jawfish

What’s AIG Cost so Far? An Entire Electric Transport Industry, That’s What.
john posted in politics & culture, rides, technologies on April 7th, 2009

It’s way too easy to pick on AIG, and the unfathomable amount of taxpayer dollars that have been flushed down it. The story is, of course, more complex, in that both Bush and Obama administrations have been afraid to push over the first domino in what they fear could be a total banking collapse by.sending AIG to the landfill.

So count this as gallows humor.

AIG has been given roughly $185 billion.

Zero electric motorcycles announced today that they are selling a street legal version of their electric dirt bike at about $10,000 less a ten percent federal tax credit.

Zero street legal lithium-powered supermotard

Tesla automobiles has already sold a few of their all-electric high-performance sports cars at about $100k.

Tesla electric roadster

If we had used the money from the AIG bailout to actually support American companies that make things, it could have funded:

9,250,000 Zero electric motorcycles or equivalent.

(Honda sold about 15 million units world-wide in 2008. All makers sold about 1 million motorcycles and scooters in the US in 2008.)

Plus,

925,000 Tesla cars.

(BMW sold about 1.4 million cars in 2008 world-wide.)

So with one bailout package we could have created an American motorcycle company selling electric bikes as the second-largest motorcycle manufacturer in the world. And we could have jump-started an all-electric car manufacturer to nearly two thirds the size of BMW. Not to mention establishing a dominating presence in the clean transportation industry of tomorrow.

Somehow I’m not laughing all the way to the bank.

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references:
motorcycle sales
Zero
Tesla
AIG bailout