Depressing. Unsurprising. Electric.

I “missed” this earlier this week. Edward Niedermeyer is anything but charged up about the Volt:

So the future of General Motors (and the $50 billion taxpayer investment in it) now depends on a vehicle that costs $41,000 but offers the performance and interior space of a $15,000 economy car. The company is moving forward on a second generation of Volts aimed at eliminating the initial model’s considerable shortcomings. (In truth, the first-generation Volt was as good as written off inside G.M., which decided to cut its 2011 production volume to a mere 10,000 units rather than the initial plan for 60,000.) Yet G.M. seemingly has no plan for turning its low-volume “eco-flagship” into a mass-market icon like the Prius.

Quantifying just how much taxpayer money will have been wasted on the hastily developed Volt is no easy feat. Start with the $50 billion bailout (without which none of this would have been necessary), add $240 million in Energy Department grants doled out to G.M. last summer, $150 million in federal money to the Volt’s Korean battery supplier, up to $1.5 billion in tax breaks for purchasers and other consumer incentives, and some significant portion of the $14 billion loan G.M. got in 2008 for “retooling” its plants, and you’ve got some idea of how much taxpayer cash is built into every Volt.

In the end, making the bailout work — whatever the cost — is the only good reason for buying a Volt. The car is not just an environmental hair shirt (a charge leveled at the Prius early in its existence), it is an act of political self-denial as well.

If G.M. were honest, it would market the car as a personal donation for, and vote of confidence in, the auto bailout. Unfortunately, that’s not the kind of cross-branding that will make the Volt a runaway success.

I suppose there is a better way to do industrial policy. Whatever it is, our government doesn’t seem to have found it. At this point, the Samwick family auto plan is looking like:

1. Drive the current two until they fall apart, an underappreciated strategy for keeping green.
2. When the first one fails, replace it with a Honda Pilot, because the kids and their friends and their gear seem to be growing.
3. When the second one fails, replace it with a Toyota Prius, assuming it can handle the hills in the winter. Otherwise, it will be yet another Subaru Outback, hopefully getting 30+ mpg by then.

What about you? Any plans to go electric with the Volt?

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