In yet another use of government to promote cars-first transportation, the U.S. Environmental Protection [cough] Agency is promoting the notion that the new Ford Focus all-electric car will get the energy-use equivalent of 105 miles per gallon.  This “news” is, of course, being happily slung about in the corporate media.

Big problem, though:  The way in which the MPGe rating is calculated is battery-to-wheels only, meaning that it excludes from consideration the very large losses to heat and resistance in the generation and transmission of electricity.  Given that such losses are still appreciably higher as a percentage than the costs of producing and delivering a gallon of gasoline, MPGe is an even more fraudulent statistic than MPG, which is itself being increasingly abused within its own limits.

No surprise here, of course, since it is vitally important to the overclass to sustain the “electric car” as a loss leader and a distraction, if not an actual way of perpetuating the insane capitalist pipe-dream of having all adults get to work and the store via 3,500-pound machines that sit idle 95 percent of the time.