White House's 2015 EV Plan To Fall Short

William Maley

Editor/Reporter - CheersandGears.com

March 14, 2012

Back in 2008, then Presidential candidate Barack Obama made a pledge to have a million electric vehicles on the nation’s roadways by 2015. Obama reiterated that pledge during his 2011 State of Union address.

But a new report from the White House called the “One Year Progress Report” of the President’s “Blueprint For A Secure Energy Agenda” shows the goal won't be reached.

President Obama stated last year that “with more research and incentives, we can break our dependence on oil with biofuels, and become the first country to have a million electric vehicles on the road by 2015.”

The plan assumed electric vehicle production capacity would stand at 1.2 million units through 2015 and that his 1 million unit EV target would “not likely to be constrained by production capacity.”

Well, President Obama was correct in assuming in assuming capacity wouldn’t be the limiting factor in EV sales. It would be the demand that would be the downfall of this plan.The Chevrolet Volt is selling at about a tenth of the Department of Energy’s projected 120,000 units per year rate, and the Nissan Leaf isn’t expected to hit annual sales of 100,000 units until two years from now.

So is the White House admitting defeat? No. What they're doing instead is changing the words. Instead of a 1 million EVs by 2015 goal, the report now says "by 2015, the United States will be able to produce enough batteries and components to support one million plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles.”

Source: Left Lane News