We Don't Need No Stinking Sparky Cars

I don't mind electric cars......just don't tell me I HAVE to own one.

Did Pres. Obama buy one of Ford Focus Electric cars?

I sure ""hope" so, otherwise some might label him...disingenuous.

And yet, there are tens of thousands of EZ-GO electric golf carts cheaply and effectively moving people.

The last thing coming out of Detroit that actually WORKED, were cup-holders, 40 years ago.

At least the sales contract doesn't say, in fine print. "batteries not included."

mike

I guess no iPad lineups for these babies eh...

Assuming one buys into the global warming alarmists' notion that human activity-caused CO2 is the problem, which I don't, the whole issue of electric cars raises a question.

Where does the electricity for the electric cars comes from?

Well in the US, which produces 40% of its power from coal-generated power plants...it seems that the eco-weinies are substituting the emissions from a car's exhaust pipe to a power plant's smoke stack.

Another example of how stupid these people are.

But... but... the environment?!

At the NASCAR race in Richmond VA coming up, Ford will use a Focus Electric as the pace car. If they don't plug it in during the green flag laps, it may be the first pace car to DNF in a race. And talk about advertising to the wrong target market.

http://espn.go.com/racing/nascar/cup/story/_/id/7820300/ford-use-all-electric-car-nascar-pace-car-richmond

In regard to electric cars, I was just reading that Burt Rutan loved his EV-1 and was sorry to give it up. It got 85 miles to a charge.

No doubt he didn't use it in the Mojave Desert.

"Well in the US, which produces 40% of its power from coal-generated power plants...it seems that the eco-weinies are substituting the emissions from a car's exhaust pipe to a power plant's smoke stack.
Another example of how stupid these people are."

Electric cars are a more efficient use of emissions than combustion engine vehicles, and not all enviromentalism falls under the alarmist label - efficient use of pollutant resources is an important and discussed factor.

Left wingers duped into buying an electric car or hybrid would never stoop to buying an actual American car. Put a Mazda, BMW VW or other foreign tag on it and they would.

And don't forget the extreme pollution from the mining of rare earth metals to produce those batteries. Then there's the huge recycling problem and expenses when these massive batteries start to die.

Yah... really eco-friendly those coal-chuggers are!

Electric cars: Rich people toys subsidized by poor people.

Our local daily rag just ran an editorial touting the 'forward thinking' of our City council for installing 4 electric charging stations. According to the editorialist, you're either a Jetson or a Flintstone.

Meanwhile, a quick call to the Manager of Operations revealed that he had no idea of the cost - other than actual installation - for the charging stations. Nor did he have any idea of the number of electric vehicles in the city. Council in their wisdom, purchased three of them - which is one less than the number of charging stations. Needless to say, the city has it's own charging units, so the four 'consumer' stations won't be in play.

The manager waxed elequently about a 'Leaf Owners Club' in Victoria - a distance a Leaf couldn't achieve without a couple of chargings. Meanwhile a quick google reveals the first Leaf was sold in Victorin in late March and that Nissan will only sell to customers living in a 65 km. range of a Nisan dealership authorized to service the Leaf.

I haven't seen a single Volt, Leaf or Mitsubishi EV in Nanaimo yet.

Ford has reported just 12 all electric Ford Focus sold in January and February and none in March or April.

Having just looked at a Detroit newspaper, it shows a very impressive graph regarding expected future sales of electrics. The graph shows sales increasing expoentially between 2012 and 2017. It looks very much like the upward curve on the Obama debt.

Expected sales in 2017 rise to 250,000. In the same year, total expected vehicle sales are 16,000,000.

Do the math.

I wish them luck. A gas powered Focus is listed at $16,500. Electric is approx. same price as the Volt or around $40 m. This will seem like a helluva deal as soon as you've had your lobotomy.

Many things missing from the equation ..... in the USA especially to plug in a car charger would mean a coal fired generator plant would be supplying the energy .... not only that .... many areas are already short of electrical power .... remember the rolling brown-outs a few years ago .... what would happen if even 20% of the cars were electric .... it would be a nightmare of shortages .... and after your commute to work in an electric ... you would plug in your car to charge up the battery .... who pays for that ? How do they meter it?....

Bottom line is that it takes 400 to 500 pounds of battery to equal the energy in one gallon of gasoline .... and to produce that hydro power burns dirty coal somewhere anyway.

For many years I operated electric fork lift trucks for Campbell Soup , the batteries weighed as much as a 1959 Buick and had to be changed after 4 hours. At the end of an 8 hour shift you had two dead batteries that had to charge overnight . The chargers were the size of industrial welders and were so noisy you could not carry on a conversation beside them.

Ford Motor Co. sold about 12 Focus Electrics

About????? No wonder,besides stealing taxpayer money through buy-outs,Found On Road Dead is going kaput. They can't even keep track of the number of cars they sell?

Math is hard.