About Those Electric Cars...

Remember when we were going to have a million electric cars on America’s roads by 2015? Ah, the salad days of 2011:

“Whether we meet that goal in 2015 or 2016, that’s less important than that we’re on the right path to get many millions of these vehicles on the road,” an Energy Department official said.

Shoring up the U.S. auto industry was one of the key pillars of Obama’s first term, starting with the federally funded bankruptcies of General Motors Co and Chrysler Group LLC .

But promoting advanced vehicles has been a long-running focus for the White House, which has also pushed for more stringent standards on fuel economy that call for automakers to improve dramatically the mileage of their overall fleets.

During his 2011 State of the Union address, Obama also called for putting 1 million electric vehicles on the road by 2015. Overall, U.S. federal policies to promote electric vehicles will cost $7.5 billion through 2019, the Congressional Budget Office said in September.

They’re still spending all that money we don’t have; it just won’t put the cars on the roads. Just because a program to get Americans to buy cars they don’t want isn’t working, is no reason to cut it. Because stimulus. Or something. So don’t you worry — Steven Chu will catch that unicorn.

At current adoption rates, Americans will be driving 1,000,000 electric cars by 20never.