Free Republic

General Motors has announced that Mary Barra will be replacing Dan Akerson as CEO as of mid-January. Ms. Barra was previously the head of global product development. As such, she already has to take partial responsibility for the over-hyped and low-selling Chevy Volt along with the upcoming Cadillac version of the car. With Consumer Reports now stating that the new Cadillac ELR (a glorified Chevy Volt) gave them "sticker shock," will the ELR be the first major embarrassment for Ms. Barra? Anyone who has followed the Chevy Volt story could have guessed at what the prospects for a gussied up...

What do the poor need most? Jobs? Nah. In Governor Moonbeam’s California they need free electric cars.Free means that you’ll be paying for them. Even if you’re not a California resident, there will probably be Federal money involved. “The California Air Resources Board is now embarking on a program that would help poor people buy energy-efficient vehicles. In one scenario posed by the agency, a “voucher” might even pay the full price for a Nissan Leaf, an electric car with an MSRP above $21,000, or for used cars with lower price tags.” But it only stands to reason. If...

I have to hand it to General Motors and those Chevy Volt supporters who continue to come up with creative ways to espouse the virtues of the slow selling and heavily subsidized vehicle. They just won't give up. The latest figures being presented in political fashion utilize large numbers that, on the surface, appear impressive. When analyzed, the figures give more insight into just how much taxpayer money is being wasted on green subsidies, particularly on electric vehicles (EVs). Sound the trumpets! According to Green Car Reports, the Chevy Volt has saved 17 million gallons of gas to date. Now...

DETROIT -- Tesla Motors (TSLA) shares dropped Monday after reports of a second fiery crash involving the Palo Alto company's Model S electric car.

A fire (screen capture from Jalopnik.com) that torched a Model S from the formerly Teflon Tesla Motors on Tuesday blackened its front end, lowered its stock price, and (further) revealed a corporate arrogance not seen since Fisker Karmas were alight. But CEO Elon Musk saw to it that taxpayers werefully paid back their $465 million Department of Energy loan, so as watchdogs over the public purse we can forget all about it and just go on about our business – right? Wrong. The incident near Seattle still should be of great concern because Tesla still heavily depends on tax breaks...

French President François Hollande hailed “a new industrial revolution” in inaugurating Friday a new lithium battery plant built by the Bolloré group, which manufactures the Bluecar made popular by France’s electric-car sharing scheme. … Earlier in the day, as he attended an environmental conference in Paris, Hollande vowed to halve energy consumption in France by 2050 and cut fossil fuels by 30% by 2030. The French president has also made electric cars “a priority.” …

Germany hopes to put one million electric cars on the roads by 2020, but just 3,000 have been sold this year. A study released on Tuesday casts doubt on sales projections. Electric cars have been among the highlights of the IAA motorshow in Frankfurt which opened last week. New models include the BMW’s i3. … Researchers argue that the best scenario for electric cars is for the price of batteries and energy to decrease, while diesel and petrol gets more expensive. …

General Motors Co. GM +1.89%is developing an electric car that can go 200 miles on a charge for around $30,000, officials at the largest U.S. auto maker said, offering a challenge to luxury electric-car startup Tesla Motors Inc. TSLA -0.58% Doug Parks, GM's vice president of global product programs, disclosed the effort on Monday at GM's battery laboratory and test facility in Warren, Mich., but didn't say when the car would be available. He said while the technology is available now, the cost of the batteries remains too high to be able to pull off the feat today. GM's move...

America will not achieve President Obama’s goal of 1 million electric cars on the road by 2015. This is despite large subsidies from the federal government and many states for making batteries and vehicles as well as additional subsidies for purchasing these vehicles. Very few consumers are interested in expensive cars with limited range and the anxiety of not knowing if the battery charge will last for their entire journey. As a result, manufacturers are dropping prices in order to sell the vehicles they are forced to produce. First Nissan slashed prices of its plug-in vehicles early this year, then...

Electric cars are currently more damaging to the climate than some other vehicle options, mainly because of the emissions involved with producing large batteries, according to a report from Climate Central. The nonprofit research organization acknowledged that electric cars have helped to lower U.S. vehicle emissions because they are consuming electricity produced increasingly from natural gas, which burns cleaner than coal. “But when all the carbon emissions associated with building and driving electric and high-mileage gasoline cars are included in the analysis, the all-electric advantage goes up in smoke,” Climate Central said. “In the vast majority of states, the significant...

“At the end of the day, you cannot deny how smart Elon Musk is.” That’s the conclusion of Karl Brauer, a senior analyst with Kelley Blue book who for years doubted electric-car maker Tesla Motors Inc.TSLA -0.31% would still be in business in 2013, much less outperforming Wall Street’s expectations with its second-quarter results released this week. Brauer’s comments reflect feelings many auto industry insiders have expressed since Tesla got started a decade ago. Like many fledgling companies, Tesla repeatedly overpromised and seemed to underestimate the difficulty of starting a clean-sheet manufacturing operation, especially in the hidebound and prohibitively expensive...

The Chevy Volt madness continued this week with General Motors announcing that consumers will see a $5,000 decrease in the price of President Obama's favorite green wonder-car. Sales of the Volt have been dismal, with most consumers refusing to be as smitten with the car as the President and the few enthusiastic green ideologues who seemed to believe that spending approximately $20,000 more for a car (over a gas-powered rival) that can save them about $3 a day in gas makes sense. What seems to go unrecognized is the fact that the price cut comes at the expense of GM...

Last summer, California highway police pulled over pop star Justin Bieber as he sped through Los Angeles in an attempt to shake the paparazzi. He was driving a hybrid electric car—not just any hybrid, mind you, but a chrome-plated Fisker Karma, a US $100 000 plug-in hybrid sports sedan he’d received as an 18th-birthday gift from his manager, Scooter Braun, and fellow singer Usher. During an on-camera surprise presentation, Braun remarked, “We wanted to make sure, since you love cars, that when you are on the road you are always looking environmentally friendly, and we decided to get you a...

On Monday, BMW announced that the U.S. base price for its all-electric i3 will be $41,350, not including any federal or state incentives. For General Motors' Chevy Volt, and possibly Tesla Motor's Model S, BMW's move spells major trouble. Here's why. Bad news, GM With a starting MSRP of $39,145 in 2012, the Volt was the best-selling EV, and it's not hard to see why. Really more of an electric hybrid than a straight EV, the Volt combines a 9.3-gallon fuel tank with a lithium-ion battery. This combination allows the Volt can go an estimated 38 miles on pure battery...

Former Electric-car Engineer: Electric Cars Pollute More Than Gas The New American 12 July 2013 Is the only "green" aspect of electric cars the money some companies make off them? If former plug-in advocate and General Motors engineer Ozzie Zehner (shown) is correct, this is exactly the case. Author of the book Green Illusions, Zehner once built his own hybrid car that could run on electricity or natural gas. And, he writes in a recent article entitled "Unclean at Any Speed," he was convinced cars such as his "would help reduce both pollution and fossil-fuel dependence." But he now...

The good news for GM these days is that no one has been consumed in a fiery death due to engine compartment fires since the Chevy Volt was discovered to spontaneous combust after accidents shortly after production began. The bad news for the company is that while Chevy Volt sales in June set a record, prior to June their sales for 2013 sucked despite general auto sales setting post-crash records. “With signs that sales of its Chevrolet Volt battery car could be coming unplugged,” reported NBC News in June, “General Motors is offering potential buyers as much as $5,000 in...

Conservatives have long argued that the pursuit of electric vehicles through government grants and credits is a bad idea, mainly from a public-policy and economic standpoint. But what if electric vehicles are a bad idea from an environmental standpoint, too? An environmental activist who once pushed for EVs and now works as a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley now calls electric vehicles “unclean at any speed” in a recent article for the engineering journal IEEE Spectrum (via Weasel Zippers and UPI): The idea of electrifying automobiles to get around their environmental shortcomings isn’t new. Twenty years ago, I myself built...

NEW YORK (MainStreet) — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced last month the launching of the "eGallon" - a tool that will compare the costs of fueling electric vehicles (EVs) to fueling gasoline-powered ones. According to the report, the national average eGallon price is about $1.14. This means that an EV can travel as far on $1.14

Last summer, California highway police pulled over pop star Justin Bieber as he sped through Los Angeles in an attempt to shake the paparazzi. He was driving a hybrid electric car—not just any hybrid, mind you, but a chrome-plated Fisker Karma, a US $100 000 plug-in hybrid sports sedan he’d received as an 18th-birthday gift from his manager, Scooter Braun, and fellow singer Usher. During an on-camera surprise presentation, Braun remarked, “We wanted to make sure, since you love cars, that when you are on the road you are always looking environmentally friendly, and we decided to get you a...

BERKELEY, Calif., July 1 (UPI) — Electric cars, despite their supposed green credentials, are among the environmentally dirtiest transportation options, a U.S. researcher suggests. Writing in the journal IEEE Spectrum, researcher Ozzie Zehner says electric cars lead to hidden environmental and health damages and are likely more harmful than gasoline cars and other transportation options. Electric cars merely shift negative impacts from one place to another, he wrote, and "most electric-car assessments analyze only the charging of the car. This is an important factor indeed. But a more rigorous analysis would consider the environmental impacts over the vehicle's entire life...