The cloud around the silver lining of the Chevy Volt

Great car. Is it the future of cars? Not yet. [Link]

GM wouldn't be in quite so deep a hole if it had not sunk a billion dollars, and much of its corporate reputation, into a not-very-realistic plug-in electric hybrid vehicle known as the Chevrolet Volt.

Likely to cost consumers more than $30,000 even after a big government tax rebate, the little four-seat Volt "is currently projected to be much more expensive than its gasoline-fueled peers and will likely need substantial reductions in manufacturing cost in order to become commercially viable," President Obama's automobile task force reported on March 30.

Translation: Unless and until gas prices shoot up, you'd be crazy to buy one of these much-ballyhooed vehicles, which will run 40 miles on a single charge if GM can overcome difficult battery-engineering issues.

It just doesn't make economic sense to own an electric car yet for most people (emphasis added):

A 2009 study by Boston Consulting Group found that the five-year total cost of owning an electric car would remain "relatively unattractive to consumers in 2020, unless its cost is subsidized."

And that's in Germany, where high fuel taxes give drivers much stronger incentives to use alternative-fuel vehicles than in the United States. So if the electric car isn't practical in Europe's biggest car market, it's even less so in the States.

In fact, Boston Consulting Group found that the total cost of ownership of existing hybrids and advanced internal combustion engine cars is more attractive than that of electric cars as long as oil prices are below $280 a barrel. Oil is trading at around $49 a barrel today; in the United States, gas costs about $2 a gallon.

It will be a while before oil hits $280 a barrel.