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Department of Energy Underwrites Firefighting Costs For The Chevy Volt. $4.4 Million Allocated.

by Bargis on 16/03/12 at 4:02 pm

Washington, DC – (SatireWorld.com)
In a concerted effort to boost flagging sales for the cornerstone automobile of the Greenies, the Obama Administration sought to increase the Chevrolet Volt purchaser tax credit from $7,500 to $10,000. But still, buyers are as scarce as a snow shovel in Miami.

What’s even more unnerving is the Administration’s efforts to offer incentives for a car so dangerous to first responders that the Department of Energy allocated $4.4 million dollars for programs to prevent fire fighters from electrocuting themselves while trying to rescue crash victims.

The troubled Chevy Volt has been bedeviled by safety issues since it rolled onto the market. Environmentalists expected it to be one of the forerunners of a cultural move towards low or no emissions vehicles. Instead, it became something between a punch line born of unfulfilled expectations and a real safety threat to consumers.

According to one industry expert, one of the problems lies with the batteries that power the vehicle. The lithium-ion used in modern electric cars are not like the old lead-acid batteries of the past. They are more powerful and, when damaged, the fluid inside can leak out, creating a short on the circuit boards that are used to control the batteries. The fluid dries and crystallizes, creating a short, sometimes weeks after the damage to the battery occurred.

This results in spontaneous fires, such as happened in a Volt three weeks after a crash test at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The BATF is considering regulating the Volt as a possible WMD, since its potential is as hazardous as a live hand grenade stored next to gasoline!

Consumer acceptance for an electric car that can only go 35 miles before a recharge is unquestionably low, and once fuel costs and electrical recharging costs are factored in, the Chevy Volt really only gets about 24 MPG…Far less than current GM muscle cars that use conventional gas.

DOE spokesman Ed Bartholomew says the battery results are disappointing and the introduction of a fully electric commercial airliner has been postponed until 2027. Until that time the DOE has budgeted almost $2.7 trillion dollars for resources that will allow airliners to drag a re-charging cable along high voltage lines on the nation’s power grid.