Los Angeles Burning Precious Cash on Electric Cars

Todd Thurman / April 26, 2011

The City of Los Angeles is offering $2,000 rebates toward home chargers for electric cars. Once again, the government is actively choosing winners and losers and skewing the free market. If the electric car is viable, and it very well could be, the government would not need to offer rebates to buy the cars or the charging infrastructure. Charging infrastructure is a necessary market hurdle for electric vehicles to overcome, and the government has no role in overcoming that hurdle with other peoples’ money.

Los Angeles is planning on handing out rebates to the first 5,000 people who qualify for them. In other words, the government is offering incentives for purchasing items made by private corporations instead of letting the market work it out.

In 1996, GM introduced the EV-1, the first commercial electric car, but it failed because the market was not ready for it. When GM announced the cancelation of the EV assembly, it said that it simply could not sell enough cars to make it profitable. (more…)