The Electric Myth: Lack of Consumer Demand Killed the Electric Car

Nicolas Loris / November 02, 2010

“Don’t wanna lose it, it’s electric! (Boogie Woogie Woogie)” Those lyrics (from Marcia Griffiths’ song “Electric Boogie,” better known as “the Electric Slide song”) are quite indicative of the Obama Administration’s position on the electric car. No matter how much the market and consumers reject the electric car, the government will continue to push forward with subsidies to produce and purchase the vehicle. Charles Lane wrote about the electric car in Saturday’s Washington Post:

[The ad campaign] asks consumers to make an economic and technological leap of faith—just as both GM and the firm’s biggest backer, the Obama administration, have invested, financially, politically and psychologically, in plug-in hybrids and other electric vehicles. How else to explain the fact that both Washington and Detroit persist in their costly electric-car project despite mounting evidence that the vehicles serve no particular purpose, environmental or economic? (more…)