Alternative Energy Craze + Chevy Volt = Socialism

Today's Wall Street Journal has a great article discussing GM's decision to build the all-electric Chevy Volt. The thing is a total white elephant, costing hundreds of millions to design and produce and in the end will sell below cost, dragging down GM's already weak bottom line.

GM's leaders are not nuts, and yet to pour hundreds of millions into a race to launch an electric car, the Chevy Volt, guaranteed to lose money on every unit sold, begins to seem a peculiar strategy for a company in dire liquidity straits.

With each hectic advance in the development process, the expected sticker price to consumers has gone up. Reportedly, off-the-shelf electrical fixtures, such as headlights and taillights, won't suffice because they draw too much power. At last leakage, GM is saying now the Volt may need a sticker price of $45,000.

So just why is this toad being built? Why, to satisfy moron politicians who are driven by the environmental lobby, of course.

GM executives are not nuts. They justify the costs and risks of the Volt as a way of changing GM's image in the minds of consumers and politicians. To commit a pun, the Volt is GM's vehicle for making a bailout of GM politically acceptable.

The company has already started signaling it expects Washington to provide a whopping $7,000 tax credit to Volt purchasers. In Europe and the U.S., under whatever fuel economy and emissions regulations prevail, GM also expects special favoritism for the Volt. The goal is to re-enact the flex-fuel hoax, in which GM receives extra credit for making cars that can burn 85% ethanol, even if they never see a drop of such fuel.

CEO Rick Wagoner last week laid out the case to Barack Obama personally for turning GM into a ward of the state, by way of direct and indirect subsidies to support a transition to "alternative" fuel vehicles.

Can we have massive financial bonfires to support enviro-socialism? Yes we can!

Let's hear it for burning piles of coal and dollar bills at the same time! Hooray!
Photo used without permission from treehugger.com where this excellent comment was left.