Interesting read about electric cars...

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Pure-electric cars are still too expensive for the average Joe, and also their range is a matter of concernment. It's perfectly understandable, since many folks can't afford to buy a pure-electric for city commuting and get a longer-range vehicle for occasional road trips.

[Frank Lee]

Most- by that I mean most every- households are multi-vehicle.

[NachtRitter]

439 passenger cars per 1,000 people in the US, according to this article : It's Official: Western Europeans Have More Cars Per Person Than Americans - Max Fisher - The Atlantic

[Frank Lee]

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/vehicles...0_fotw618.html

2009: 1.92 vehicles/household; 1.52 vehicles/worker

http://www.autospies.com/news/Study-...usehold-26437/

This one says 2.28 vehicles/household...

[NachtRitter]

Each report slices different data differently;

• Experian report doesn't include households with no cars (and doesn't include other personal vehicles like motorcycles)
• NHTS report includes all vehicles, even golf carts and commercial vehicles, but only if the contacted household (which was reachable by land-line; no cell phone survey results were included) agreed to participate in the survey
• Carnegie report looks at raw numbers of registered passenger cars & light trucks (no commercial vehicles and no other personal vehicles) per capita (rather than per household), thereby including those that cannot drive yet. Using US Census #s of an average of 2.6 people per household, it comes to 1.27 passenger cars per household

How is it relevant? I would say that the (cell phone reachable only) young people will buy cars later (than we did when we were young) and when they do, it will need to meet all their (long or short distance traveling) needs.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by RedDevil

Please don't half-quote, killing the point I make. To elaborate the obvious: Money spent in subsidies on locally produced energy gets in the local economy and is not wasted but put to good use.

I didn't intend to change the meaning of your quote when I disagreed with subsidies. Even acknowledging that subsidy money tends to stay in the local economy, I cannot rationalize the forced wealth redistribution from individuals to very specific areas of industry. Also, since we are increasingly living in a global economy, I don't see the point in isolationist practices. If I don't buy cheap oil from Arabs, someone else will and the Arabs will still gain wealth. I might as well be the one to purchase it while it's cheap and put it to work to grow my economy.

You can only make it in the eco market by investing your own money. Subsidies are just additional.

This supports my argument that subsidies are not generally required to develop a technology and make it viable. Instead, it generally just makes specific businessmen and politicians wealthy at the expense of you and me.

Do you think the Nissan Leaf would not have been developed without the US $7500 subsidy? It likely would still have been developed, and even if it wasn't that just means it doesn't make economic sense at the moment.

Would you forbid me to say I do not mind subsidies are being given for environmental friendly technology? On this forum?

Opinions should never be forbidden. The whole purpose of this forum is to inform and to discuss. Ideas don't get confirmed or rejected without a rational discussion about their pros and cons. It takes a diversity of minds to address problems from multiple angles and hash out ideal solutions.

A major point of disagreement is often a difference in philosophy, which is why politics and philosophy are a natural topic of discussion here. For example, the answer to the question of who owns the fruits of ones labor will shape the answer to the question of what ought to be subsidized and how much.

[RedDevil]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

... This supports my argument that subsidies are not generally required to develop a technology and make it viable. Instead, it generally just makes specific businessmen and politicians wealthy at the expense of you and me. ...

I bet you cannot name one that actually got rich from subsidies. I can't for sure. Elon Musk of Tesla, Nissan with their Leaf, even Honda with their hybrids(*) all lose money on every car sold despite the subsidies. Without subsidies those cars would be even more expensive, sell less, suffer from being produced in even lower quantities; not get build or sold at all.

It takes visionaries like Edison to break the cost/profit curfew on new technology. When Edison promoted electricity for home lighting he insisted that the light bulbs he sold should never cost more than 40 cents, even though it cost him $1.20 to make them. Because he knew that at $1.20 per lamp most households would just stick to their trusty oil lamps. He expected, rightly so, that in time with large numbers the cost per lamp would eventually drop below 40 cents. The rest is history; we don't use oil lamps any more. We still use oil cars, though.

Not many entrepreneurs have the balls to take risks like Edison did nowadays I fear, unless they are really rich and determined to do something good with that.
So what should a government do, concerned about pollution and such? Pass a law to forbid or curtail ICE powered cars? Or subsidize cars that don't use ICE's? Or just do nothing, ignoring the problem?
I don't like them sitting around doing nothing. I don't like them putting fences to prohibit people from using their cars in the way that fits them best.
What rests is to stimulate the good cause by putting money in, a fraction of all the taxes we pay.

I think the government cannot function if it cannot exert its power bestowed on it by us though democratic means. Subsidies are a benign way of nudging those involved towards the wanted goal.

(*) Recently Honda came under fire because the batteries in the Honda Civic Hybrid from model year 2009 onwards frequently failed, often just outside the warranty limits. So they extended the warranty limits for both duration and mileage, even though that will just increase their loss.

[NeilBlanchard]

EDTA: Wall Street Journal attacked plug-in vehicles with "fuzzy math"

The EDTA calls Lomborg's conclusions "tortured."

[TheEnemy]

Passenger vehicles in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Overall, there were an estimated 254.4 million registered passenger vehicles in the United States according to a 2007 DOT study

ACEA - European Automobile Manufacturers' Association

The European vehicle fleet reached over 256 million units in 2008, an increase of 1.2% compared to the previous year. With 224 million vehicles, passenger cars accounted for the highest share of the vehicle fleet (87%).

It looks like the EU study was for all vehicles, while the US study was just passenger vehicles. So here in the US we still have by far more vehicles per capita than the EU.

[wdb]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

This one says 2.28 vehicles/household...

They must have surveyed my driveway when the Jeep was rusting away.

Originally Posted by redpoint5

[...]I cannot rationalize the forced wealth redistribution from individuals to very specific areas of industry.[...]

I'm trying to ignore you but this one pushes a button. Everybody that pays tax wants to be empowered to say exactly where every penny goes. Good luck with starting the new country you're going to need for that one.

This supports my argument that subsidies are not generally required to develop a technology and make it viable. Instead, it generally just makes specific businessmen and politicians wealthy at the expense of you and me.

The simple fact that there is a thing called duh intuhnet, with a thing on it called duh intuhweb, the first created with $US and the second with $Swiss, puts the lie to your statement.

For example, the answer to the question of who owns the fruits of ones labor will shape the answer to the question of what ought to be subsidized and how much.

Wrong question.