We Don’t Need No Stinking Sparky Cars

Alternative Subsidy 66 Comments

Via Truth About Cars;

I’m a Chevrolet dealer… we have a Chevy Volt on the lot, it’s been there now for four weeks. We’ve had one person come in to look at it, just to see what it actually looks like… Here’s a car that costs $45,763. I can stock that car for probably a year and then have to sell it at some ridiculous price. By the way, I just received some additional information from Chevrolet: in addition to the $7,500 [federal] tax credit, Pennsylvania is going to throw another $3,500 to anybody foolish enough to buy one of these cars, somehow giving them $11,000 of taxpayer money to buy this Volt.
When you look at this, it makes absolutely no sense. I can stock a Chevy Cruze, which is about a $17,500 car and turns every 30 to 40 days out of inventory… or I can have a Volt, which never turns and creates nothing for me on the lot except interest costs… So a lot of these things that we’re seeing going on have a tremendous economic impact on people who are being asked to stock them and sell them. There is no market for this car. I do have some friends who have sold them, and they’re mostly to people who have an academic interest in it, or municipalities who are asking to buy these cars.

h/t
Related! You’ll get a charge out of this.

66 Replies to “We Don’t Need No Stinking Sparky Cars”

  1. I anticipate some back room dealing to use Federal money to entice municipalities to buy the Volt. The car is emblematic of the “Green” movement,it doesn’t work very well and is too expensive.
    Speaking of Moral Superiority cars,about the only vaunted “Smart” cars I see locally all have the City or Regional District logo on the door.

  2. and a cruze gets 45 mpg (imp) and is the same damned body, so what’s with the extra 30 grand to have the privlege of sitting on a LiPo bomb.

  3. Of course it’s overpriced crap, only purchased by elitists with money to burn.
    Kinda reminds me of this one thing back in the 60’s; I think it was called a ‘computer’ or something.

  4. I can just imagine the horrendous headaches that will come from trying to maintain all those on board computers and shit. Not to mention the recalls. There is no way in hell those cars are in any way efficient.

  6. “I think it was called a ‘computer’ or something.”
    That’s not true – you’re not thinking at all.

  7. So… $11,000 in tax credits… and the chief consumers are municiple governments…
    And the taxpayer grabs his ankles…

  11. what happens to a car like the VOLT in -30C? or -50C with wind chill and 2 feet of snow???????like they can get in Saskatchewan??????
    makes no sense at all

  14. dmorris@5:38- “the car is emblematic of the Green movement and doesn’t work very well…” Exactly.
    Kind of like the East German Trabant. While the west was making Mercedes and BMW’s the commies on the other side of the wall were turning out a unit that would hardly get itself out of the factory before it was on a hook heading to a repair facility.

  15. “In related news: ‘115-year-old electric car gets same 40 miles to the charge as Chevy Volt'”
    Imagine that! It’s almost as if there was something significant about that 40-mile figure …
    In other news: “Roman Legionnaires 2,000 years ago carried the same 80lb load as today’s infantryman”.

  16. ((…or municipalities who are asking to buy these cars.))
    So, in other words, a full $45,763 paid by the taxpayers to try and legitimize a piece of crap.

  17. I did hear a rumour that the bright lights at Calgary City Hall were looking at buying a few Volts as a test fleet. My advice would be to have them use their own (personal) resources to test fly this crap and leave my money out of it.

  18. $45k for a green vehicle that is in every way inferior to a Prius. This is GM efficiency, and US industrial policy at work.

  19. The reason I will never buy a Volt or any car of its ilk is because I care about the environment. Batteries are a helluva lot more damaging to the environment to produce (and later on dispose of) than Carbon Dioxide (a.k.a. plant food) ever will be. Also, a car using electricity is essentially a coal burning vehicle. It produces emissions, but the driver gets to feel self-righteous because he/she doesn’t see them – they are 100 miles away at the coal fired power plant. Go Green – buy a diesel!

  20. Thomas Edison gave up on electric cars, and urged Henry Ford, an employee of his at Detroit Ed., to pursue his internal combustion research, as it didn’t have the range limitations inherent to electric batteries.

  21. Does anyone here remember the big push to get propane made into a motor fuel. The government got involved then and decided that a certain percentage of the fed govs fleet had to be propane. That resulted in the army having a large fleet of completely useless vehicles that could never be used “in the field”, and didn’t work on base for very long either. I predict that it won’t be long before the army is forced to replace their Hummers with volts.

  22. Alex – Your point is that the both “systems”; the human body and electric batteries have fundamental limitations to their power output which neither time nor human ingenuity can significantly improve? Agreed.

  24. Sooooo, nobody is buying a car that has no heater. Funny, that. (When heat is required, the gasoline engine starts automatically and aimlessly idles along just to provide heat. Sorta defeats the purpose of a “no fossil fueler”, eh.)

  27. Had enough experience with the new diesels. They are going to be maintenance nightmares over time, can’t see the latest greatest idea pushed by the enlightened as being any different. Yet I have to help pay for it.

  28. ron in kelowna-
    What the ” greens” really care about is control of/submission of the people. In their view, your point is impertinent; your duty is to do what they tell you to do: they, alone, have the vision, intellect, and high moral sense to determine society’s direction.

  29. The most hilarious part of the posting was Edmonton buying an electric van to transport their painters. I don’t do much painting, but I’m assuming that the electric vehicle painting season in Edmonton consists of just the months of July and August; the snow free months.
    Having frozen cans of paint in an unheated van with shivering painters on a -40 C day does have it’s advantages, though, as when they smash up the van there won’t be paint all over the place. Van smashups are inevitable as there probably isn’t enough power available to defrost the windows.

  32. I am from Edmonchuk.Called the socialist Iverson and asked him where the power was coming from to recharge the batteries.As he spluttered on about saving the world,told him bluntly to pull the unicorn out of his ass and tell me where the power was coming from.
    Funny thing.The broadcast on Globull TV was cut to something else.
    Call these asshats out every chance you get.And NO,you do not have to be nice about it.Nice is used by the lefties to f&^k you!

  33. And meanwhile Rob Renner is looking for a flower patch to tend. Had he not bought into this SCAM globule warming, lock stock and barrel, he might just still have one of those 260,000 a year jobs like he used to have. Until some, just some Canadian politician, with maybe just a little set of BALLS, calls this garbage” AWG” a SCAM, just say it! it is a SCAM, well,,, we will see billions more flushed to offshore accounts of politicians and SCAM artists like parasitic Suzuki and Gore! Go volt go to the wreck yard where they belong.

  34. “You’ll Get A Charge Out of This” = “You’ll Be Charged For This.”
    Love the logic of the “buy it first on the taxpayers’s dime and then see if it runs” bit:

    “The purchase of the van is part of a pilot project to determine if the City can add more electric vehicles to its fleet. The van will be tested to see whether it can stand up to Edmonton’s cold weather.”

    As if there’s no available data on how well these vehicles work in cold weather.

  35. I read through the Edmonton article and was impressed by the $600 a year savings in fuel costs. Unfortunately,that saving can not be compared to the overall cost of the vehcle,because they didn’t put the vehicle cost in the article. A simple oversight,for sure.
    But what really impressed me was their slogan ” The Way We Green”. Wow,that makes it all worthwhile.

  36. ron in kelowna @ 8:44 “At least this one is green” and furthermore serves a useful purpose as there will be no mosquitoes around.

  37. Posted by: first timer at October 14, 2011 8:11 PM
    And they also leave out what would happen when all of North America has electric cars and all plug them in at the same time to charge overnight. Alright, peak electricity from 10 p.m. til 6 a.m. Woohoo!

  38. I watched Jeremy and James test drive two electric cars on Top Gear the other night. They tried to do a short trip between cities in England. After way too few miles they had to push their car to the nearest outlet then wait 13 hours while the batteries charged. Needless to say their experiment did not cast a very positive light on electric powered vehicles…well unless they do a bumper car ‘chicken wire’ power grid over all the roads.

  39. The best battery is a tank full of hydrogen. The problem is it takes more energy to separate hydrogen than is generated from burning it. On top of that is the fact that you’re driving a bomb. If they can solve those two issues hydrogen could work but we’d also need a lot more power plants.

  40. “Alex – Your point is that the both “systems”; the human body and electric batteries have fundamental limitations to their power output which neither time nor human ingenuity can significantly improve?”
    Nope! Try again? I’ll give you a hint – compare the weight and power consumption of the older vehicle to the new one. Also, compare the lethality of a Legionnaire to a modern Infanteer. As long as your IQ is larger than your waist measurement, you should be able to detect a pattern.

  41. James @ 11:03, I agree with you for the most part. Hydrogen, while highly volatile is not a bomb. Being lighter than air it would rise above the ground. Hydro carbons being heavier than air tend to stay at ground level causing real problems. People associate hydrogen with the Hindenberg. It was burning diesel that killed the passengers. The hydrogen simply floated up. Okay it was burning but it didn’t settle to the ground.
    My other point is that wind and solar could be put to a more practical and realistic use by breaking down water into hydrogen and oxygen. We refer to H as a battery as it is now transportable. Given that solar panels produce DC current, they are the logical choice for this process.

  43. From the print pages of Motor Tend Oct. 2011 …
    The segment “MT Confidential” be Mike Conner….
    Excerpt: … Ford marketing chief Jim Farley saying… “F**k GM. I hate them and their company and what they stand for.”
    There is much more to this article … but the salient point is the divide between auto execs who once were just part of a big family.
    Also, there is book out by a Detroit auto industry reporter named Bill Vlasic titled “Once Upon and Auto” … this promises to be a real expose of the rot and corruption in Detroit.
    Without even considering the intrusion of the green politics into the auto industry …. GM is and deserves to be the object of derision by every automobile enthusiast in the world.
    I agree …. F**K GM.

  44. IIRC, there is a Kevin here (from Toronto) who thinks these are the bees knees.
    Sales will be skyrocketing soon … so it didn’t happen this summer … maybe next summer.
    I waiting for an “expert” report stating the the Chevy Volt is the best vehicle to be in … in a blizzard.

  46. So the only people buying this car are those who are spending other people’s money.
    Posted by: BillyHW at October 14, 2011 7:02 PM
    Exactly so, Billy.
    Qualicum Beach councillors in their vast wisdom, just bought several Mitsubishi EV cars. Slightly larger than a ‘Smart’ car, they cost over $40,000 (including the optional ‘fast chargers’). For that price, the town could have purchased three Toyota Yaris or similar vehicles that provide excellent mileage. And noting Dan’s comment regarding Qualicum also buying a Volt, I can only conclude that because it’s much more upscale than the EV, it’s likely the Mayor’s little electric limousine.
    But they could hardly hope to get the accolades of the local press or their colleagues in other cities/municipalities as they try to out do each other in ‘green cred’ at their taxpayers expense.
    Incidentally, I note in today’s newspaper that the Mayor of Nanaimo plans to mandate that all new housing have “reinforced roofs with plumbing pre-installed…so homeowners can add green technology whenever they like.” But what if you have no intention of using green technology. Why would they require that you pay to have the infrastructure installed – unless they are planning to mandate that all new housing have ‘solar panel heating installed too?
    Never mind personal choice. Forget the additional expense that is reflected in your mortgage payments. Don’t concern yourself with the long pay back period for water heating solar panels or the fact that you no longer have any choice in how you choose to heat the water in your home.
    When asked what he thought of the Mayor’s scheme, Nanaimo’s ‘Environmental Planner’ said that while they don’t intend to include residential systems, “it doesn’t mean we couldn’t and it sounds like a cool idea.”
    With municipal elections coming up, I sent a blistering letter to the local newspaper, suggesting they get out of our personal lives and let us make our own choices regarding how we live our personal lives.

  47. The city of Edmonton used to have electric Zamboni’s.
    At 10,000 for maintenance every 3 years. They are now mothballed. Cost a fortune to run. Broke down . Where worthless doing ice maintenance as they would never charge enough for 3 scrapes. Acid in the Air & our work boots would melt from dripping batteries.We use Natural gas only.

  48. Electric vehicles are ludicrous and actually cause more total pollution, UNLESS they’re recharged from a completely renewable source of electricity. The north American grid is more than 50% coal fired, so using more electric cars there will actually increase pollution.
    Just another example of greenwashing for fun and profit at the taxpayers expense.
    As compared with a grid connected electric vehicle, a high MPG gasoline or diesel vehicle produces less pollution over it’s lifetime [mine-well to wheel] for significantly less cost per mile.
    The lowest pollution and cost per mile over a vehicle’s lifetime is with LPG or CNG fuel.
    This study is enlightening for the technically inclined:
    Comparing Future Alternative Fuels and Powertrain Technologies for Vehicles
    http://itee.uq.edu.au/~serl/ITEE%206-11-03.pdf

  49. Old spice;You are wrong.The hydrogen of the Hindenburg did incinerate the passengers.Watch the film.The hydrgen could’nt float up as it was inside the gas bags as there were many in the air ship,notjust one big one.Hydrogen is extremely flamable and helium is non flamable.The US uses helium in their air ships as there is only two places in the world that helium has been discovered.Amarillo Texas and Swift Current Sask.By the way,propane powered vehicles are banned from underground parkades and so would hydrogen powered vehicles be.

  50. Alex – wouldn’t an infanteer be one who climbed infants? Infantry man or infantry soldier are much better terms.

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