At the time the Prius was a hot car and we even test drove one.  We all agreed it was a nice car. But then we did some calculating. Comparing the cost of the car and cost to drive versus our two year old Chevrolet my daughter discovered it would take nearly five years for the better gas mileage to pay off. That’s a long investment.

Today, with the rising cost of gas it occurred to me that many will be like my daughter, wondering if they should update to a new, better gas mileage car. For fun I checked into the cost of several new popular cars, including a couple hybrids (I consider the new Volt a hybrid as it uses a gas engine after the battery runs down.)  For the purposes of this article I used the Edmunds website as a source for pricing and estimated mpg and electric costs. Warning: Math Involved.

So what does this graph tell me? A two year old Prius might be the best deal. We are always told that a car loses a large amount of value the first year. The cost of the Volt, even figuring in the current tax credit is most costly to operate.  An interesting note: Toyota is now making a ‘plug-in’ version of the Prius which is listed at $32,000 and may be eligible for a $2,500 tax credit. It gets 50mpg in the hybrid mode.

Personally, I really like the idea of an electric car. It’s quiet and should be easier on the environment.  I do wonder about the inconvenience of plugging the car in each night. Many areas, like mine, offer very reduced electricity rates after 7 or 9pm. Will I remember to charge my car each night? Will it become bothersome to take the charge cord out of the trunk each trip? Will I have to install a new super electric panel? Living in the sprawling Phoenix area will I find that I am always using gas just to drive across town, especially because I refuse to drive without air conditioning thus increasing my costs? Can I plug it in while shopping? Or is it a car before its time?

It is remarkable that the average income of a Volt buyer is $170,000; wages well above the working class ($30-100K) who more often are living paycheck to paycheck.  Personal experience of acquaintances has shown that many prefer buying a used car due to the lower cost. Due to the Cash-for-Clunkers many have said that the used car market is a lot tighter than before. Unfortunately, friends who drove “clunkers” were not financially able to buy a new car and participate in the program. Like the tax credit rebate on the Volt, the Cash-for -Clunkers program seemed to help those already with better finances.

The decision to buy new or upgrade is not one to be taken lightly. For many the cost of a new or even slightly used car is still significant and a major portion of our budget, especially during these challenging economic times. With groceries up over 9% and the job market still unstable many are making the decision to wait a while longer before buying a new car. From my friends there is a strong feeling to wait, that while my car does become another year older at least I am not taking on more debt. A stronger economy would help. Still, should you buy a Volt? Do the math.

Yes, that’s the same Chevy Volt that caught on fire after its batteries were punctured, that currently receives a $7500 per car purchase subsidy, and will receive, if Obama’s 2013 budget is approved, a $10000 per car purchase subsidy and that Obama said he would buy after leaving office. Our tax dollars at work!

Chevrolet sold 7671 Volts in 2011, and has sold 1626 so far in 2012. GM planned to expand production of the Volt to 60000 this year, with 45000 for the US market.

The Chevy Volt’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) fuel mileage estimate sticker provides something called an “MPG equivalent,” with an EPA rating of 93 MPG, but only for 35 miles. Its “gasoline engine only” rating is 37 MPG, and for 344 miles. The EPA’s “combined composite” rating is 60 MPG. Tony DiSalle, Volt marketing director, said owners can expect about 40 MPG in the real world. The Volt’s 1.4 litre gasoline engine that powers the generator will make enough electricity to power the car, but it won’t recharge the battery. So before an owner can drive on battery-only power again, he/she will need to plug in. The Volt saves the most fuel and emissions when used primarily on battery power.

But that 40 MPG admission presents a problem for the Volt in particular and GM in general. The Volt costs $41000 (before subsidy). GM introduced the 2012 Chevrolet Cruze, with an EPA rating of 42 MPG in some versions, yet costs about half the price of a Volt While the Cruze will probably not achieve the unrealistic EPA rating, it will most likely get 35 MPG. That will make the miles that the Volt will have to be driven to reach breakeven at somewhere about 150000 miles (assuming $4/gal gasoline price, $33500 Volt price, and $20000 Cruze price). But that calculation does not include the approximate $8000 cost of battery replacement, since the Volt battery warranty of 100000 miles is well short of the breakeven mileage.

But that’s just my opinion.

Of course, it takes but one step beyond the agreement that improvement is positive to find a distinct and very core difference between the two ideologies. Conservatives wish societal progress to be fueled by free market ingenuity and creativity. Leave it up to the suppliers and demanders to decide when something is worth the time and money, and at what point new will surpass old. Liberals, on the other hand, seek first the government to require progress to be made, through legislation and tax dollars.

This kind of forced advancement is a failed experiment, exemplified recently with the Chevy Volt disaster. Every Volt sold costs taxpayers $7,500 in tax credits to the buyer, making it cost-prohibitive to a general public who only purchased 7,800 in 2011. Last week, greenercars.org released their compilation of “The Greenest Cars of 2012”. The taxpayer-funded Chevy Volt didn’t even make the list (which included the top 12 most fuel-efficient vehicles).

Not only did a precious few of the Obama-lauded “Car of the Future” actually sell, the main draw for the volt – that it is a vast improvement over the environment-killing gas-fueled cars – is a complete farce.

Meanwhile, the Environment News Service reports () that a new study shows electric vehicles create more harmful pollution than gas-fueled vehicles. According to the article, “In China, 85 percent of electricity production is from fossil fuels, and about 90 percent of that is from coal. The generation of electricity to operate EVs emits fine particles at a much higher rate than petrol-powered vehicles, finds a team of researchers from the United States and China.”

The point is not that efforts shouldn’t be made to create more efficient, alternative-fueled vehicles; it’s that the government shouldn’t shove technology that has yet to come to fruition down our throats.

The President is receiving much grief from the conservative blogosphere due to his comments in the last couple of days referencing algae-powered cars. The reason for the criticism certainly isn’t that right-wingers oppose alternative fuel, but that they can see the writing on the wall. Conservatives do not want to pay for the government to research at a slower and more expensive pace than the private sector could.

Liberals aren’t practical enough to allow the U.S. to tap into its own vast reservoirs of oil, why should conservatives trust them with government funds to properly navigate uncertain energy sources like algae?

In this day of rapid technological advancements, Republicans cannot afford to accept an image, painted by the media and academic world, of stand-still curmudgeons opposed to advances in efficiency and energy. They must instead stress that true progress comes at the hand of private-sector initiative and originality, not government regulated union jobs or coerced research.

America’s proven traditional principles allow for the freedom of imagination and innovation, the very thing that “progressives” take away when they infuse government into whatever the field may be.

Conservatives do not support the platform of anti-progress, but rather condemn government funded failure.

In his effort to have 1 million electric, or “Advanced Technology,” vehicles on American roads by 2015, a budget document, entitled “Investing in Our Future,” discussed briefly by White House economic chief Gene Sperling, includes this goal. If that goal is reached and the new subsidy rate is enacted, the subsidy will cost $10 billion. Cars powered by natural gas are also considered as advanced technology vehicles.

But not to worry. Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf sales are nowhere near that goal. The 2011 sales for both of them combined was 30000. In fact, General Motors’ goal of selling 10000 Volts in 2011 came up 3800 short. The Toyota Prius, which has been around since 1997, sold 13650 in 2011. Still, at the current rate of $7500 subsidy per car, we taxpayers shelled out $348.75 million. Bad enough! And at a time when we are over $16 trillion in debt.

The average yearly income of Chevy Volt owners is $170000, higher than Cadillac and Lexus owners, on par with BMW owners, and exceeded only by Mercedes-Benz owners. That yearly income puts the Volt’s buyers in the top 7% of American households. The obvious question is why do these buyers receive subsidies?

An unexpected occurrence has been the advance in the traditional internal combustion engine. Ford Motor Company is ending its hybrid version of its Escape crossover vehicle, saying a new model equipped with its EcoBoost engine will outperform the hybrid. It will be most interesting to see how the Obama administration spins this situation.

So while the average yearly income for the American family in 2011 is $63091, we continue to subsidize Obama’s goal. I think former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said it best: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

But that’s just my opinion.

Thanks in part to this article by Doug Stewart ( @dmatthewstewart on Twitter) and further conversation on the growing list of failed Green energy investment projects during a recent interview , I have become completely convinced that vetting, if any, for funding potential Green energy products was performed by a few guys eating pizza and throwing darts at applications taped to the wall.

While not the first project to fail miserably, even after an injection of stimulus funding, Solyndra is probably the the poster child for failed vetting and cronyism, that are apparantly the norm for deciding where to spend taxpayer dollars. Add in Shepherds Flat ( which, we don’t even *need* to fund since GE HAS the capital!) , SunPower’s PAC action win , the EPA approved TR Auto Truck Plaza mess, The failed job delivery and inanity of the Fisker Motors investment, the likely march of the Chevy Volt into both fiscal and progressive failure, and the likelihood that Doug is correct about Alstom, and you have a laundry list of failures that exceeds anything that can be pinned on the private sector. Each of these investments inherently contained an easily verifiable history of risk that should have been a red flag for any review panel, if they had bothered to check into them at all ( or hadn’t been told to ignore the flags) I’d be willing to bet that the woodwork is crawling with plenty more evidence of the complete waste of taxpayer money due to non-existent vetting processes.

Johnathan Silver, the Energy Department’s loan program director, has stepped down, most certainly as a sacrifice to the indignant, but there needs to be full on public rage at this outright failure and deception by our government to even attempt responsibility with our economy. Silver’s resignation is an appeasement offering, and I am not appeased. It’s time to take the dartboard away and for us to get more involved in keeping an eye on our money. I have an idea of a replacement past-time..