Remember how we had to bail out Chrysler and give the company to Fiat because they were going to save American jobs and the environment with their awesome new electric cars? The electric cars that were going to start hitting the streets in 2010? Apparently, now that they've gotten the money, it's festina lente; Fiat has apparently disbanded the team that was trying to rush these cars to market.
The only comfort is, I'm not sure if anyone ever bought the top-notch twaddle about electric cars; I assume the administration, and voters, mostly made the decision based on how many angry interest groups a collapse would produce. Still. It's worth keeping in mind every time we hear companies demanding money from the government based on their outstanding future contributions to society. Which you hear an awful lot, these days.
Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Free Market 1, Carbon Fairy Appeasement 0.
Meanwhile, the Earth was almost hit by an asteroid last week.
In a saner world, the budget for asteroid research and avoidance would be be bigger than the AGW budget.
In a saner world, the budget for asteroid research and avoidance would be be bigger than the AGW budget.
In an even saner world, the budget for asteroid research and avoidance would be bigger than the less than 1/10th of 1% that it currently spends from NASA's yearly budget.
It is a joke what we currently spend dealing with this issue.
One hopes it won't take a Tunguska event on the East Coast to wake us up...
Your link links back to this post, TallDave
Yeah, this board parses HTML tags weirdly - you need to put the URL in quotes for it to work.
This doesn't have anything to do with Global Warming.
It's out-and-out fraud. It's illegal. And Barack Obama participated in the scheme ... just like he's participating in the bait-and-switch scheme that "creates and saves jobs" by spending billions of our tax dollars.
In reality, the money is being diverted. Very few, if any, jobs are being created. It's all a hoax so that monies can be diverted for uses other than that which they were authorized by the Congress.
Only when Barack Obama is no longer our President will these fraudulent thefts of taxpayer funds stop.
Hey, I don't like our President either, but it was Bush who first bailed out Chrysler, and in any event, politicians have been stealing from us for generations and will continue to do it. As Menken said. "Government is a broker in pillage, and every election is a sort of advance auction of stolen goods." Nothing is going to stop when Obama's out of there. Might slow down some, to be sure.
"... it was Bush who first bailed out Chrysler ..."
No it wasn't.
Democrat Jimmy Carter first bailed out Chrysler in 1979 with a $1.5 billion loan guarantee sought by chairman Lee Iacocca.
True, Carter did bail out Chrysler the first time, but that one actually worked out well, and the company was quite healthy for a time. This round was started by Bush though.
Never really understood the environmental merits of electric cars that have to be recharged with energy largely produced by coal-fired power plants.
I guess when the Fiat mangement scrapped this program, they did not worry about where the electricity would come from. What would have alarned them are the very poor commercial prospects of being a hasty me-too late comer in a problematic new market.
We'll recharge them with our solar cells overnight.
Derek
I love that. The funny part is that there are a lot of people who pride themselves on caring about the environment whose thinking of such matters looks a lot like that.
The slightly less extreme version is the person who thinks you can put up a few solar panels, with a few square meters of area, and replace The Man's electric power grid. Concepts like kW/square meter don't enter into that thinking.
That's because you're thinking pragmatically, and the people pushing this divide into two groups with totally different thinking.
The first group pushes electric cars for theological reasons, more or less, the 'I care about the environment' people who want symbollic issues to makes themselves feel good. Electric cars serve this purpose rather neatly, especially for people who have only a very vague idea of where electricity comes from, other than the socket. They like electric cars for the same a-rational reasons that they hate nuclear fission power.
(Most of the them wouldn't know a neutron from the neutral gear, but they know they approve of electric cars and hate fission, because of 'the environment'.)
The other group consists of rather cynical pols and activists who manipulate the first group for their own ends. They may or may not know the score on electric cars, good and bad, but they couldn't care less, because their agenda is tangential.
No way! Are you telling me it was all a lie? Color me surprised! Hoodcoodanode?
As Buzz said, I'll believe that electric cars are serious for the mass market (and "for the environment") once we're building a lot more nuclear power plants.
There isn't that much spare capacity in the US electric grid now; moving any considerable number of cars (ie, millions) to electric power is going to cause... issues.
You can charge your car at night. That's the off-peak period when demand generally drops. The electric company reduces rates for commercial customers at those times to encourage usage.
However, you have to be careful about just when off-peak is.
You can see California's daily demand here: http://www.caiso.com/outlook/outlook.html
Thanks, but the off-peak rates don't necessarily correspond to off-peak demand. You have to check your particular rate schedule.
You're right that there's spare capacity at night in most places. But the problem isn't only system capacity. It's also residential electrical infrastructure, and that tends to be the limiting step.
It doesn't matter how much electricity you can generate at the plant if the substation serving your neighborhood has a small capacity. The typical reason for residential brownouts and blackouts during the night in the summer months is not that the power company can't produce enough electricity (although that happens). The reason is usually that the lines bringing electricity to your block can't handle everyone running A/C on full blast.
Charging just one electric car with a 50-mile range will increase the average daily household's electrical use by 50%. There's no way that many neighborhoods are prepared to draw that much juice off the grid.
I've been a long time proponent for electric cars, but I think anyone who had been paying attention to this space knew that Chrysler was either lying or smoking crack when it came out with the details of their electric vehicle line. IIRC they claimed that they not only were going to have at least some of these vehicles on the market before GM hit with the Volt, but they were going to have better performance and be about the same price, all in a package that has the same aerodynamics as a brick.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have a EV Jeep Wrangler, but this was vapourware from the moment it was announced.
It's worth keeping in mind every time we hear companies demanding money from the government based on their outstanding future contributions to society. Which you hear an awful lot, these days.
Does this apply to the banksters as well? Lord knows they aren't helping the greater economy.
I think the banksters' strategy was closer to blackmail than bait-and-switch...
Fiat made no secret of the fact that they wanted Chrysler for the truck and SUV platforms, and the dealer network. It was an efficient strategy for reentering the U.S. market and they got the UAW to bend over in the process.
Fiat knows the U.S. market isn't a growth market so pumping tens of billions of their capital to establish themselves for a few percentage points of market just didn't make sense... China is where that money is going.
"I assume the administration, and voters, mostly made the decision "
Did we vote on that thing? I must have slept in that day.
Indeed. As far as I remember, the public at large was opposed to the bailout. For example: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2008/12/poll_americans.html
Nothing stopped the US from entering into an agreement with Fiat for the money with a requirement to develop an electric car and to impose penalties if a good faith effort were not undertaken.
The electric car ploy was as much a ploy by the US as Fiat to justify spending funds to preserve union jobs.
Jeez. Didn't see that coming.
I am just waiting to see how many Chevy Volts are in the budget for next year.
We obviously should now hire Fiat-Chrysler and the UAW to build us a planetary asteroid defense system.
Oh, wait. We already have one. It works. It is called the atmosphere.
It leaks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater
I forget the exact numbers, I think we're supposed to get a Tunguska every 100 years and something that could wipe out a city every 50. It would be nice to have a little warning and maybe something to nudge their trajectory a bit.
It is interesting. If we had a near approach, and the ability to nudge it somewhat, we might be able to create a new moonlet, large enough to make the ideal, permanent space station. No need to lift up tons and tons of structural materials, just use what's there already, bore within it and seal it well, and you have a nice, orbital space-junk-safe staging point for lunar spaceflight, and thus a cheaper way to support development of the moon. And you would be living and building technology in hope, not fear.
By chance alone, most impacters will hit open ocean. Good news: no vaporized real estate and populations. Bad news: tsunamis from hell, and some seriously f'ed up weather patterns for weeks if not months after.
If asteroid deflection is developed as a government program, it will probably deflect safe asteroids INTO the earth.
There is no gain without some pain! What could go wron?
It's worth keeping in mind every time we hear companies demanding money from the government based on their outstanding future contributions to society. Which you hear an awful lot, these days.
But not always: US is Destroying Manufacturing.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a_EbBQyskKl0
This is precisely the effect Barack Obama is going for.
He fists Michelle every time a company moves more jobs offshore. That puts more and more people under his thumb and dependent on him for their survival.
This is a disgusting comment. Admins, can it please be removed?
That's it. The next time you cross the line, I'm banning you.
Apparently, now that they've gotten the money, it's festina lente
If only...
I don't think that is what Augustus had in mind with his motto ('make haste slowly'), but rather, the fastest way to get stuff done is to act deliberately, carefully and efficiently. It doesn't mean to blow something off or to drag ones feet.
@ ian: festina lente=make haste slowly
Do it right the first time.
There is never time to do it right,
but there is always time to do it over.
Is there time for Fiat to reinvent Chrysler ?
@ jeff: Crazy like a fox; Fiat money move.
Ah, so, but is it crazy enough to work ?