Father of Ford Focus Electric and the modern Electric Car

[evluv]

Here's an article about electric vehicles that sure to spark a debate or two!

Car Connection writes that George W. Bush is the Father of the modern electric car - mainly due to his suport and signing of the electric car subsidies that are widely in place today. Although some critics feel the subsidies are due to the current White House, Bush was responsible for the electric vehicles you can buy, drive, and charge today.

Bush underwrote $25 billion in loans, starting with a $7.5 billion invetsment, that's translated directly into the Leaf, the Volt, Ford Electric Focus, the Think City, and Tesla and Fisker's leap from paper to plant.

http://www.thecarconnection.com/news/1060552_george-w-bush-father-of-the-modern-electric-car

 

[NextGenDriver]

I think the article is missing a few keys to the puzzle. The biggest being the fact that Electric cars have been around since the early 1800's:

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/223/electric-car-timeline.html

Even before the Ford Focus Electric was a dream Henry Ford was spending lots of money on researching and building electric cars. Given all of this it would seem very hard to rationalize Bush as the Father of the modern electric car. Also another point the article seems to miss is that by no means are all electric vehicles as mainstream as they make it seem (for $7.5 billion you would think there would be way more on the road). Most including the Ford focus ev have been delayed and released in very very limited quantities at high price points. Not sure if Bush can take credit for too much of anything as far as electric vehicles go so far. If anything I would think there would be way more focus ev's on the road by now and so far we are failing in our attempts to bring the mainstream electric car to market quickly and efficiently. Pretty typical for government backed programs though and nothing new.