For all the dreamers who foster a future of transportation based upon electric motors, good luck. While many forms of hauling translate into the use of electric propulsion, the prospects are that General Motors and Tesla will not be the namesakes for EV personal transport. Government subsidies may be the Achilles heel of the car industry, but reliance on mobile electric fuel and battery storage ignores the reality that the petroleum oligarchy will just sit on their reserves and watch the long lines of extension cords plug into these high tech and costly trendy go carts.

If this craze runs with a silent noise, reliance on such energized bunnies do not qualify as a muscle car. Where is John DeLorean when you need him?

Public Funding of Tesla and GM claims "In total, Tesla has received or been promised fewer grants and tax credits than Ford and GM, but more than Fiat Chrysler. However, when loans, loan guarantees, and bailouts are considered, all three major U.S. carmakers have received vastly more government money than Tesla."

Tesla:

Total grants and tax credits: $3.5 billion

Total loans, loan guarantees, and bailout assistance: $0.5 billion

General Motors:

Total grants and tax credits: $6 billion

Total loans, loan guarantees, and bailout assistance: $50.3 billion

Government grants, tax credits, loans and guarantees of all sorts are predisposed corporate welfare decisions intended to support favored enterprises. Subsides for the development of basic scientific technology may well have a place in academia. However, providing public funds to corporatist ventures is pure politics.

Henry Ford engineered and sold his Model T without the infusion of government backing that Elon Musk has received. William Durant created General Motors as a holding company among different brands of automakers. Under the guidance of Alfred P. Sloan, GM developed the quintessential corporate manager style which much of business sought to emulate. The inevitable failure to meet the needs of the consumer caused the demise of the company which was once the largest on the planet.

Only a massive bailout and an illegal cancellation of the bond holder's first position claim on the assets in a bankruptcy allowed the resurrection of Government Motors to start another round of corporate fraud to begin. So it should not surprise any seasoned business observer that Mary Barra's intention to move manufacturing into China is an insulting betrayal to all the GM former and present employees, bond and stockholders.

Yet even this next disaster does not compare with the announced intent to fabricate only electric vehicles in the not too distant future. Well, this kind of leadership might work at a Green Party rally; but in the real world, gasoline and diesel fuel power means of transportation rule the highways.

Ah, but you say electric power is clean and fossil energy must be replaced! Sorry, my dear utopian, the world may just have to wait until 'Beam Me Up Scotty' becomes a reality. Missing from the mind warp that causes the zealots to forgo even a scrap of pragmatism about the facts or factions that go into a viable energy policy is ignored.

When President Dwight D. Eisenhower championed the interstate highway system, no one really envisioned that batteries would provide the storage energy to dash short distances between charges. Walt Disney built a Tomorrowland, but the masses of commuters require a cost effective and expansive network of electric chargers.

Do you believe that the oil companies will jump at closing their retail fill-up stations just to convert over to an electric grid receptacle? This obstacle has an even more difficult problem that no one wants to admit. Just how will the added demand for electricity be generated? If you listen to the pie in the sky environmentalists, they think that plugging into the grid is like charging their iPhone. Using an USB port just isn't going to cut it.

The next issue for the purist's demands only using electricity generated from clean sources. That condition translates into trashing clean coal, natural gas, hydro and of course nuclear power. What other methods are left to satisfy the libtards?  Industrial wind factories or solar panels reflectors have insurmountable shortcomings that are usually absent from any serious discussion of how to generate electricity for the next demand usage.

Since wind and solar cannot fulfill base load requirements; coal, natural gas, hydro and nuclear cannot be phased out to meet some fantasy of a "PC" pipe dream. Even a friendly site like Slate has to admit the obvious in the report, If All U.S. Cars Suddenly Became Electric, How Much More Electricity Would We Need?

"This means electric vehicles are a pretty crummy way to reduce CO2 emissions, given the current U.S. power mix. You can do three times as much good per dollar by fitting coal plants with carbon capture systems. Not to mention even better alternatives like replacing coal plants altogether with nuclear, wind, or combined-cycle gas plants. Mass rollout of electric vehicles is only worthwhile in tandem with massive increases in renewables generation. Perhaps in the future we’ll get there. But today’s generation market trends do not support that assumption for the next several decades."

The Business Insider points out some relevant concerns in an analysis by Morgan Stanley is wrong — electric cars aren’t going to take over.

"The startups died off, for the most part, and the traditional carmakers have seen limited demand. Tesla has more or less thrived, but it's also been selling high-priced luxury vehicles.

This has led to the uncomfortable realization that Tesla could survive, and that the traditional automakers can continue to tinker with their own EV designs, but the market won't be transformed. In fact, it could require a few more EV cycles before Morgan Stanley's outlook comes to pass — meaning that 50%-plus EV penetration won't arrive until well past the midpoint of the century."

Do your own research and be realistic. The public is not sold on electric vehicles. General Motors is ready to repeat another bankruptcy all over again.

SARTRE - December 18, 2018 

http://batr.org/utopia/121818.html