Today's starter topic: Despite billions of dollars in taxpayer corporate welfare, electric vehicles are failing to sell everywhere, not just in this country. The results worldwide are showing that Obama's subsidies for vehicles no one wants are failing even more than you'd think:
The Daily Mail reported that sales of electric cars in the United Kingdom have fallen so sharply that there are now more charging stations than there are vehicles. If you thought the flaccid U.S. sales of the Chevy Volt (7,671 units) and Nissan Leaf (9,674 units) were a letdown – despite significant government funding for research and development, batteries, charging systems, and a $7,500 tax credit for buyers – the signs from Europe won’t lift spirits.
“Just 2,149 electric cars have been sold since 2006, despite a government scheme last year offering customers up to £5,000 (about $7,700 U.S. dollars) towards the cost of a vehicle,” the U.K. newspaper reported. “The Department for Transport says that around 2,500 charging points have been installed, although their precise location is not known.” That’s just 430 cars sold per year. [...]
The aversion to EVs exists north of the border as well, where the Montreal Gazette reported there are “so many green cars, so few buyers” as “automakers keep pushing electrics, despite slow sales.” Only 58,000 of the 18 million vehicles sold in Canada the last 11 years were hybrids.
And as if to add a final stake of debunking to the propaganda that heralded EVs for nearly all of 2011, Motley Fool analyst Alex Planes characterized the build-up as leading to a “big face-plant,” calling the year-long romance “America’s sad love affair with the electric car.”
Will the American media ever wise up and realize just how wasteful it is to subsidize a product for mass distribution that no one wants? Do you think that conservative politicians should make more of an issue about this?
