Jan 12 2009
Give Us Electric Cars and Lots of Them
Dear Auto Makers: we would like some seriously fuel-efficient cars for 2009.
Like a lot of people, I’m interested in new cars, in part because I don’t have one and I would like to buy one. However, the only cars I would consider buying right now are hybrid, or electric. So this year’s Detroit Auto Show is interesting to me because I want to see how the car companies we gave all those billions and billions and billions of dollars to so their businesses could survive are going to pay us back. Will they pay us back by giving us good fuel-efficient cars we want, or the usual flashy and/or mammoth junk we don’t want? You see, most Americans just want to get from Point A to Point B without polluting the planet and causing the end of endangered species, including humans. We don’t need to impress anyone, really, we don’t.
I know people who are really into cars and even they just want something more practical and affordable to drive around. Many of those people “get” climate change, but not quite enough of them. Car manufacturers could help with this. Even if they don’t, they need to give us cars that are incredibly fuel efficient, since we are past peak oil and gas is already going up again and will continue to rise now into the stratosphere, and climate change marches on. After President Obama urges Congress to increase CAFE standards and work on climate change, asking us to sacrifice as I expect him to, do they only expect rich people to be able to drive? Rich people won’t be rich anymore if the peons can’t afford to get to work.
The good news is that this year at the Detroit Auto Show we have the debut of some electric cars including the Chevy Volt and some hybrids like the giant Ford Escape plug-in pictured above. I would call these two vehicles “good starts”. We need to make a lot more progress than this, however. And oddly enough, though the car show was mostly without dazzle this year, Volkswagen did something kind of unusual: “Volkswagen Uses Breakdancers, Child Labor To Show Off New Car”. (I think that was meant to be humorous).
Here is some actual progress– an electric Cadillac, joining the “Volt” fleet of GM cars. About time!
Read about it here. OK, OK, let’s tone it down a bit for the rest of us. Toyota debuted an electric car, and so did China’s BYD car company. It will give the Chevy Volt some good competition as it’s expect to cost around “$ 30,000 - $40,000″. I have news for them. If they want the average Joe or Jane to buy these electric cars, and that’s who drives cars the most, they better lower the price. With prices like these, it looks like I’ll be riding a new bicycle instead of driving a car this year. Even so, this new Chinese car is sounding pretty good. If I wait a year, the price will probably go down, or I’ll buy a used one. Here is the BYD F3DM electric vehicle (EREV):
