Go Tesla!

Even though my views would generally fall in the moderate-conservative bucket, my standards for the idea of the government picking winners and losers is very low ever since the Bush administration’s era of war spending that benefited a small number of their friendly companies like Halliburton. By investing in electric cars instead of wars, there might be something in it for the rest of us this time.

There are many benefits to driving electric cars – more choices of energy sources, considerably less maintenance, longer engine life. The only slight hiccup is that electric car technology is not mainstream yet so it’s expensive and lacking in the usual conveniences of a mainstream technology. If we give it a hand though, we’re looking at:

• More energy choices. When you have a gasoline car, you are at the mercy of your gas pump overlords, sometimes leading to hilarious attempts to ‘stick it’ to the man.Your gas-powered car doesn’t give you a whole lot of leverage against big oil so you just have to suck it up and shell out. An electric car on the other hand can run on electricity regardless of its origin – from renewables, coal, hydro, natural gas, even gasoline. You can even generate your own.
• Low cost of maintenance.  An electric engine’s maintenance schedule is – eyeball it every 10,000 miles or so to make sure it’s still there. My 2006 Prius has 82,000 miles on it and, while its gas engine had all of its usual scheduled maintenance (oil changes, tune-ups, etc), its electric engine so far had exactly ZERO work done – and no issues whatsoever. Or, to put it another way – how much maintenance do you need to do on your washing machine?
• Gasoline car transmission is clunky and expensive. A gasoline engine can only deliver reasonable torque between about 1000-4000 RPM. This means that regardless of your speed, you have to keep the engine in that narrow range. To achieve that, you need a complex transmission system that often turns into an expensive maintenance burden. Electric cars have no such issues – they can deliver consistent torque between 0-14000 RPM without a hitch, making it easy to build a simple, no-fuss transmission that’s far less likely to break down on you.

Mitt Romney takes every opportunity to bash Obama for supporting this awesome technology. Somehow Obama seems completely oblivious to these advantages and consistently fails to produce a coherent answer. Mr. Obama, stop being a dufus and get your sh!t together – this stuff is too good to let slide.

GO TESLA!