute necessity, only makes it tougher on the consumers and workers the Obama Administration claims to love so much. Driving up taxes and increasing the cost of personal transportation will only stall private initiative.