Karma: No plug-in hybrids without a gas tax?
Does the Volt make sense when gas is $2.00 per gallon?Watched some of Newsweek's Future of the Auto Industry discussion yesterday on CSPAN. Interesting panel, but mostly a bunch of people pushing individual agendas, rather than an open discussion of possibilities.
For instance Michigan Governor Granholm framed everything around saving the Michigan Auto Industry. Henrik Fisker painted a rosy portrait of the Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid and claimed 50 percent of all vehicles sold by 2020 will be plug-in hybrids.
Mike Jackson, CEO of AutoNation disagreed with Fisker. He predicted 10 - 15 percent of all vehicles sold might be plug-in hybrids by 2020. However, most US consumers, according to Jackson, will not pay more to do the right thing, and Jackson has decades of auto experiences and numerous consumer studies to validate his position.
A gas tax, however, could make change happen much faster and Jackson pointed to July of 08 as an example. Because of high gas prices, the far majority of consumers made fuel efficiency their top priority.
Labels: plug-in hybrid vehicles, quantum fisker plug-in hybrid
posted by Dahcredyns at
7:27 AM
2 Comments:
yes at 2.oo a gallon a huybrid MASS produced with not lot of frills makes very good sense to me. Im talking a drive out price of 19k.....then within a year we start to see USED hybrids for even less! Then when gas skyrockets up to 3.75 by next year lots of people with cheaper hybrids are happy, as are the ones that got their hands on great priced used ones :)
see it makes sense..at least a lot more than a 10 ton vehicle carrying just one wide american too and from mcdonalds.
i'm with you. i like the mcdonalds reference.
ironic that in this recession, mcdonalds has done well. we'll take the cheap burger in the short term, despite its negative effects on our long term health.
why should we expect more aggressive consumer action on cars if most consumers put little value in taking care of themselves?
still, according to studies i've seen, people are changing. we've not hit critical mass yet, but we're gaining.
Post a Comment
<< Home