There will always be supporters of the past due to price and plain old fear of change. That’s OK, technology always overcomes those problems at the end of the day. What’s harder to overcome is pure politics.

Let’s look at the Volt (and other EVs) as advances in technology and transportation and leave the politics out of it. And that is what Spieckerman is talking about.

Way cool.

First oil. The typical gasmobile wastes about 80% of the energy in a gallon of gas. What to know where it goes? Stick your hand on your engine block after you’ve driven for a while. Hold you hand against the tail pipe. (Don’t really do that, but think about what would happen if you did.)

And that’s just part of the waste. A significant part of the barrel of oil extracted from wells is burned to refine the crude into gas/diesel/etc. Electricity is purchased, coal is burned, natural gas is burned – lots of energy gets used to turn oil into fuel. More energy wasted.

And let’s throw in the wasted energy used to drill/pump/transport/distribute oil.

Overall, tremendous inefficiencies. It could be that only 5% of the energy in a gallon of the stuff down in the ground is actually used.

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Now let’s address the energy consumption needed to charge EVs and PHEVs.

There are losses if we burn fossil fuels to create electricity. But we’re in the process of transitioning away from fossil fuels. And coal/gas plants are more efficient than ICEVs.

Of course there’s no fossil fuel energy loss if we’re talking about electricity from renewable sources.

We loose a very small amount of electricity in transmission. There’s about a 10% loss in battery charging. EVs are very efficient, they waste only 10% or so of the energy in batteries – 90% goes to moving the car forward.

The energy coming out of wind turbines and solar panels – we’re wasting roughly 25%.

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5% vs. 75% – There’s no contest.

Gasmobiles are the energy black holes of transportation. We throw away an incredible amount of energy moving ourselves around with this outdated technology.

Once people understand that this technology addresses three implacable problems that effect us all, the sales will skyrocket. But what’s needed mostly are the cars. I sell the LEAF in LA and can’t keep these cars on the lot. I need more cars!

Now that the new Volt is out and can get HOV access and the CA rebate, they are hard to find in SoCal.

Had the Fox people not conducted this anti-EV campaign, but instead championed the technology, we’d closer to our goal of reducing imports to zero.

That can’t stop it, but they succeeded in slowing it down. Bully for Fox, too bad for America.

Whether he drives on now isn’t material. The words he said were enough. He’ll get one eventually, probably his next new car purchase.

Let’s not rag on the guy who is doing us a huge favor here.

Or threatened to drop advertising from Fox…

Clearly, GM just signed a deal to start advertising on Fox.