“The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’ they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened.”

Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas


Monday, October 29, 2007

Build it and they will come

This is an electric car....pretty much the ridiculous euro-junk that I would expect.

This is also an electric car. If I ever get an electric car, it'll have to look more like this.

Finally somebody figured out that one of the primary reasons people haven't warmed up to the idea of electric cars for short commuting, is the issue of running out of "gas". Where do you recharge if you make an unscheduled trip to the mall for instance? Well the laws of economics might just have solved this problem with marketability. Some really smart guy is getting together capital to fund the placement of charging stations ubiquitously around the country, like gas stations, in parking decks, road-side, etc., and businesses can have charging stations for employees and visitors so that no matter where you go, you can re-charge you battery.

In my opinion, this is precisely the right way to go about it...from a business standpoint. Creating onerous government-mandated quotas for electric car sales won't work because you can't force people to buy something they don't want. Remove all the obstacles to demand first, then stand back and let the entrepreneurs take over. The market-based, capitalist economy always, always finds a way to satisfy demands of consumers. The lure of profit is a powerful motivator.

Look, I don't give a rip about despoiling the environment by driving too much. Everybody knows that, but I do care about my money. I like driving my gas-guzzling SUV, but if there's a cheaper, convenient way to go back and forth to work every day, even I'm willing to entertain the idea of electric cars.

If you want to read the article on this go here.

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