sic semper tyrannis

The Acolytes of Environmental Doom must be pleased. $4 a gallon gasoline has the automakers scrambling to produce hybrids and purely electric cars. One such concept, much seen being touted in major circulation magazines, is the Chevy Volt.

Yippee skippy. Can’t tell you how enthused I am about this, especially the notion that this limited-range car requires 6 hours of charging to go 40 miles. Hard cheese if you need to drive more than that. But hey, who would need to go that far? That’s just crazy talk…

As for price, the Wired article linked above has it as $35,000. If you want such a silly accoutrement as windshield wipers. But that was all the way back in the dark ages of February 2008, when gas was a mere $3.

For a more complete rundown on the idiocy of GM, consider this from today’s Wall Street Journal:

GM’s leaders are not nuts, and yet to pour hundreds of millions into a race to launch an electric car, the Chevy Volt, guaranteed to lose money on every unit sold, begins to seem a peculiar strategy for a company in dire liquidity straits.

With each hectic advance in the development process, the expected sticker price to consumers has gone up. Reportedly, off-the-shelf electrical fixtures, such as headlights and taillights, won’t suffice because they draw too much power. At last leakage, GM is saying now the Volt may need a sticker price of $45,000.

At best, the Volt will be an affluent family’s third car. It will have to be plugged in for six hours a day – i.e., it will be a car for a suburbanite with a sizeable garage wired for power. It won’t be a car for a city dweller who parks on the street or in a public lot. It will travel 40 miles on a six-hour charge. After that, a small gas motor will kick in to recharge the battery while you drive. Some reports claim the Volt will get 50 mpg in this mode, but that’s hallucinatory: If using a gasoline engine to power an electric motor were so efficient, the streets would be full of such vehicles. (Our guess: The car will be lucky to get 15 mpg under gasoline power.)

The General has been building crappy cars for decades. My 1970 Pontiac was sufficient to convince me to never, ever, buy anything made by GM. Since that GM P.o.S. I’ve mostly bought Hondas and Subarus. Never looked back — they were better when new, ran better, and did not require the tender loving car that my Pontiac, and Chevys before that needed just to motorvate down the road.

So, let’s review the bidding. You can, today, buy a nicely-equipped Honda Fit that gets close to 40 mpg on the highway for $15K or so. And, if you really wanted a larger car, about the size of the Chevy Volt, there’s always the totally-reliable Civic. Yours for under $20K, again, very nicely equipped.

So, how ’bout that Volt. Can’t get you where you might want to go; you’ll need a private garage to plug it in at least six hours after each use; probably performs like an asthmatic, elderly dwarf on its mini-gas engine. What’s not to love for three times the cost of a Honda Fit?

Perhaps the Journal’s author erred when he wrote “GM’s leaders are not nuts.” Maybe, but surely they don’t know much about those of us who actually buy and drive cars. I’d say they have a strong corporate death wish. Which the market appears about ready to grant them: GM’s shares are now at about $10. About the same as they were during the late 1950s, half a century ago.

Except that $10 per share today would be more like $1.50 per share in the mid-1950s. Way to go, General. You’ve found a way to destroy your company. We’ll miss ye. Not.