GM Electric Car Not Selling Well… Why Are We Surprised?

“A General Motors spokesman announced today the plug-in hybrid electric Chevy Volt would stop production for five weeks and 1,300 employees would be temporarily laid off, according to a report in the Detroit Free Press.”

Now why would anyone be surprised about this… less than 30% of all automobile owners have a secure spot at home to “plug-in” and charge up…  and the amount of time to charge is long.. and the total range of travel is very limited…. so who in their right minds thought the electric are would be the end all and beat all….

Hydrogen  … in MY opinion… Was .. and still is… the best choice overall for us to use  … Fuel Cell Technology is  far more advanced than the battery technology… and besides, electric costs to plug-in are still higher than hydrogen…

COMMENTARY | General Motors, the recipient of so much government largess that it has been called “Government Motors” by critics of automobile company bailouts, as temporarily suspended production of the Chevy Volt.

Citing slow sales and what it called “exaggerated” media reports of the Volt’s problems such as the reported tendency of its batteries to catch on fire, GM has laid off 1,300 workers. It promises to hire them back and resume production in late April.

GM’s decision comes with it considerable embarrassment to President Barack Obama, who boasted at a GM plant in Detroit that he would personally buy a Chevy Volt when his presidency ends “in five years,” according to the CBS News affiliate in Philadelphia. The Wall Street Journal suggests this development imperils Obama’s goal of seeing a million electric cars on the road by 2015.

The production halt of the Chevy Volt is the latest example of the perils of Obama’s green industrial policy. Obama believes the government can drag the U.S. kicking and screaming into a green economy in which everyone tools around in electric cars and lights and air conditioners are powered by wind mills and solar panels. As William Tucker of the American Spectator points out, green energy technology is not only unready for the marketplace, but trying to force it into the market leads to scandals like Solyndra and howlers like Obama’s touting of “green slime” fuel.

Economists have known since Adam Smith and most likely even before that the aggregate wisdom of the marketplace, of millions of people making decisions based on their self interest, is far more adroit at driving an economy than the lofty dictates of politicians and bureaucrats. If people want electric cars they will buy them and there will be plenty of businesses willing to sell them. If they do not want electric cars, not even the mighty federal government can make them want them.

Obama can ruminate about people clinging bitterly to their God, their guns and their gas guzzlers all he wants. But he can no more make people cling to government and green energy than King Knut could cause the tides to roll out at his command. Government is limited in the United States by the Constitution. It is also limited by objective reality. Only God can work miracles and Obama is decidedly not God.