GE to Order 'Tens of Thousands' of Electric Vehicles

Source: IBTimes.com

General Electric(NYSE: GE) will order "tens of thousands" of electric-powered vehicles in about a week, CEO Jeffrey Immelt said.

At a speech in London yesterday, Immelt said the company will place the "largest order in history" in the next week, although he did not confirm an exact figure or manufacturer.

Under the initiative, about half of GE's sales force would drive electric cars, leading to estimates that the company could purchase up to 23,000 vehicles -- a total that a single manufacturer would probably struggle to meet.

Several automakers are getting ready to sell EVs over the next 18 months. These include Nissan's (OTC BB: NSANY.PK) Leaf, Chevy's Volt, and Ford's (NYSE: F) Transit Connect delivery van and Focus


Read more: http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/news/article.aspx?Feed=FOOL&Date=20101031&ID=12331135&Symbol=F

I'm somewhat surprised they haven't pushed something like this years ago.

That a company called General Electric would have to Purchase Electric vehicles instead of building them in the first place?

This logic would lead to Shell Oil being the world's largest automobile manufacturer...

.... from some other manufacturer. I'm sure GM has the capability to produce electric motors in mass quantity, and eventually will. But right now I am pretty sure they are buying them.

Motors and generators for industrial purposes. Power plants. Locomotives. They specialize in large industrial stuff. To tool up for smaller assemblies and to staff up the engineers and to ramp up the technology and the management structure could cost them billions. They also have a huge defense business and a giant propaganda machine. They can't just turn on a dime.

GE has a factory that makes 6000-horsepower motors for your submarine.

They also have a factory that makes quarter-horse motors for your dishwasher--in fact, they're a key player in the appliance motor business. My press probably has eighty motors on it and most of them are one-horse totally-enclosed fan-cooled units.

GE can make any motor you want.

No one is going to gear up unless people buy the cars. So far they are not.

Maybe this will help.

Duck and cover one and all.

I still plan on buying a Volt when I can though :).

The solar gods will brighten up a bit.

because you owe us for what you did to the EV-1

Why is GE suddenly buying thousands of electric cars?

They make everything from wind generators to nuclear power plants and likely want to bolster the market.

This is, ironically, a bit of the flip-side of the dreaded Oil Giant scooping up new technology to kill it.

1/2 of the energy used by an selfish individual motor vehicle is used during the extraction of the resources and manufacture of the vehicle.

So an "electric car" really only represents about a 5 - 10% savings in resources and energy compared to an oil-fired car...especially when considering that in USAmerica, the odds are good that they will be recharged by dirty, water wasting coal fired electricity.

We need to POWER DOWN, simplify, relocalize...there's not much time left...