All Charged up

In Detroit, Obama Motors … er, General Motors announced last week that it will boost production of its Chevy Volt from 15,000 this year to 60,000 next year to meet what executives anticipate will be a strong increase in demand.

We’ll know soon enough whether this is actually a prudent business decision or one simply designed to please the company’s congressional and White House patrons.

But at this point, all signs point to the latter.

Less than a month before GM made its announcement, BMW’s North American CEO told the Detroit News that while he’d like to sell a lot of his company’s new ActiveE electric cars, he doubts he will. Electric vehicles won’t work for "at least 90 percent" of the population given current battery capabilities, BMW’s Jim O’Donnell said. Tax credits designed to encourage the purchase and manufacture of electric vehicles are a waste of taxpayer money, he argued.

And on Wednesday, a USA Today/Gallup Poll found that "nearly six in 10 Americans … say they won’t buy an all electric car no matter the price of gas." Many Americans have concerns about the driving range, recharge time and high prices of electric vehicles, the survey found.

While Barack Obama has said he’d like to see 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015, research firm J.D. Power and Associates says a more likely figure would be 95,000, less than 10 percent of the president’s goal.

This is the best the alternative energy crowd can hope for after government intervention after government intervention to push electric cars on the public? Perhaps the realities of the marketplace are more powerful than many on the left appreciate.