{"id":6057,"date":"2010-11-29T20:20:34","date_gmt":"2010-11-30T00:20:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/henrypayne.com\/?p=6057"},"modified":"2010-11-29T20:20:47","modified_gmt":"2010-11-30T00:20:47","slug":"the-volt%e2%80%99s-reason-to-be-national-review-11-26-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/2010\/11\/the-volt%e2%80%99s-reason-to-be-national-review-11-26-10","title":{"rendered":"The Volt\u2019s Reason to Be (National Review  11.26.10)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"margin-top: 0in; line-height: 14.25pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; color: black;\">Critics of the Chevy Volt rightfully point out that GM\u2019s new plug-in hybrid is an overpriced Chevy Cruze, that it is not a revolution-in-the-making but a niche vehicle, and that it should stand on its merits without expensive taxpayer subsidies. But those critics also assume a rational world.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: 14.25pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; color: black;\">The world American automakers live in today, though, is highly irrational \u2014 governed by irrational Washington agencies that have bipartisan political support to draft irrational mpg mandates that force carmakers to irrationally build cars consumers don\u2019t want to buy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: 14.25pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; color: black;\">The Chevy Volt is GM\u2019s rational answer to irrationality.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: 14.25pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; color: black;\">This week, the EPA<span> <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/detnews.com\/article\/20101125\/AUTO01\/11250410\/Volt-gets-93-mpg-using-just-its-battery#ixzz16MCdIrfj\"><span style=\"color: black;\">announced<\/span><\/a><span> <\/span>that the Volt will get an EPA MPG rating of 60 mpg, which will go a long way towards helping the company meet the government\u2019s absurd 35 mpg average for all the vehicles the company makes. That is, since consumers prefer cars that get 21 mpg on average (53 percent of vehicles bought today are SUVs, after all), GM can throw in the Volt\u2019s 60 mpg to goose up its fleet average and avoid millions in federal fines and public execution by the national media.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: 14.25pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; color: black;\">The EPA arrives at its 60 mpg figure with a suitably obtuse averaging of the Volt\u2019s 93 mpg on battery power alone (which it can manage for up to 35 miles) \u00a0and the 37 mpg it will get on the car\u2019s tiny 1.4-liter gas engine once the battery runs out of juice. All of these ratings will appear on the $41,000 window sticker of the Volt in a blizzard of mumbo-jumbo that will make its rich green buyers feel good about saving the planet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: 14.25pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; color: black;\">It will also make GM feel good about meeting the fed\u2019s ridiculous rules.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"line-height: 14.25pt;\"><span style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; color: black;\">And it will make everyone else feel $7,500 lighter in the wallet from the subsidy of each Volt sold.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Critics of the Chevy Volt rightfully point out that GM\u2019s new plug-in hybrid is an overpriced Chevy Cruze, that it is not a revolution-in-the-making but a niche vehicle, and that it should stand on its merits without expensive taxpayer subsidies. But those critics also assume a rational world. The world American automakers live in today, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6057"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6057"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6060,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6057\/revisions\/6060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}