Speaking at a post-election press conference at the White House on Wednesday, U.S. President Barack Obama called on his political rivals the Republican Party (also know as the GOP, short for Grand Old Party) to join him in supporting electric vehicles.  He said that while the pair sparred on many issues, that he hoped electric vehicles would be something that the two parties would see eye to eye on.

The President will need GOP cooperation if he hopes to push further grants for the EV industry.  While the Democratic Party hung on to control of the U.S. Senate, Republicans seized a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Obama is trying to sell Republicans on his plan to push one million electric vehicles onto U.S. streets by 2015.

Automakers have been partially supportive of Obama's plan.  They've lauded the $5B USD in special battery and EV technology loans and grants that he's lavished them with.  The legislation to fund these grants did enjoy a degree of bipartisan support, with some Republicans jumping on board.

However, $10B USD more in proposed EV loans and grants for the EV industry was torpedoed during President Obama's first two years in office.  Opposition came primarily from the Republican party, but also from some fiscally conservative Democrats.

Obama tried to drum up support for more EV grants among both parties at the conference, stating, "There's a lot of agreement around the need to make sure that electric cars are developed here in the United States, that we don't fall behind other countries.  That gives opportunities for Democrats and Republicans to come together."

Many of the big Japanese and U.S. automakers are preparing to release electric vehicles this year or next.  Nissan will release its LEAF EV and General Motors Company will release the Chevy Volt.  Next year the Ford Focus Electric and the Toyota Prius Plug-in will launch.

Automakers have asserted that grants will be greatly helpful in ensuring that the expensive research needed to develop electric vehicles -- a radically different internal architecture -- moves head at a sufficient pace.  

But while they have praised the "carrot" side of Obama's EV approach, they have noisily criticized the "stick" side of his plans -- a proposal to mandate a 62 mpg average light vehicle efficiency by 2025.  Automakers were forced to begrudgingly accept a 34.1 mpg mandatory fuel efficiency increase that must be reached by 2016.

Perhaps acknowledging that he faces an uphill battle to pass more electric vehicle legislation, Obama took an apologetic tone about the broader bailout, stating, "[Some voters] started looking at all this and it felt as if government was getting much more intrusive into people's lives than they were accustomed. We thought it was necessary, but I'm sympathetic to folks who looked at it and said this is looking like potential overreach."

Very significantly, the President also essentially agreed to drop plans to pass "cap and trade" legislation which would spend billions (if not trillions) in taxpayer money to set a hard limit on the amount of greenhouse gases companies can emit, in a bid to fight the supposed "global warming" crisis, which some researchers claim mankind is causing.

The President acknowledged that the bill wouldn't pass the House due to Republican opposition and argued that he only tried to push it because of the Supreme Court decision that found greenhouse gases a danger to public health.  That decision mandates the EPA to adopt some sort of action to fight GHG emissions in the U.S.

Obama said that there's plenty of alternatives to cap and trade, though -- including promoting lower-emission EVs (centrally produced power, even with transmission losses is typically lower emissions than small internal combustion engines).  He states, "Cap and trade was just one way of skinning the cat; it was not the only way. It was a means, not an end. And I'm going to be looking for other means to address this problems."