Not Even In New York City

My son is good friends with one of the pro-tennis players participating in the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament in Flushing Meadows, New York. So Monday morning we decided to attend the opening round, and visit his friend. As we were driving into New York–and driving around the City on our way to and from the tournament–we observed, empirically, Obama’s fallacious assertion that electric/green automobiles are something the American public can’t live without.

My son and I talked about the dearth of electric and so-called green cars. We observed a few (five to be exact) of Toyota’s Prius on the way into the City. That’s five in our 76-mile trip into the City. Once in the City it was worse. We saw none of Chevrolet’s Volt and the only reason we saw any significant number (such as it was) of the Prius is because the police department drives them.

But we did see a lot of every other model and size of vehicle on the way into the City–and we saw more Porsche Cayennes in Manhattan than we saw Prius all the way into New York. Lexus, Porsche, Maserati, Infinity, luxury SUV’s, the 12 cylinder Mercedes Benz S Class (which averages less than 20 MPG highway) were not in short supply on the streets of New York and everywhere we looked we saw the BMW 750i. We saw SUV’s by Ford, Chevrolet, and Dodge. Of course, we saw every other make and model vehicle. But, in New York City, where because of traffic congestion it took us nearly three hours to get from Flushing Meadows to Newark, New Jersey where we planned to have dinner, we saw one Chevy Volt. Chevy Volt, the car Obama invested billions of our tax dollars into and personally lauded at every opportunity, and we saw only one. And lest I be remiss, I’m guessing the average person could walk from Flushing to Newark in probably 4-5 hours.

Now to be fair, there are probably a couple more Volts in New York’s five boroughs. But when it takes approximately 30 minutes to drive 12 blocks–$4.00 a gallon, high-test burning cars and SUV’s would be noticeably in short demand if consumers wanted electric automobiles. And for the record, the number of pocket cars we saw like the Smart Car and Fiat were not that well represented either.

So imagine my lack of surprise when, on Tuesday, I read that General Motors was going to halt production of the Volt for a month. And I certainly wasn’t surprised when GM tried to spin that their shutting down the production of the Volt had nothing to do with poor sales (of the abysmal failure).

If the Volt were a financial success, GM wouldn’t close it down the plant for 30 minutes, much less 30 days. The increase in Volt sales to 10,666 up from 2,870 last year is owing in large part to municipal fleet sales, not an outpouring of love from the consumers.

Obama continues to claim that we tried free-market capitalism and it didn’t work. I beg to differ. The fact that the marketplace has rejected and continues to reject electric automobiles and pocket cars proves the free-market is working. It also proves that Obama isn’t listening. They are being rejected by buyers across the personal economic landscape.

Take a look around where you live. Count how many Prius and Volts you see compared to other vehicle makes and models. Ask yourself the question: if Obama and his environmental cabal are so aware of what the public wants, why don’t they understand that we don’t want to be forced to spend billions of our tax dollars on what we nor the market want? Specific to that point, at least when the last Fuehrer introduced his car for the people it burned fossil fuel, it was affordable, and the people liked it.

Obama has forced a healthcare plan on us that 60 percent of the people are opposed to, and that number is going to increase when the 40 percent who favor it or are ambivalent to it see that it is a plan for dystopia that we’ll be driven to in electric cars that have a range of about 25 miles when they are running on fully-charged batteries.

But there is one thing Obama is right about pursuant to the Volt. He didn’t build it; our tax dollars did. But, because he nationalized the automobile industry, and then forced his will upon same, it was a monumental failure. If he is reelected, we have no hope of his having learned from past failure. He’ll become more dogmatic in his pernicious agenda, and the feckless Republican leadership will mumble lies on Fox News before and after their rounds of golf with him.