"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
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"Ed Huntress" wrote in message
...

"F. George McDuffee" wrote in message
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On Wed, 7 Jan 2009 14:49:51 -0800, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:

The signal they will be looking for is a tax on gasoline or some other
genuine indication that if Ford jumps out they won't get clobbered.
One difficulty that goes largely unmentioned when people talk about
hybrids
is the electricity.
It has to came from somewhere. Unless Obama and Co are serious about
energy
Ford could end up producing and selling a million vehicles that would
bring
the power grid down if plugged in all at once.
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This just in on the batteries. Note that the taxpayers will be
putting up 78% of the capital, with possibly more from state ED
grants, tax abatements, etc.

---------------
snip
A123 Systems says the plant will be the first of several across
the country that could eventually employ 14,000 people and supply
batteries for 5 million hybrid vehicles or 500,000 plug-in
hybrids by 2013. The company says it will spend $2.3 billion on
the factories, and has applied for $1.8 billion in federal loans
under the $25-billion advanced technology program that Congress
funded last year.
snip
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http://www.freep.com/article/2009010...ESS01/90107042

Also note that at this point this is all plans and no shovel.

Ford is introducing some major advances in hybrids
http://www.freep.com/article/20090107/COL14/90107105
with a fully optioned cost of about 32k$. This would appear to
blow the Volt out of the water at 40K$.

Just keep in mind that you're comparing apples to oranges, George. The
new Fords are conventional, parallel hybrids with no plug-in capacity
(not that it would be useful for anything -- they won't go far enough on
the batteries). The Volt is a serial hybrid, the first in production,

The first serial hybrid in real production is that Chinese thingy Ed.

Then the first serial hybrid that any Westerner would drive. g There are
some neat serial hybrids running around, built by hobbyists. One guy even
has an all-electric Honda CRX that runs something like 100 - 120 miles on a
charge. He won't say how much he has invested, but my understanding is that
he has over $30,000 worth of ultracapacitors for acceleration, alone. God
knows what the batteries cost.

The Prius plant is on hold so unless you want to lok at Fords Hydrogen
Fuel Cell test, there isn't anything in North America.

You mean, no serial hybrids? Right, there are none in production. There are
lots of parallel hybrids being sold by a variety of manufacturers, including
Ford and GM.


As far as GM is concerned, their salvation might lie in the assertion that
they are on the way to lowering their per vehicle cosr by $5K.
I'm skeptical but dumping their health care and pension benefit overhead
combined with the downsizing under way might get that result.

All they need to do then is come up with a ten thousand dollar vehicle
that works.

Then all they need to do is to find someone who will buy it. It would need
to have a high roof so Richard doesn't have to bend over. d8-)

--
Ed Huntress