Is This How Henry Ford Did It — Making Cars Nobody Wants?

(Thomas Mitchell/4TH ST8) Is it time for a recharge?

General Motors late Friday — when such things are often ignored by the media, already into their third round at the local watering hole — announced it is idling the production line for the battery-powered Volt for five weeks due to lagging sales, according to The Wall Street Journal.

GM sold 1,023 Volts in February, up from 676 in January. There is an inventory of Volts sitting on car lots.

The Volt sells for $41,000 but we generous taxpayers chip in a $7,500 rebate. You can buy a 2012 Chevy Corvette for $45,000.

The shutdown will idle 1,300 workers at Government Motors’ Hamtramck, Mich., factory between March 19 and April 23.

While in Detroit this past Tuesday, Obama promised a cheering crowd of 1,600 autoworkers, “Five years from now when I’m not president anymore, I’ll buy one and drive it myself.

“Yes, that’s right,” he repeated to loud applause.

It might have to a be used one. Or maybe they’ll still have a couple in inventory. And hopefully it won’t be in five years.

John Ransom writes today:

“The website ExtremeTech calculates that the car (Volt) costs about 6.3 cents per mile when running on electricity at 13 cents per kilowatt hour. But that rate ignores depreciating the cost of a replacement battery ($8,000) over the life of the battery warranty.

“When you add in the cost of the battery depreciation, you get a calculation of about 14.3 cents per mile for the Volt. As the tech site notes: ‘A compact car getting 35 mpg would cost 10 cents per mile using $3.50-a-gallon gasoline.’ So in other words, the Volt, in addition to the high cost to purchase, costs 43% more to operate than a conventional car.”

So that’s why Obama and Chu want $9-a-gallon gasoline.