When the Obama administration took over financially ailing General Motors instead of allowing the bankruptcy courts to reallocate the bloated firm\u2019s assets to sharper entrepreneurs, more than one wag dubbed the resulting state-socialist enterprise \u201cGovernment Motors.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since then, GM has geared up production of pricey \u201chybrids\u201d that supposedly cause less pollution — until one considers battery manufacture and disposal.<\/p>\n
You also may not want to ask how they\u2019ll fare in highway crashes.<\/p>\n
Critics complained the central state was mandating production of a kind of car that truck- and SUV-hungry American consumers don\u2019t want. The Obama administration responded, in effect, \u201cNot so: Lots of the hybrids are selling.\u201d<\/p>\n
But an examination of just where those sale are coming from gives the \u201cGovernment Motors\u201d label new relevance.<\/p>\n
President Obama\u2019s own administration has bought almost a fourth of the Ford and General Motors Co. hybrid vehicles sold since he took office, Bloomberg News reports, accelerating federal purchases to make up for waning consumer demand.<\/p>\n
The U.S. General Services Administration, which runs the government fleet, bought at least 14,584 hybrid vehicles in the past two fiscal years, according to sales data obtained by Bloomberg under a Freedom of Information Act request.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government is boosting investment in a technology that has failed to win broad acceptance after more than a decade in the marketplace,\u201d conclude Bloomberg reporters Angela Greiling Keane and Jeff Green. \u201cConsumer sales of hybrids are headed for their third consecutive yearly decline.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAt some point, the reality is that for this technology to be accepted, it needs to be done without a government crutch,\u201d comments Jeff Schuster, director of forecasting at J.D. Power & Associates in Troy, Michigan. \u201cBut without a huge gas-price increase or further government demand, the natural demand just isn\u2019t going to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not only that, about 3,100 of the hybrids purchased by GSA were paid for out of $300 million that the agency received from the 2009 economic stimulus package, says Sara Merriam, a spokeswoman for the agency.<\/p>\n
So the government brags of creating \u201cgreen jobs\u201d by giving the \u201cstimulus\u201d money to itself, and then using that tax loot to buy cars from a bankrupt auto giant the government itself is now running, so it can claim it\u2019s manufacturing a \u201cpopular\u201d product? Isn\u2019t that a little like using a roulette wheel that stops on the green zero whenever the operator pushes his knee against the side of the table?<\/p>\n
Once the government subsidies run out, after all, it\u2019s not as though you can merely \u201cflip a switch\u201d and start manufacturing SUVS or pickup trucks on what was previously your \u201chybrid\u201d or \u201call-electric\u201d assembly line. If the government \u201cbets wrong\u201d on what consumers will want to buy in a few years, that factory is closed; your workers will all line up for the two remaining jobs making root beer floats at the local A&W.<\/p>\n
But the politicians won\u2019t be broke and out of work … will they?<\/p>\n
Another 5,600 \u201chybrids\u201d were bought with proceeds from selling older cars in the government fleet, Ms. Merriam says, without explaining whether those gas-guzzlers had actually worn out or not.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the beginning,\u201d Ms. Merriam says. \u201cOur main goal is to increase the fuel efficiency of the federal fleet. The other goal is to drive the market toward cleaner technologies.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u201cmarket\u201d? This is what the Obama administration describes as \u201cthe market\u201d? That\u2019s like saying the Russian \u201cmarket\u201d was happy with the Lada, since that\u2019s pretty much the only car Russians used to buy.<\/p>\n
As though they had a choice.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe lesson learned is that it isn\u2019t easy to make these vehicles mainstream,\u201d comments Brett Smith, who specializes in alternative propulsion vehicles at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan. \u201cThey are still not near the point where they are cost-competitive in the market.\u201d<\/p>\n
The government purchased about 64 percent of GM\u2019s Chevy Malibu hybrid models and 29 percent of all Ford Fusion hybrids manufactured since Obama took office in 2009, the data show. GM stopped making the Malibu hybrid in 2009 after lack of consumer demand.<\/p>\n
Hybrid and electric vehicles can be $3,000 to $20,000 more expensive than gasoline models, according to Smith Electric, an affiliate of Washington, England-based Tanfield Group. The U.S. offers as much as $7,500 in tax credits for the purchase of plug-in vehicles and about a dozen U.S. states offer additional incentives.<\/p>\n
But hybrid and electric vehicle technology only makes sense if it can stand without government support, Ford Chief Executive Alan Mulally told Detroit-area supplier executives in a Nov. 8 speech that was closed to the media.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was saying, \u2018You have to have a business that doesn\u2019t need all these government incentives,\u2019\u201d Karen Hampton, a Ford spokeswoman said, told Bloomberg News. \u201cIncentives have a role to play when you\u2019re trying to get new technology off the ground or change behaviors, but it\u2019s not meant to be a permanent part of the business equation.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Washington, that message doesn\u2019t seem to have sunk in. The Obama administration says they\u2019re getting ready to purchase lots of the new all-electric models being introduced by automakers including GM — plug-ins which some wags have already dubbed \u201ccoal-powered cars.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When the Obama administration took over financially ailing General Motors instead of allowing the bankruptcy courts to reallocate the bloated firm\u2019s assets to sharper entrepreneurs, more than one wag dubbed the resulting state-socialist enterprise \u201cGovernment Motors.\u201d Since then, GM has geared up production of pricey \u201chybrids\u201d that supposedly cause less pollution — until one considers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[17,18,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-brother","category-economics","category-transportation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-ah","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=637"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":638,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637\/revisions\/638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}