Fmr. Car Czar: I Don’t Expect To Ever See An All-Electric Car Company

Steven Rattner, formerly the Chief Adviser to President Obama's automotive task force
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The guy who oversaw the Obama administration’s bailout of the auto industry for seven months doesn’t think he’ll ever see the day when a car company can survive on selling electric cars alone.

“Probably not in my lifetime,” Steve Rattner, Obama’s former car czar, told TPM. “Electric cars are going to be a very, very important part of our future but we should not assume, hey, will be an important part of the car companies’ profits.”

Rattner said he doesn’t believe dumping stimulus funds on the industry is the way to get a viable gas-free car made. As he told Jon Cohn in an earlier interview, as part of a media tour for his new book, Overhaul, “When Congress allocates X billion dollars for electric cars, or for batteries, or for windfarms, the money ends up in the hands of some government agency which has to decide how to invest it. And I candidly don’t believe that government is the best allocator of resources, especially within a compressed time frame.”

“I think using tax credits for buyers is a good way to encourage car companies,” he said to TPM. “These are helpful things to do … but they are not game changers for the companies, financially.”

He added that his role was only to get the car industry set up so you “never have them reappear at the government’s door,” saying he’s only looking at a “five year time horizon.” “Everything we’re doing works in the context … It’s not possible to make any accurate predictions beyond that.”

As for those Bush tax cuts TPMDC has been reporting about all week, Rattner said he believes they’d encourage people to buy more cars. But extending them is still a bad idea.

“Certainly, anything we do that puts money in people’s pockets will encourage people to buy cars,” he said. But extending them “for the wealthiest Americans is still a bad idea.”

Rattner, who was a Wall Street financier before taking the Treasury gig, said he thinks business’s anger with President Obama — on display at this week’s CNBC town hall — is misplaced.

“You have to start by understanding that the mood of the country is completely anti-business, whether right or wrong,” he said. “The Obama administration has tried to be constructive, has brought the groups together, been conciliatory to both sides. [But Obama] is often perceived as being bad to business.”

“It wouldn’t be politically justified for the president to go on some pro-business speaking tour,” he said. “They [businesses] are perceived to be part of the problem. Instead of complaining, they should try to be part of the solution.”

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