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The mnad scramble to change over to hybrids would have happened anyway, dude. The EV1, for better or for worse, wasn't cost-effective. If you want to talk about conspiracy theories, the only one I'll grant you is that GM may have intentionally released an electric car that wasn't cost-effective, but considering how many units they'd have moved had they been able to produce a cost-effective and functional electric vehicle, the only way I'll buy that argument is if you can prove they were in bed with Big Oil. Not impossible, just difficult.
Anyway, we're seeign a "mad scramble to change over to hybrids" today for one simple reason - that with gas now over $4 a gallon, something that wasn't cost effective even 8 months ago at $2.60 a gallon suddenly is a lot more so. It's still probably cheaper to buy a Corolla than a Prius, but after watching gas prices spike by more than $1.50 in s months, and baloon from less than a dollar a gallon under Clinton, you have to wonder just how high they're going to go. I want to say that $5 a gallon is the point where a Prius really begins to pay for itself, and at a national average of $4.08, we're really not that far off.
It's simple economics. We'd have a mad scramble for ANYTHING that would improve gas mileage right now simply because over the last few months the cost of gasoline has changed so radically that the cost/benefit analysis of alternative energy vehicles just changed radically in their favor. The EV1 wouldn't have fundamentally changed that, because it wouldn't have been as cost effective as the alternatives until just now, as well.
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