Discussion on:

Audi scraps plans to sell electric supercar

and hopefully, staying away until electric vehicles are able to compete effectively against the gasoline powered vehicles. GM should take a hint and put the Volt to rest, until car batteries are built to give those vehicles the long-range capabilities that people want in their vehicles, and at affordable prices, and with short recharge time periods in the range of 5 to 10 minutes (which may never happen).

Um... the Volt is a plug in hybrid. It has better than 300 miles range between the electric mode and gasoline mode.

a neighborhood drive, or a to-work-and-back vehicle, and, for the huge price that it commands, it's just a waste. In fact, it's a double waste, since, the person that buys it is getting a lot less for his money, and then the taxpayers are having their money wasted by subsidizing the purchase price for about $7500 per vehicle, and all against the taxpayers' will.

Then, when it comes to the 300 mile range, it requires a whole night to recharge the batteries, which then forces people remain within close proximity of their homes in order to recharge those batteries. The infrastructure to make EVs practical is not there, and will never be there.

People need to start using their heads, and be practical, and forget the naive environmental agendas.

Audi probably didn't qualify for the $20K taxpayer subsidy that the Volt gets....[;>}

support Obama with campaign money, like GM and even a foreign automaker, which has now, also given up on the EVs.

Currently electric vehicles have limitations so cannot compete with gasoline cars yet. 25 years ago the mobile phone was as portable as a house brick with a battery life of a few hours so should they have abandoned that idea? Fossil fuel use doubles every 10 years and has done so [2 or 3 small exceptions] since 1790. This means we will burn more fossil fuel in the next 10 years than we have burnt since the beginning of time!!!!!!!!!
Do you really think it will never run out? We send our young people to war to safeguard our supplies. You are paying well over $1 per litre and it is in someone elses blood. Is that cool?

mobile phones (the precursors to smartphones), never had to worry about fitting the wishes of the environmental wacko agenda, while, EVs are an attempt to replace the fossil fuel powered vehicles, with an agenda item by the wacky environmentalists.

Besides, the electric vehicles have been around for more than 100 years, and the makers/designers have been trying, for most of that time, to make them energy-efficient while trying to add distance to a charge. They've failed in every attempt, and they've given up many times in the past, and, just like Audi, they'll be giving up again. The technology is not there yet, and may never be, while, when it comes to the technology in computers and mobile devices (like smartphones), is one which is very doable and still getting improved on. By the time EVs become energy efficient, and can actually compete with fossil fuels, we'll be getting around with jet-packs, which might mean, never.

...and concluded that the marketplace is already saturated with very expensive, quickly depreciating super EVs, with a diminishing number of consumers willing to pay such amounts for eco-vanity.

Audi shareholders should be breathing easier.

Indeed they might be breathing easy now !
Did you know that a large part of them are gulf states?
I'm joining Edddyie on this. The analogy of phones holds ground. EV will prevail in the end, you whine or not.
Eco-vanity or not, we can't continue like that. It was already a mess with half a billion cars on the road few decades ago, today we are approaching a billion, tomorrow it will be tripled... Insanity !
I have an idea, let's build them with their tailpipes turned inside to the cars, then you would be happy to have EVs on the road ASAP.

...but that doesn't change the fact that the market for >$100,000 EVs for 1%'ers is rather limited; hundreds, perhaps thousands of units at best. Hardly enough to justify a production line, marketing, etc for a mainline auto producer. Far better suited to niche players who get subsidized by taxpayers.

of money and time and effort.

EVs will NEVER be energy-efficient, nor cost-efficient. And, the analogy to smartphones is still delusional.

Smartphones never depended upon government funding to be made better and faster and more usable. EVs still depend upon government subsidizing, and they're still a big waste or valuable government resources, mostly our money.

No government money was ever needed to invent the phone, nor to improve it to the point it's at now. So, the analogy is still pure garbage.

...if the government had actually taken that role 20 years ago?

Cost efficient ? They will be soon.. In fact, they are already ! But they fight against big guys and it will take time. Bad guys will not let it go that easily.

By the way, see if you can come with how much subsidies they get compared to cleaner technologies from the government, then we can discuss your garbage with mine.

no matter how much you wish them to be.

Nor are they now cost-efficient, nor will they ever be.

Products which are not adopted by the masses, because they are too expensive, cannot ever be cost-efficient, and they'll remain above the pay-grade of 99% of consumers.

The "big guys", aka: the car companies, are already producing EVs, but mostly at the urging and subsidizing by government; otherwise, nobody would be producing them, and nobody would be buying them. In fact, in order to get the few people that are buying them to do so, the government has had to subsidize the price of the cars. Without that subsidy, the cars would have even fewer buyers.

Your garbage is still garbage, and subsidies has nothing to do with it.

Subsidies is something that no government should be involved in, and that should be applicable for businesses and to people. No subsidizing whatsoever would be preferable, for businesses and for people. The free market system stops being so, when government inserts itself into it, thereby distorting the whole economy. Most of the problems with the U.S. economy, and that of the European countries, came by way of the big government policies which created the environments which caused many to fail.

"Cleaner" technologies is just a term, and not a reality. Green energy companies are just a waste. Obama funded a huge number of "green energy" producers and research companies, and now, all of them have failed, mostly because they were all shams.

The audience of this blog can calculate, make some research, before declaring nonsense.
EVs are 5 times more efficient than an ICE powered car, this is a fact. Google if you don't believe.
The only problem being the energy density of batteries, and it will be taken care of by the time you (and many others) will decide to jump in.
I would agree with you one thing, the politics should better get out of the way. But then again, it must be equitable to both parties. When I say big/bad guys, firstly, I think of Petrol companies then comes car companies and it most cases they are tightly inter-twinned they will not let it go!
I come back to my of everybody driving with tail pipe should keep their emissions. Full stop!

you are looking at just the vehicle, and not the whole package which would comprise the total needed infrastructure to make EVs viable and cost-efficient and worthwhile.

We already know the negatives for EVs, mostly about their prices and short-range driving, and about how they need to be subsidized in order to turn them into real vehicles. We also must get informed about the reason for the development of EVs, which is mostly about an agenda from the environmental wackos and the liberals who want more government control over our lives and business and, especially, the energy industry. He who controls the life-blood of the economic system, gets to control the entire system. It's the agenda, stupid! (borrowing from the Clinton mantra).

"Hello! This is my first comment here so I just wanted to give a quick shout out and say I really enjoy reading your posts. Can you recommend any other blogs/websites/forums that cover the same topics? Thank you!
http://dirtyglovebastard.com/"