With All The Volts Counted, Taxpayers Lose Again

Investor's Business Daily ^ | February 15, 2012 | Staff

[raptor22]

Incentives: Doubling down on industrial policy failure, the administration decides to bump up the taxpayer subsidy for Government Motors' touted electric car. Who said its range wasn't enough to drive us to the poor house?

Tucked away in the recesses of President Obama's 2013 budget, a budget that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he will not bring to the Senate floor, is a nugget that speaks volumes about the troubles we're in:

While delaying the Keystone XL pipeline, the administration plans to increase the subsidy for the Chevy Volt and other "new technology" vehicles to $10,000 per car.

"We give consumers the incentive to buy these cars," White House economic chief Gene Sperling said at a budget briefing where he announced the 33% increase from the current $7,500 subsidy. The budget document, titled "Investing in Our Future," includes a goal of putting "1 million advanced technology vehicles on the road (by) 2015."

So, doing the math, we're talking about a $10 billion dollar "incentive" to get people to buy the Chevy Volt and similar vehicles. Can people be bribed to buy Government Motors' electric car? Even with the $7,500 rebate for each buyer, Chevy sold only 7,671 Volts in 2011.

We wonder if people making $170,000, the average income of the relatively few buyers of the $40,000 Volt to date, really need the incentive. It is not your typical family or factory worker's car. So doesn't that make this the functional equivalent of tax credits for the rich?

As the Daily Caller notes, only Mercedes-Benz drivers, at an average $174,000 a year, earn more than Volt drivers. Their high income puts Volt buyers in the top 7% of households, according to census data, and slightly above the rankings held by households with BMWs, Lexuses or Cadillacs.

[dila813]

The perverse thing is, that this will cause GM to increase the price on the car because they don’t make money on them.

So the consumer isn’t going to get them cheaper, they won’t sell more, and GM will pocket all the money.

Real Smart!

[Seaplaner]

"We give consumers the incentive to buy these cars," White House economic chief Gene Sperling said at a budget briefing where he announced the 33% increase from the current $7,500 subsidy..."

This means, essentially, that you and I pay money NOT to own one of these gems.

(And, it's more than worth it, n'est ce pas?)

.

[NCLaw441]

You posted: “The Volt will run up to 40 miles on a charge”

This reporter got 25 miles per charge.
******

I guess 25 mpg is part of UP TO 40 mpg, as would be 10 mpg.

[TheBattman]

But just today, I read that GM has reported is biggest profit every - some $7.6 billion...

Of course - how much of that is taxpayer subsidies of the Volt (and who knows what else)...?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/michellekrebs/2012/02/16/little-celebration-for-record-gm-profit/

[TheBattman]

Increasing the subsidy for the Volt to $10K??? That is the direct-to-consumer subsidy. That isn’t including the subsidy for the manufacture of the car in the first place- aren’t those figures somewhere around $250,000 per car?