A Million Electric Vehicles

Back in January, during his State of the Union speech, President Obama said that he wanted the U.S. to “become the first country to have 1 million electric vehicles on the road,” and he wanted it to happen by 2015. Given current sales of the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf, the president may hit his target . . . sometime in 2064. In May, U.S. sales for the much-hyped Volt totaled 481. The Leaf did better, with 1,142 units sold. That’s a grand total of 1,623 electric cars sold for the month. At that torrid rate, it will take about 639 months, or a bit more than 53 years, for domestic sales of electric vehicles to reach 1 million. Of course, none of this is surprising. Electric cars are the Next Big Thing, and they always will be. What is, ahem, shocking, is just how gullible the Obama administration, and much of the mainstream media, has been about the potential for electric cars to garner a significant share of the market. Why would consumers buy a Volt, which gets 40 miles per gallon on the highway and costs $40,000, when they can buy a Chevy Cruze, which sells for less than half that amount, is nearly identical in size, and gets 42 miles per gallon? The answer is, they wouldn’t. In May, General Motors sold 22,711 Cruzes. Put another way, for every Chevy shopper who chose the Volt, 47 others decided the Cruze was a better value...more