Courtesy of Bruce Krasting.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) did a good job of shredding the electric car industry and the government’s role in its evolution with this report (Link):
I’m not knocking electric cars, I’m knocking DC’s role in this industry. Washington has provided the loot necessary for research on battery design, it has committed to up to $25Bn of soft loans to the auto industry and it is subsidizing every electric car that is sold. Without the massive support from our “rich” Uncle Sam there would be no electric car industry in the USA. The question is, “Is this money well spent?”
The government’s role with electric cars goes back to the 2009 emergency spending program ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act):
ARRA provided $2 billion in funding to the Department of Energy (DOE) for grants under that program. Of that amount, $1.5 billion was awarded to battery producers, intermediate suppliers for those producers, and recyclers of vehicle batteries; the other $500 million was awarded to manufacturers of components for electric vehicles and intermediate suppliers of that manufacturing.
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