This month, A123 Systems, one of the country’s highest-profile battery makers for the EV market, cut 35 percent of its workers at two Michigan plants. A123 was one of several dozen companies that got subsidies from the Obama administration, which has handed out $2.4 billion in grants to the EV sector, as well as nearly $2.6 billion in loans.
Further, despite Obama’s hopes, made clear during his State of the Union speech earlier this year — that the U.S. would be “the first country to have 1 million electric vehicles on the road”
GM has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the Volt, but in October, when the auto giant sold 186,895 light-duty vehicles, the Volt accounted for just 1,108 of them.
Back in 2009, Johan de Nysschen, the president of Audi of America, cannily predicted the Volt’s future: “No one is going to pay a $15,000 premium for a car that competes with a Corolla. . . . There are not enough idiots who will buy it.”
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