Another Lie

In 2011 obama promised that by 2015 there wouldbe more than 1 million electric cars on the road.

He lied - again.

... with just days to go, he's only about 826,000 or so cars short of that goal. 

Instead of 200,000 Nissan Leafs on the road today -- as Obama's Department of Energy predicted in 2011 -- there are less than 70,000.

And while Obama forecast 375,000 Chevy Volt sales by 2014, just a bit more than 71,000 have made it off the showroom floor.

Fisker, which was supposed to be selling 85,000 electric cars a year by now, went bankrupt last year.

Add it up, and there are a grand total of less than 180,000 plug-ins on U.S. roads today. Worldwide, there are only 400,000.

And so, after shoveling $8 billion in taxpayer money into electric cars, Obama quietly ended up ditching his 1 million goal late last year.

The electric car picture isn't likely to get much better in the years ahead, no matter how much money the government throws at this technology.

As Mark Mills carefully and devastatingly explains in an article on Real Clear Politics, electric cars face one impenetrable obstacle in replacing gas-powered cars -- it's called physics.

"Pound for pound (and pounds matter) the chemicals that comprise gasoline store 40 times more energy than the best chemicals in batteries," he writes. "Gasoline is not only more dense but also remarkably safe, easy to store, and portable."

He goes on: "The underlying difference in energy density — hydrocarbons vs. electrochemistry — is locked in the physics of the associated atoms and molecules. No venture capital, government subsidy, or computer magic can change that," he writes.

What this means is that electric engines must be far heavier. "A Tesla battery pack, plus motor, weighs over 1,500 pounds. A loaded fuel tank, plus motor, in a Mustang weighs just over 500 pounds."

Electric cars are also, he explains, far more expensive to drive than gas-powered ones when you include all the costs involved.

Back in the day, one of the things I taught was cost-benefit analysis. I used to pound into my students heads that they must consider not only primary costs and benefits, but secondary and tertiary - and beyond - ones as well.
 

In the case of electric cars, that includes not only the cost of batteries and electricity, but also the cost of constructing those batteries, generating and distributing that electricity, and even the cost of building the facilties to acquiring the carbon fuels or renewable energy used to generate the electricity that charges the electric cars.
 

Science and business - two things the obama administration and most progressives know nothing about.