可能不是最美好的月的電動汽車。五月一日尾，電池驅(qū)動汽車，美國制造商宣布破產(chǎn)；在第二十六個更好的地方，一個大肆宣傳與插拔電池汽車啟動子（籌資近1000000000美元的2007），申請清算以色列。菲斯克，另一個美國的電動汽車生產(chǎn)商，這部分是由納稅人資助，走到了崩潰的邊緣，有沒有車輛自（也是國家資助的）電池制造商A123，去年，倒塌。菲亞特-克萊斯勒的老板說在上個月，它將失去10000美元每500E電瓶車銷售。汽車的費用是32000美元，雙汽油版的價格，但菲亞特曾試圖把他們因為加利福尼亞在“零排放”的汽車制造商的銷售配額。
The news has not all been bad. Tesla, a Californian maker of battery-powered sports cars, recently declared its first quarterly profit, and repaid its $452m of government loans early. But overall, electric cars, whether purely battery-powered or hybrids that use petrol engines as backups, have been a flop. They are expensive, even with state subsidies, and the all-battery ones have a limited range.
新聞也不都是壞的。特斯拉，加州電動跑車制造商，日前宣布其第一季度的利潤，和償還政府貸款4.52早期。但總的來說，無論是純粹的電動汽車，電池供電或混合使用汽油發(fā)動機作為備份，是個徹底的失敗。他們是昂貴的，即使有政府補貼，和所有的電池的人有一個有限的范圍內(nèi)。
In this section
在這一部分
The strange rebirth of liberal England
自由英國的奇怪的重生
Towards the end of poverty
對貧困的終結(jié)
Tougher love needed
嚴厲的愛的需要
The price of peace
和平的代價
Flat batteries
平電池
Reprints
重印
Related topics
相關(guān)主題
Internal-combustion engine vehicles
內(nèi)燃機車
United States
美國
Barack Obama
巴拉克奧巴馬
Technology
技術(shù)
Science and technology
科學(xué)和技術(shù)
Does this failure matter? Not that much. The main reason why Better Place failed seems to have been bad management. In 2009 it struck a deal with Renault to sell 100,000 electric cars with swappable batteries by 2016; it sold just 1,300. It failed to get other carmakers to make vehicles with swappable batteries, restricting its subscribers’ choice.
這種故障的重要嗎？沒有那么多。主要的原因，更好的地方失敗似乎是糟糕的管理。2009它已經(jīng)與雷諾出售100000輛電動汽車用插拔電池2016；它只是賣1300。它沒有獲得其他汽車制造商與插拔電池使車輛，限制用戶選擇。
Another barrier has been that all cars have been getting greener, driven in part by manufacturers’ need to meet emissions standards. In the longer term a race is on between scientists trying to create low-cost, low-carbon “biofuels”, which could give petrol and diesel engines a new, clean lease on life, and others trying to make electric batteries lighter, cheaper and more reliable. The odds are that pure electric cars, despite their slow start, will be part of tomorrow’s cleaner traffic: they just will not be the whole answer.
另一個障礙是，所有的汽車都已變綠，驅(qū)動部分由制造商必須符合排放標準。在長期的比賽是對科學(xué)家試圖創(chuàng)造低成本，低碳燃料，它可以給汽油和柴油發(fā)動機，一個新的，干凈的生命，和其他人試圖使電池更輕，更便宜和更可靠的。賠率是，純電動汽車，盡管他們的慢啟動，將成為明天的清潔交通部分：他們只是不能全部答案。
We watched “Star Trek” too
我們看了《星際迷航”
Given this uncertainty, the wise thing for politicians would be to set overall emissions targets, and leave the risk to businesspeople. Wherever this has been tried, in Europe, America, Japan and more recently China, carmakers have grumbled: but they have responded—most notably by squeezing more efficiency out of the century-old internal-combustion engine.
鑒于這種不確定性，政客們明智的舉動就是集總體排放目標，而把風(fēng)險的商人。銅裝飾無論這已經(jīng)試過，在歐洲，美國，日本，最近中國，汽車制造商也抱怨：但他們表現(xiàn)最明顯的就是從百年內(nèi)燃機壓縮效率更高。
Sadly politicians see electric cars not as a means to a greener future but as an end in themselves. Barack Obama is still prattling about having 1m of them on America’s roads by 2015 (so far he is only 5% of the way there); this week Angela Merkel restated her aim to have 1m such cars on Germany’s roads by 2020 (a mere 3,000 were sold there last year). Under fire from Congress, Mr Obama has stopped lending to makers of electric cars and batteries, but he still wants to increase the maximum federal credit for electric cars from $7,500 to $10,000. And the Chinese government is planning to revive an old subsidy scheme worth up to 60,000 yuan ($9,800) per car.
可悲的是政客們認為，電動汽車并不是作為一種手段，綠色的未來而為最終目的。巴拉克奧巴馬還說約2015有100萬人在美國的公路（到目前為止他只有5%）；本周安吉拉默克爾重申她的目的2020已經(jīng)在德國的道路上，100萬輛這樣的車（只有3000的銷量去年）。火從國會下，奧巴馬先生已經(jīng)停止向電動汽車和電池制造商的貸款，但他仍希望增加最大的聯(lián)邦政府信用對電動汽車從7500美元到10000美元。和中國政府正計劃恢復(fù)舊補貼計劃，價值高達60000元（9800美元）每車。
Such subsidies make little sense. If governments want to cut emissions it would be better, say, to pay people to insulate their homes. Better Place achieved little in its brief, expensive life. But if its failure, despite having such weighty backers (including GE and HSBC), persuades governments of the folly of picking winners, it will not have died in vain.
這種補貼毫無意義。如果政府想要削減排放會更好，說，付錢給人來隔離他們的家園。更好的地方取得的小小在其短暫的，昂貴的生活。但如果失敗，盡管沉重的支持者（包括通用電氣和匯豐銀行），說服政府挑選贏家的愚蠢，它不會白白的死去。
