Rush Hour: The Volt's Bad Electricity, Facebook's Delayed IPO, and a Moratorium Morass

Today's hot business topics, boiled down to a couple of arbitrary quotes, comments, and tweets.

On the backlash against GM's new electric vehicle, the Volt, on the same day that President Obama went to Detroit to tour a Volt facility:

"Quantifying just how much taxpayer money will have been wasted on the hastily developed Volt is no easy feat. Start with the $50 billion bailout (without which none of this would have been necessary), add $240 million in Energy Department grants doled out to GM last summer, $150 million in federal money to the Volt’s Korean battery supplier, up to $1.5 billion in tax breaks for purchasers and other consumer incentives, and some significant portion of the $14 billion loan GM got in 2008 for “retooling” its plants, and you’ve got some idea of how much taxpayer cash is built into every Volt. In the end, making the bailout work—whatever the cost—is the only good reason for buying a Volt." —Edward Niedermeyer writing in the New York Times.

"Looks nice and drives nice are not going to become the TOP Concerns of prospective electric-car buyers. People are going to want to know what the TRUE lifetime costs of owning one of these are when those costs show up in Consumer Reports' article. Good luck selling the Chevy Volt. And if the Chevy Volt is a massive FLOP then where does that leave GM?" —A blogger called Varchild2008 writes on the Motley Fool site, under the headline "Bleak Future of OBAMA MOTORS."

On marking the 100th day of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and the Obama administration's deepwater-drilling moratorium:

"The relocation of just these two rigs threatens more than 200 jobs in the Gulf, a number that will only grow as the moratorium continues. One conservative estimate of the total jobs that will be destroyed is over 40,000.... It’s clear that President Obama’s moratorium on deepwater drilling has not only been a colossal error, but one made purely of the president’s refusal to listen to experts, scientists, the courts, and even the Gulf Coast residents who are the most impacted by the spill." —Newt Gingrich and Steve Everley writing on FoxNews.com.

"Big Oil is like a pusher who wants to sell us one more hit and who wants us to believe that the alternative isn't worth it. Well, it's time to tell the pusher we're going clean. Our oil addiction is preventing us from finding clean-energy solutions that could stimulate our economy and make us world leaders in clean-energy technologies" —Jackie Savitz writing in the Huffington Post.

On reports Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will wait until 2012 to take his company public:

"An IPO like that could have other repercussions—it could lift the slumbering fortunes of Silicon Valley, which is waiting for the initial public offering market to party like it’s 1999. There are a lot of significantly large companies that are stuck in neutral because public markets, for now, are waiting for a powerful signal—like a Facebook IPO." —Om Malik writing in GigaOm.

"At 26, Zuckerberg has taken his share of missteps in handling the company, though he’s handled the pressure of criticism—addressing it and adjusting because of it—better than some veterans. And it’s paid off. The popularity and growth of the site is clearly on an upswing. Giving him more time to focus on the growth of the company, instead of quarterly filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, is a good idea." —Sam Diaz writing in ZDNet.

What are your thoughts on any of the above topics, or anything else that's on your mind? Offer them below.