The truly desirable electric car

I first read about the car a year ago, in Wired. A fast, battery-powered, sports car, that looked like a sports car. (check out a video from Sundance Channel - click view more, then Drive 4)

Let's face it, most of us buy cars (and almost everything else) for truly emotional reasons. There probably isn't a guy alive who wouldn't love to drive one of these - including yours truly.

As cool as this, the idea behind it is incredibly simple: cool car body + rechargeable batteries = a year long waiting list that you have to pay at least $30,000 to get on.

More proof that there are very few new ideas, just curious people who add 1 + 1 and come up with more than 2... (you've got your chocolate in peanut butter... )

My questions are:

With all the trouble the Big 3 US automakers are having, why didn't they come up with something like this? GM did, but then abandoned it.... sadly. It didn't look like the Tesla, but still...

With gas over $3 a gallon, why isn't the government doing more to subsidize development of things like this?

Comments

[Mike]

Jon,

Answer to question one: How many people would have to reframe their reality to get an idea like this through the Big 3 sausage machine?

Answer to question two: See question one, but that's a good thing. Look at what ethanol subsidies are doing to food prices these days...

Mike

[Jon Strande]

Mike,

For question 1 - GM has done some pretty progressive things, they did create that electric car I referenced above (the one that they got rid of), they created the Saturn Brand (which was different), and I'm sure that there are others. Now, why don't they take the corvette and switch it to an electric car, they could easily charge more for it.

Jon

[Mike]

Jon,

Saturn was how long ago, and they needed to create a completely separate company to prevent "infection" from GM culture. Any company can innovate, but GM doesn't seem to do so on a regular basis. There's an interesting discussion between Laurence Haughton and another fellow over at Naked Strategy.

Mike

[Mike]

and it's related to the cyclical nature of car companies (in this case, Chrysler.