So, if you are correct and Battery EVs increase efficiency, the manufacturers of those vehicles and infrastructure will be making large amounts of money. Why should we provide incentives for those technologies? Why should they receive massive government subsidies to develop a technology that will make them tons of money?

But, the point stands that no matter what technologies are used, if we are going to provide incentives, the incentives should be based on real results not technologies. There may be some alternative besides batteries, hydrogen and internal combustion or simply huge breakthroughs in internal combustion that we will never find if we are blindly focused on plug-in technologies.

The whole point is that we have put on blinders and said, "No, we don't care if you have an accessible technology that can be mass produced now and makes an ICE car get 150 MPG. If it isn't a plug-in, we don't care"

GM specifically knows that the key to getting boat loads of free money from the government is to cater to this idea as wrong and mis-guided as it may be.

Because, why would we want to push for the creation of efficient technologies that can be built into existing products when we can push for the expensive development of vehicles that will be too expensive for the average american to purchase without huge subsidies from the government that cause taxes to go up and the national debt to increase?

Why do so few people see that government involvement is a bad thing. federal incentives have been encouraging automakers to pursue all kinds of things that consumers can't afford right now. In doing so, they have taken engineering resources away from engineering other things that consumers want and can afford like more efficient conventional vehicles. Just imagine if the effort that GM is putting into the Volt had simply been focused on making their engines get an additional 5 MPG.

These other technologies are being pushed in such a way that they act like the internal combustion engine is at it's peak and can not be further improved. They think the only way to get any better is to replace it with something new.

"ultimately choosing to cancel plans for the rumored 53 mph hybrid last November."

I hope it goes a little faster than that.

By Al, do you mean the guy with a huge electric bill that flies all over the place and has a private boat but, because he pays more for all his energy and transportation, thinks it is green.

Seems to me like he is the typical eniromentalist, willing to spend more to get "green" products but, totally unwilling to change their lifestyle while telling others that they should change their lifestyle.

I know that there can be a big difference based on how an engine is tuned but... 10 seconds for a 1.8 liter engine with HSD seems strange. My standard '01 Civic can do it in less than that with a 1.7 liter engine and regular ol' automatic transmission.

I still get 38mpg.

If you were going to build a hybrid sports car, why would you start with the Prius and try to make it sporty when you could start with something sporty and give it HSD. Even for marketing reasons, calling it a Prius doesn't make sense. When was the last time someone associated the Prius name with sporty?!?!

Trade in values for these vehicles are going to drop like a rock though because the dealers are going to take that $3500 and subtract it from what they are willing to give you for it. You are going to have to get them to give you a quote on your trade-in before they know you are using the voucher but, you can't because, as soon as they know the make and model, they are going to know you qualify for the voucher.

I have been using this for almost two months to track my sales and I love it.

I wonder if in another year we will see GM in third place.