From this Fox News article:  http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,538902,00.html

comes the amazing News that an (essentially all-)electric car is going to be receiving a fuel economy rating of 230 MPG.

You read it right, two hundred thirty.  Two. Three. Zero.  An amazing order-of-magnitude leap in fuel efficiency, from fossil fuel to electric power, if you ask me.   Almost makes a man wonder why this nation didn’t start with electric cars in the first place, eh?

Well, the article itself gives away its first tell (and sorry to quote so heavily from such a short article, but there’s just so much cracked crab in this dish), the car in question:  

runs purely on electricity for the first 40 miles of driving

and then in the next breath goes on to mention something critical to the rating itself, the dead giveaway:

The EPA is currently developing a special methodology to calculate fuel efficiency for vehicles that work in this fashion

Is that a fact?  Why would MPG (miles per gallon), a simple unit of distance per fuel consumed, require any special consideration by the EPA?  Wouldn’t it be more consistent (read: accurate, truthful, not a weasel) to account for the fuel consumed in creating the electricity needed to run the car on the first 40 miles in the first place?  Or, would that accidentally pull the curtains back a little too far on the outrageously huge whopper that a 230 MPH would be to anyone with a brain?

Another indication that this number is flatly fictitious is the fact that the fuel efficiency of the vehicle in question is expected to drop to about 100 MPH in the highway mileage, that’s right 230 city, 100 highway, quite a loss on the smooth, open road, hmmm?

Here’s what’s really happening.  The EPA is doing its best to get people to buy electric cars.  Car companies that are heavily invested in selling their electric car tech are only to happy to look the other way when it comes to a ridiculously high mileage rating.  It means bigger sales, no doubt.  Finally, the appearance, at least, of cars that helps Americans wrest themselves free from fossil fuel and all the consequences, real or imagined, of their use.

The methodology the EPA wants to use can only start from this:  treating mileage in the first forty miles as consuming no fossil fuel.  Of course, if you’re somebody from the isle of Manhattan that couldn’t survive outside their idiom, the car in question would NEVER require pumping fuel into the tank.  The problem is of course is that results in an infinite gas mileage, something neither a complete moron nor a modern environmentalist can accept without balking.

So the EPA figures to run the test using a standard method for something like a 50-mile commute, 40 miles on electric, 10 on gasoline, and, voila!  Five times better gas mileage than a hybrid than runs just on gasoline.  It’s a freaking miracle!

Of course, then we get to the highway mileage.  Just create a 75-mile standard test method, running 40 miles on the electric (that’s all you get), and 35 miles on the gas.   One and a half times the distance on three and a half times the gasoline. 

That gets you 230 city and 98 highway.  Well, no kidding.  Hidden costs, hidden facts, hidden truth, ladies and gentlemen.  Redefine the measurements to get attractive enough numbers to claim something that people might be willing to accept.

What do you think’s going to happen when people start getting their electric bill, especially if that electric bill is cancerously large because of a cap-and-trade scheme?  You think people have buyers remorse now…

What do you think’s going to happen when people start plugging in overnight at the hotel, or plugging in at work instead of at home, so you have enough power to commute, and you aren’t directly paying for the electricity because they can’t afford their own electric bill?  

What do you think’s going to happen when people start plugging into the neighbors’ or strangers’ homes, when they think nobody is looking?

Here’s what’s going to happen, they are all going to find a way to make you pay for the electricity which they are supplying.  And when I say pay, I mean in ways that make a gallon of gasoline look cheap. 

EPA, Mr. President, all the President’s little con artist friends, you ain’t fooling me, and I’ll make sure you ain’t fooling anybody.  Get your thumb of my scale.