An army of Lysenkos

A government “investment” of $5 billion in a product that nobody wants? Wow, who coulda seen that comin’? Charles Lane of the Washington Post writes:

Federal billions cannot overcome the fact that electric vehicles and plug-in electric hybrids meet few, if any, of real consumers’ needs. Compared with gas-powered cars, they deliver inferior performance at much higher cost. As an American Physical Society symposium on battery research concluded last June: “Despite their many potential advantages, all-electric vehicles will not replace the standard American family car in the foreseeable future.”

This is what happens when arrogant bozos are given pots of money to play with. Elsewhere in the piece, the author chides the administration for its unmitigated gall:

[T]he debacle is a case study in unchecked righteousness. The administration assumed the worthiness and urgency of its goals. Americans should want electric cars, and therefore they would, apparently.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu, he of the Nobel Prize in physics, epitomized the regnant blend of sanctimony and technocratic hubris. He once told journalist Michael Grunwald that photosynthesis is “too damn inefficient,” and that DOE might help correct that particular error of evolution.

Well, if nothing else, Obama, Chu et al certainly seem to have accelerated our nation’s evolution into a bloated nanny state, which, like incompetent hog drovers, they’ve led straight into a pool of quicksand.