Posted by Snow in Why isn’t the USA the premier producer of the Hybrid car?
Today is the age of the hybrid automobile. Every newfangled car manufacturer from Pyongyang province to Canada to Brussels to Detroit should be turning out hybrid autos. The materials should be lighter and less expensive to make because the footprint is smaller and there should be new cost efficiency and tax breaks for stimulus related manufacturing activity that render a hybrid car more affordable.
Yet look at who is emerging as the premier manufacturer, China (hardly shopping local) while the carmakers in Detroit have had almost a trillion dollars flung at them and the joint is shut down. Why (and where) are all those little boys who played with cars when they were small and are now grown and itching to run a innovative electric hybrid car manufacturing enterprise?
Hybrid cars are sustainable, but supply and price are hardly saturation supportive. I am angry that one of the most green friendly and eco-intelligent manufacturing concepts in this depressed economy is being handed to China, (known for its efficient global carmaking exports?). Yeah, if you live in Tunisia and your choices are that and a used Golf.
I want to buy an American hybrid car, not a Silkworm Ladybug or Glider or whatever they are naming them. The big ticket carmakers offer “versions” but they hardly justify that cost. Paying over $20,000 for a car is not green. Supporting extensive metal production and pollution manic industry is not sustainable.
And since when did cars have to cost so much? Supposedly most of the research and design has been done. What vendor in their right mind is overpricing for plastic panels and battery wires? Why, when the whole world knows that Obama has thrown money to Detroit carmakers to survive, are cars above $5,000 jamming off the assembly line? Detroit wants to be saved by the American taxpayer, gouge the public, and absorb the tax savings and energy initiatives?
Americans can never saturate the electric technology of the hybrid car until there are enough of them on the road to affect popular culture. Impacting how the American driver chooses a car is key. So why is there a waiting list anywhere? Is it going to be like the Ipod, where one factory stimulates demand to the stratosphere?
As one of the foremost (if not first) fossil fuel consumer nations in the world, the USA should be stamping out hybrid cars by the thousand. We know we are car people. We know who keeps that traffic bumper to bumper. The business commuter drone, mom-and-pop shop stops, seniors behind the wheel and more. We want our mobile soccer moms, access to tailgate parties and connectors for our coffeehouse slacker Titans of Warcraft.
If there was ever a need for a state-run industry, hybrid cars in the United States would blow the lid off foreign fossil fuel and petrochemical dependence. We don’t have a oil-and-gas president anymore with Middle East ties to maintain. So how did China get there first? Consuming a product brought by tankers filled with foreign cars is not sustainable shopping.
RSS Feed