Obama’s $5 Billion Delivers Slow Jolt to Electric Vehicles: Cars

President Barack Obama has put $5 billion in taxpayer money behind his goal of having 1 million electric cars on U.S. roads by 2015. The Republican presidential ticket says it’s money wasted on “losers.”

Whether the technology itself is a loser or consumers are merely slow to adapt to new things, car buyers so far haven’t embraced electric vehicles in numbers close to Obama’s goal. Electric-vehicle sales since 2011 totaled fewer than 50,000 through September, just 5 percent of the president’s target.