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GM Loses Money On Every Volt Built
thecarchik writes "Doug Parks, vehicle line executive for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, GM's range-extended electric vehicle, confirmed Tuesday that the company loses money on every Volt it sells. The expensive 16-kilowatt-hour battery pack, which likely costs GM somewhere between $8,000 and $12,000, is clearly too expensive to let the company build hundreds of thousands of Volts right away. Just 10,000 Volts will be built in 2011, though GM is working to increase that number. GM plans to chip away incrementally to lower the costs of the specialized components in the Volt, especially the power electronics. The price of consumer lithium-ion cells has fallen 6 to 8 percent annually since their 1989 launch; the large-format cells in automotive packs seem likely to follow the same curve and as costs are lowered the Volt may stop being a loss for the company."
This is only an issue in lower volume production runs.
Although they can never overcome the cost penalty associated with each vehicle, they can make it up in volume.
It won't be a problem. They can make it up in volume.
Reality bites ... although yea, the hope is eventually costs will come down, especially with volume.
BTW, are those batteries somehow recycled at end-of-life?
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
You lose money on every product until you've sold enough to pay off the retooling process, the design process and to force the price of new materials/parts to drop. If you spend $1,000,000,000 developing a product that you sell for $50k then you will make a loss to start with - no matter what.
So why is this news? (Slashvertisement anyone?)
dnuof eruc rof aixelsid
This whole 'new technology is pricey and scary' has to stop. It's new, it's expensive, we get it.
Someone (GE in this case) will step up and start buying. As production increases, volume drives the cost down. Technology improvements drive the cost down even further.
It stinks that GM is losing money on these, but they're putting the effort into it, and I have to applaud them for it. Then again, didn't the PS3 and Xbox 360 cost more to make at launch time than they were selling for? Maybe GM is on to something...
If gasoline were to suddenly become significantly more expensive, the asking price could be adjusted accordingly.
Electric eels.
If they're only making 10,000 the first year, demand will surely greatly exceed supply. So raise the price and make a tidy profit from the early adopters.
If we care about GM, then we should not buy Volt from them. Every Volt we buy causes GM to lose money, so if we don't buy any Volt (boycott them) then GM won't lose any money, hence a nett positive for them. Yay on a more serious note, I don't see why GM would market a car that causes them to lose money. How can they recoup their investment? From selling battery replacement or services? anyone care to explain?
Sure, they are losing money now, but they will turn it around and make huge profits. This is GM, they have experience at this.
Wait, never mind.
Who is building all the new power generating plants we'll need when millions of drivers have electric cars? Now is the time to start. You can't build those plants overnight.
GM Loses Money On Every Volt Built
Technically, sure. In reality, because the government owns GM, the tax payers lose money on every Volt. Labor unions made off like bandits at the recent IPO, so I guess someone wins.
Here is my other problem: where do the tree huggers think the electricity to power these "zero-emissions" vehicles comes from? Magic unicorns? No, usually fossil fuel burning power plants, along with all the associated loss of energy down the transmission lines etc along the way. Oh right, and we can't build clean(er) power plants like nuclear because the same environmentalists, w/ their friends 'OMG teh nukeclear!' alarmists, tie up everything in so much red tape it isn't worth it. Like the Prius, this isn't about the environment. It is about status, and acting like you're so much better than your filthy neighbors driving that BIG OIL powered global-warming causing piece of crap.
There is very little future in being right when your boss is wrong.
After you "borrow" billions of dollars from taxpayers you kind of have a responsibility to use your second chance wisely.
They have a proven track record of running a business which cannot support itself.
...GM losing money on one of their vehicles. They're pretty used to that.
That would save them the cost of the engine and all it's secondary components (cooling system, exhaust system, etc etc)
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Sell the car at a loss, make up for it by selling the electricity at a markup. Er, wait...
Nothing new in manufacturing really, but it might be the first time it's been seen in production cars I suspect. You make a bunch at a loss initially, tweak the technology, the manufacturing process, streamline the design and eventually you start making a profit on them.
In some situations, those early losses will be spun back into R&D costs on the budget and targeted as profit that has to be made on future units.
Hopefully they'll stick with it and start driving costs down so that the technology can be made cheaper and is more efficient, rather than pulling the plug (no pun intended) and giving up on it.
Bad decisions and producing vehicles that most Americans don't want.
The execs of GM will pay huge bonuses after hitting goals that they help set.
The unions will continue to demand ever increasing pay and the common share holder will get screwed.
Thanks but no thanks GM you suck and so do your cars.
It's a well known fact that all hybrids lose money at first. Toyota lost something like $5000 on each early model Prius. This will all work out.
Howard Roark, Architect
I believe in a Man's right to exist for his own sake.
... is there anything you can't screw up?
Paying for gasoline when they can just as easily use a battery and save tons of money over the lifetime of the car.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Step 1) Sell the car at a loss. ...
Step 2)
Step 3) Profit!!!
Wow...
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
If you spend $1,000,000,000 developing a product that you sell for $50k then you will make a loss to start with - no matter what.
That's not what this is about. This is not about fixed or one-time costs. This is about gross margins on each item sold. That means the delta between what you can sell a given instance of the product for, and what it cost to make that particular instance above and beyond any expenses already incurred.
If you spend $1bil to develop a product and tool the factor etc, then prior to making or selling any product you are $1bil in the red. You have lost this amount of money even if you never sell a single product. So this cost alone cannot be used to say that you lose money on every item sold.
If, in addition to those costs, building an instance of the product costs $40k in labor, materials, and energy and you sell it for $50k, then you have a gross margin of $10k, and after the sale your total balance for the project is $999,990,000. You have made $10k on the sale. Sell enough product at this margin, and you'll eventually pay off the R&D expenses and the project as a whole will be in the black.
If, on the other hand, it costs $60k to build that product and you sell it for $50k, then your gross margin is $-10k, and your balance after the sale is $1,000,010,000. You have lost $10k on the sale. Every product you sell is actually costing you more money, not making you money. Unless costs are cut or prices raised, you can never pay back the expenses, because every sale simply costs you more money.
That is what it means to say "GM loses money on every Volt built".
However, TFA itself seems to be slightly confused on this distinction, and does not provide any link to the actual alleged quote. If Doug Park actually said that they are going to lose money on every Volt sold, then the 'gross margin' sense is what he meant. If he said that they don't expect the Volt (as in the project) to be profitable for several years, then that most likely means they are selling the Volt for a profit and hope to make back their expenses in several years.
The enemies of Democracy are
Slashdot conservatives will come to tell us how this is the personal doing of Obama in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
It's the razorblade model - you buy it, and they hold a razorblade to your b*lls
If GM had not decided to add direct gas engine drive (for speeds over 70MPH), then:
- the design would have been simpler
- the manufacturing costs would have been reduced (perhaps allowing them to make money...)
- the car would be more easily repaired
- the car would not be a "hybrid". It would be an electric with a gas powered generator.
- the car would be limited to more efficient ( and often more legal ) driving speeds. 70 MPH?
- some, including myself, would have considered purchasing one
So what is the average life of this $8000.00 battery ? How many miles does this equate too?
Microsoft makes money off of their xbox line even though it loses money per sale. Game licenses more than make up for the lost cost of the console.
Maybe if GM dealers are the only place for maintenance, they'll recoup the costs that way. If not, Uncle Sam is already standing by. I'd buy stock, but that didn't work out so well for the last set of shareholders.
Back on planet earth, the UAW actually bought a portion of GM. Why would they intentionally screw up the profits of GM when they have their own money invested in it? After all, you can't extract money from a company that doesn't exist...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Some vital stats:
* Gas/petrol usually costs about 15 cents per mile. This (and other electric cars presumably) will cost just under 4 cents per mile (based on current electricity costs), so the overall cost is only 4x cheaper (I was hoping for a full 10x or even 100x cheaper, but it's still good).
* It takes 10 hours to do a full recharge to do a full 40 mile recharge on 120 volt, but only 4 hours with a 240 volt supply. Maybe America et al. should switch to the 240v power like Europe to get faster charging (our kettles boil in half the time too). I'm not sure if anyone in the world has 480 volt mains, but that sounds as though it could be useful.
Most info obtained from here: http://gm-volt.com/chevy-volt-faqs
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Well, considering they are one of the ones responsible for killing the NiMH Battery in the electric cars over 10 years ago with the help of Cheveron (Well Texaco which was bought out by Cheveron. Bought the company holding the patent and mothballed it for anything big enough to run a vehicle) and stalled the entire industry for this long, they deserve to lose some money.
I am wondering how much of this talk about all these electric cars coming out now has to do with the fact that the patents on that old thing is actually supposed to be up soon and then anyone will be able to make and use them as they see fit so they have to start giving us something or someone else will.
Economy of scale.
We may recall that when the PS3 first came out Sony was losing money on each unit sold. That didn't exactly bring down Sony in the process; nor did it cause people to scream out that it was the result of some great conspiracy.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
if making the battery is more toxic than operating a regular car for 20 years it seems like this is the wrong direction. Honestly it still seems like fuel cells are a better option to pursue.
You're misreading the difference between constant costs (overhead) and variable costs (production costs). Volume only works if you can get the variable costs (the costs of producing each item) below the profit of selling each item.
Economies of scale (making each item cheaper to produce by producing more) doesn't work for the Volt: the batteries have a constant cost and making more only makes them MORE expensive if anything. This is because the resources to make them are limited and increasing demand causes prices to increase.
Therefore they can't overcome the cost penalty by making it up in volume. This move only makes sense for GM if the practice and market establishment of selling now will later be useful for them when making the cars is profitable. There's another explanation: the owners of GM are pushing this for political reasons. Considering the rhetoric about making them make cleaner cars when the bailout occurred, it would be a conspiracy theory to NOT believe that the government had a hand in this.
Then again.... I'm an idiot.....
...... and idiots rule the world....
So they will be making 10 kilovolts?
Japanese manufacturers such as Toyota/Lexus and Honda. They've been selling hybrids worldwide for around ten years now, and you can bet that they, too, lost money on every sale for at least the first few years. In doing so, they bought themselves ten years to refine their processes, tooling, and supply chains, iron out bugs, and discover (and patent) non-obvious efficiencies and improvements.
Meanwhile, the American auto manufacturers chose to stick with the same old profit-heavy SUVs, elderly sedans, and rental-grade compacts they'd been selling for the past twenty years.
The history of alternate-fuel technology is yet another demonstration of US companies' skill at trading the next decade's earnings for the next quarter's. I have zero sympathy for Chevrolet and whatever learning curve they (and their customers) are about to climb with the Volt, because with any competent management in place they would already have several years' experience manufacturing these cars by now.
Good thing they're "too big to fail," I guess.
I don't have the access, know-how, or time to investigate,
but my gut reaction is not to believe these kinds of stories.
It all comes down to creative accounting.
If you want to put out a story that you lose money on each one,
you just mess with the numbers and say it.
If you want to put out the opposite story, you mess again and do that.
You might even do both things in different news stories.
Wouldn't you think you were getting a great value if you knew the company was losing money on every sale?
Let's face it. The Volt is about Obama's vanity, the UAW's greed, and the green lobby's delusions. GM will be ruined again in 5 years. I should say the shareholders. The slugos who work there have the full backing of the US government. If you own the new GM stock you are a fool.
an ill wind that blows no good
They could have cut battery costs by a large margin by using Nickel-metal hydride.
Did they use any carbon fiber components to cut down the weight?
How about front-ending the battery with a super capacitor for greater energy efficiency and better regenerative braking?
:T:R:A:N:S:
make the money off of the games they sell, not off of the units they produce... uh wait..
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I call bullshit. Companies can whine all they want about how they don't make money, but in the real world you never sell a product for a loss. This is just GM's way to get more funding from the govt. Hell, I already own 60% of the company. Fuck GM.
21st Century Renaissance Man
Toyota lost money on every Prius for years. It is the price for new technology until economies of scale and public acceptance kick in.
I'm a BBS orphan in a blogging world.
I'll stick with my 20 year old honda that gets good gas mileage.
Wake up America, this ain't the industrial age of capitalism any more. Its all about the FINANCING of high ticket items. You may think interest fees are low, but in today's bullshit economy its the ONLY real chance that corporations can get your money after they eliminate the competition in the marketplace. GM will make you pay on the bottom line, not on the sticker, but on the clock. Wake up and smell the rip off.
The taxpayer's are losing money for every Volt made.
He seems to have a total boner for railing against the Volt. Not that I listen to him....
I must have somehow been transported to a Universe where this is NOT true
"
According to modern cosmological theory, lithium—as both of its stable isotopes lithium-6 and lithium-7—was among the 3 elements synthesized in the Big Bang. Though the amount of lithium generated in Big Bang nucleosynthesis is dependent upon the number of photons per baryon, for accepted values the lithium abundance can be calculated, and there is a "cosmological lithium discrepancy" in the Universe: older stars seem to have less lithium than they should, and some younger stars have far more. The lack of lithium in older stars is apparently caused by the "mixing" of lithium into the interior of stars, where it is destroyed.[26] Furthermore, lithium is produced in younger stars. Though it transmutes into two atoms of helium due to collision with a proton at temperatures above 2.4 million degrees Celsius (most stars easily attain this temperature in their interiors), lithium is more abundant than predicted in later-generation stars, for causes not yet completely understood.[9]"
"Although lithium is widely distributed on Earth, it does not naturally occur in elemental form due to its high reactivity.[2] The total lithium content of seawater is very large and is estimated as 230 billion tonnes, where the element exists at a relatively constant concentration of 0.14 to 0.25 parts per million (ppm),[31][32] or 25 micromolar;[33] higher concentrations approaching 7 ppm are found near hydrothermal vents.[32]
"Estimates for crustal content range from 20 to 70 ppm by weight.[10] In keeping with its name, lithium forms a minor part of igneous rocks, with the largest concentrations in granites. Granitic pegmatites also provide the greatest abundance of lithium-containing minerals, with spodumene and petalite being the most commercially viable sources.[10] A newer source for lithium is hectorite clay, the only active development of which is through the Western Lithium Corporation in the United States.[34] At 20 mg lithium per kg of Earth's crust,[35] lithium is the 25th most abundant element. Nickel and lead have about the same abundance."
Lithium shortage indeed. Bunch of idiots in business who don't want to actually work or a living. Open the FUCKING MINES IDIOTS
Why should I buy a welfare car?
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Tell them to leave my cows out of this!
Screw your cows, why do my ducks have to be threatened?
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
No! GM is counting on future video game sales, just like Sony/Microsoft/Nintento to make their profit.
As well as OnStar signups...
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Gee - is that, like, 10 kilovolts?
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Do you think that the first iPad that was sold covered the cost of Apple's R&D?
I hate to hijack this thread, but since you said that I feel compelled. I agree with you completely, yet all the pro-piracy "information wants to be free" Slashdotters [1] say that amortizing the R&D/design costs over the sale of multiple copies of a piece of IP - a song, a book, a piece of software, a movie - is not a good business model and that it needs to change. Other than medieval-style patronage by wealthy groups to do their bidding, I don't see how anyone expects to recoup millions or billions of R&D/creation cost of the first copy of the IP if they can't amortize that cost over multiple sales.
[1] I looked at some of your post history and you seem to favor a reasonable copyright term (15-20 years) so I don't think you fall into that category, so don't take this as any sort of attack.
how can we afford to charge these vehicles? 3300 to 15000 watts, 8+ hrs to charge..
obama already wants to tax coal energy. more nuclear plants?
i want to see California charge 25000 electric cars in it's current power grid.
Nintendo does NOT sell their consoles at a loss, never have.
Only Microsoft and Sony can be stupid enough to do such a braindead move.
Actual (most) US homes do have 240 volt service. They just use it only for the water heater and clothes dryer.
You could probably have an electrician hook up a 240 volt outlet for your car, too.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
GM, not unlike Toyota with its Prius, have tried solving a systemic problem - infrastructure to support mass deployment of EVs - from the car up.
If all human efforts to date can be belived, this simply can't be done.
What both GM and Toyota ended up with is a car that's more expensive than the ICE equivalent, and in the case of all plugin cars, whose distribution is capped and cannot scale because there just isn't enough electricity to go around to power everyone's car charge at 8AM and 5PM without massive investment in the grid that's not forthcoming.
This doesn't mean the problem can't be solved, or isn't being solved. In actual fact, it already has been.
Better Place has approached the same problem as a systemic problem, solving it from the infrastructure down, rather than from the car up.
In a nutshell, they roll out the infrastructure, they own the batteries, and they sell miles like cell/mobile-phone companies sell minutes.
This is not as bad as it sounds. We pay in two ways for a car - at the shop, and at the pump.
Better Place's idea is to take the same money at "the pump" as an ICE car would require. That "same petrol money (per mile)" - which we're already used to spending every week - is enough to:
[a] Pay for 100% clean energy.
[b] Pay for the battery, whose price drops off the car price, making the car 10K$+ cheaper.
[c] Cross-subsidize the parts or even all of the car on a long-term plan. "Free iPhone on a 3 Year Plan", the "Corolla Version".
[d] Make profit
Yes, that petrol money we're paying is enough to pay for the kilometers AND cover the car lease.
Don't jump if the idea of someone making a profit off your back offends you. That holds for the current system equally well, and unlike BPL, the Saudi Sheiks don't send you a cashback to pay for your car.
Not only that but the smart charging nature of the grid solution completely sidesteps the "everyone plugs in at 8AM and 5PM" problem by flattening the charge curve to accommodate the grid limitations of current infrastructure.
Plus, they have a "battery swap" system so if your battery is depleted and you want to "refill quickly" you just drive in and get it swapped by something that resembles a carwash for... no extra charge.
This is not just a "my battery doesn't hold that much charge no more, please swap" solution. It also gives you access to new battery technology as it comes out without the need to re-buy the car, and more importantly, solves the range problem.
Range, after all, is limited by the deployment of gas/petrol stations, not just the size of your tank.
Better place is putting the swap stations on roads and charge spots at home, work and retail, before they start selling the plans - much like you'd expect AT&T to put up the towers before they come trying to sell you a phone.
How far from reality is all this? Here's the good bit.
It's here.
Israel is Country #1 and going retail in the next few months. They have already enough cars pre-sold to make Better Place profitable from day 1.
Denmark is #2, 6 months on their Heels and Australia is #3, starting rollout out in a year or so, with Hawaii in the 'soon' mix as well.
Tokyo (who has a 70,000 taxi fleet - the world's biggest) has been running a pilot with 24/7-driving taxis powered by BP's battery swap system for months now.
Renault has geared up to mass-produce compatible cars. Large family sedans, not little city-cars. Better Place also sealed deals with Chery in china, with General Electric for the charge spots, got 700mil$+ in VC money from banks in the middle of the GFC.
They got good tax incentives in Israel and outstanding ones in Denmark (still no word on tax incentives Down Under).
BPL also dropped that they're in discussions with about 30 governments in the world.
It's looking VERY rosy for the EV. Just not because of half-measures a-la Volt.
As a sidenote, my money is in Lithium mines. If this flies, and it seems there's nothing to stop it, if we bunch up all laptop, prius, iphone and camera batteries in the world into one very big battery mountain, we're going to need about 4-5 of these mountains in the next 5-10 years. Demand will outstrip capacity in 4 years or so. Watch this space.
-
Its all about the FINANCING of high ticket items. GM will make you pay ...
Historically, yes. But not currently. GM sold off General Motors Acceptance Corporation (which is now Ally Financial) between 2006 and 2010, because they needed the cash. GM wanted to bring that operation back under their control, but couldn't afford it. They bought AmeriCredit, a small Texas bank active in "subprime auto lending" last October 1, and renamed it "GM Financial", but so far, it's not a big player in GM auto financing. The dealers are mostly using Ally.
The bailout, though, worked; GM is alive and well and rapidly paying off the U.S. Government.
That is, if the batteries really give the cycle counts they claim, which I kind of doubt based on similar usage of smaller ones in my hand power tools. GM's really going to be up a creek if they don't last an awful long time, since they probably cost more to replace than whatever part of the above mentioned Camaro breaks first.
If I had one -- there'd be no further demand on the grid, since I've been off it since about 1982, thanks. It works well for me.
It would be a nice place to store some of the excess power my large solar PV array makes.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
I am still predicting plenty will buy a volt, the prius has already proven that a large portion of the population is bad at math. Once enough idiots buy in perhaps the price will drop to a point where it makes sound financial sense. I am predicting that day is still a long way off.
Got Code?
... they hold a razorblade to your b*lls
"There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum, it's breathtaking, I suggest you try it..."
The main point of electric cars has often been to shift the pollution from the street corner to a big power plant with scrubbers/bag filters/precipitators/whatever and a whopping big stack that dumps everything left at a height where nobody is breathing it. Even for horrible cases like being powered by wet brown high sulphur coal without pollution controls it's still a lot less pollution at street level than an ordinary car. That's the main reason why California with its smog filled cities has been interested in them for a long time.
and finally realize the amount energy stored in a ton (literally) of even the latest batteries is nowhere close to a gallon of gasoline. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Until we get cold fusion there will be no widespread use of electric cars.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Not everything models around economies of scale, especially in tech. For example, Intel can't make chips for cheaper, without introducing new technology that may or may not happen.
They really should reserve the Volt for luxury automobiles. A Mercedes S550 would be much better vehicle with a quiet all-electric drive, instead of the noisy gas-system. Plus, at $100k each, they can afford a more expensive/longer-ranged/powerful set of batteries than something like the Volt.
For GM, I'd like to see a Vette with lots of electric power.
If you do a lot of stop-and-go urban driving, hybrids are great. Taxi drivers love them.
If you're doing a lot of highway driving, a diesel will likely do better.
why did I sell NiMH patent to Texaco
why did I sell NiMH patent to Texaco
why did I sell NiMH patent to Texaco
why did I sell NiMH patent to Texaco
I wonder how many times GM executives thought about this question once they started working on the EV2^h^h^hVolt.
for some background, GM sold their majority stake in the NiMH patent to Texaco around the time they were crushing the EV1:
http://pppad.blogspot.com/2007/05/nimh-held-hostage-by-chevron-texaco.html
I also read that the 16KWh Li battery used in the Volt can only be run to about 50% so only 8KWh are usable. A 400lb NiMH made of EV-95 batteries would provide 12KWh and provide more power because they could be run down much lower than 50%. Shoulda, coulda, woulda GM is run by idiots.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
No! GM is counting on future video game sales, just like Sony/Microsoft/Nintento to make their profit.
As well as OnStar signups...
It's nice to know that the bailout money is going to good use. And when GM is asked why it hasn't been paid back, they can say that they lost money on the deal while at the same the CEO's rake in nice bonuses.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
GM should get into the battery LEASING business. Redesign the car to allow the battery to slide in underneath the car, ad clamp it in, and plug in the cables. They should lease the batteries for approx $75/month (there is their money).. Volt drivers don't actually OWN the batteries, but if you get into a situation where you cannot make it back, go to service station, trade for a full one. The cars can cost less, since they are not paying full price of the battery.
I worked out the numbers, this is economically feasible. If most people can afford a Volt, then it leads that they don't mind paying the $75/month leasing fee. GM should have been in the battery LEASING business years ago. Now, small service stations can have special arrangement to obtain a number of batterybanks and charge them.
So - a volt driver pulls in, replaces the battery, pays the attendant and drives off with a full battery. So, even with 70 miles or more driving range, if the distance between service stations are less then 70 miles, its possible to drive cross country.
GE Came out with a WattStation, a level 2 charging station for EV's.
they'd dealt with this a long time ago. EV1 was their golden ticket.
Why would they intentionally screw up the profits of GM when they have their own money invested in it?
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
give gm's financial situation with non-electric vehicles, i guess they're just stick to their standard procedures
How long before they don't hold full charge properly? How reliable are they? There's no chance of anyone buying into a product where it costs $8-12k every few years. Obviously there will be some kind of buy-back/refurbishment program in place but it's still going to be a significant cost issue.
Thanks, this image now keeps floating before my mind's eye.
And my testis seem bend on crawling up into my chest cavity.
Auto makers in the US are required to keep the average mileage of their vehicles below a certain standard. This means that, to produce a lot of inefficient vehicles (trucks, SUVs, etc.) they need to produce a quantity of fuel efficient vehicles.
Producing vehicles that use 0 gallons per mile has the added benefit of allowing them to make more gas hogs. This probably isn't a huge part of the reason they made the volt, but it would be a contributing reason.
Staying relevant and in the press would be another factor.
Its called glaring incompetence. But in today's society we are all kept alive with energy we don't replace. We have lost our mutual value and GM shows how disgusting the theatricals can get about the 'imposibility of the transition'. Oil = money and we all need oil because of freaking moronoic lying scumbag companies like GM. We need a localized energy, food and skill autonomous patchwork of commuities to develop asap. That or we will all run into the peak oil wall of death in our massive Chevy Volt.
for the past 50 years, GM HAS LOST MONEY ON EVERY car they've done. that's why they needed to shuffle debts out via government deal.
volt is just the poster child.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
You mean, leave out your bulls, right?
I saw 4 Volts driving south on I-75 in Ohio on Wednesday, they were moving along at a pretty good pace (70-75mph). Far enough from Detroit that they were probably testing the gas engine.
But more on topic, I think the Volt is a good step forward but even if it is selling at a loss, it's too expensive for what the vehicle offers. It's not a big car (smaller than my TSX, which admittedly doesn't have much room in the back for adults), looks like it would be cramped for anyone in the back seat. $40,000 is a big price tag for a car that is designed for city commuting. What happens in 2-3 years when the battery doesn't have the same capacity as it did brand new? Regardless of what they say you can get out of it, we all know batteries almost never live up to expectation. Who is going to be happy about paying $5000 for a new car battery?
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
They can call it the GM Mono!
I don't understand why so many think it is. It is too heavily compromised in its current state. For anyone who has been in one its interior is craptastic, as in stuff that should not have ever been allowed out the door. While the view from the front seats is OK provided you get the charcoal interior, if your in the back seats you would swear your in the cheapest econo box on the planet.
Throw in an overly complex system which has arisen because they could not get the original idea to work but had to get it out the door now. As in, if they had pushed it back another year then we might not have three planetary gear sets, three separate cooling/heating loops, etc. Let alone having the gas engine drive the wheels directly which it can do over 40mph.
The Leaf is more innovative because it changes how we think about cars. It forces you to actually think about driving, instead of just going because you can. The Volt is not because it doesn't require you to actually change your habits. It lets you have your "feel good I am an ENVIRONMENTALIST" smugness without actually having to do it. You would do more for the environment and your walled by buying the Cruze HF model, which gets 40mpg on the highway all the time and 30 in the city and costs around 20k.
The only reason GM can sell these at a loss is because the tax payer poured enough money into them to keep them afloat. Worse the tax payer is further keeping them afloat by subsidizing the purchase of each Volt sold. People bitch about hand outs and for some reason turn a blind eye to this boondoggle? Get real. So we now are handing money over to the 100k per year crowd and feeling good about it? Even after the $7500 credit it is not an inexpensive car, so the majority of middle class will only see this in the parking lot at work; usually on reserved spots or those with someone's initials, or at the dealer ship.
GM isn't behaving like a start up, they are behaving like the banks did a few years ago (specifically Fannie Mae). They know they can never go under because the US will step in and make it all all right. There are also reports out already that they may actually not be losing ANY money on this car at 41K.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
80% of that energy is lost by burning. So you have to reduce the power available in a gallon of petrol by 80%.
Then you have to realise that one reason for 150bhp engines is so that when your engine is at idle and you want to start off, you have enough torque without revving the engine massively to actually start the car. 50bhp is plenty to get to any legal speed in the US or most of Europe. The remaining 100bhp is so the car can actually move from standing still. An electric engine doesn't need that 100bhp because it can have maximum torque from 0rpm.
Which means you don't need as big an engine, nor all that complex and heavy gearing and transmission.
Also, when you brake, your engine doesn't create petrol to put in your tank. So you have to reduce the power in that gallon of gas again unless you never brake until you get to your destination...
When will people realise this?
Never, because they have a hard-on over hating anything ecological because they're trained to think it communistic.
Bull with it's balls cut off = cow
Obviously, very few developers study economics, and perhaps of those who did, they bought into the Keynesian theories. Most of the comments here demonstrate massive ignorance of economic reality. The Volt is yet another of those "we do it because it makes us feel virtuous" projects. And the sign of another government bailout to come.
Obviously, very few developers study economics, and perhaps of those who did, they bought into the Keynesian theories. Most of the comments here demonstrate massive ignorance of economic reality. The Volt is yet another of those "we do it because it makes us feel virtuous" projects. And the sign of another government bailout to come.
These massive battery packs present massive problems, none of which will be resolved at tolerable cost by forcing production. This is another technology whose time has not yet--and may never--come. Buy high, sell low, and make it up in volume plus government handouts. At this rate, with more and more of our income taken to prop up failures, none of us will be able to afford a Volt anyway.
--- Bill
Last I checked, they're paying off the government with loan money they haven't spent yet.
Are they solidly in the black?
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
This reminds me of the program running in india for 1 laptop per child, where they wanted to get a laptop made for 100$ to be able to sell to all children, something like that, and India rejected it saying it was too expensive, 100$ was not something all households could afford, so they were about to can the project( project lead by those invested in making millions from this....of which many designers took a crack at...) as they were all not budging from their respective perches. Then the students from India university, took it upon themselves to design a new tablet, of which retail costs about 35$ to make, and uses a flash card for a hard drive, imagine the ingenuity of being able to come up with that idea!
So the program will go ahead because the students went and found cheaper ways to make things work, and cheaper parts then where the original designers were looking for....of course when I hear this, I think how many closed door meetings happened to try a run a deal where the HDD will be supplied by x company and they will make $$ profits, instead of looking at this as a non profit program, and just sell the mats for cost + maybe a small %.....makes me gag.
I am sure again this is ford not going through all the right R&D to find the best mats and best ways, but more so making it quick for the public. Why can SONY and M$ force themselves to sell PS3 and XBox at a loss, because they know they will make it up in games being sold, so likewise ford should consider they will make it up in charging stations sold to their public, or accessories...
something like that
To continue to receive the government grants, subsidies, and tax breaks.
By releasing this statement, I'd guess they are bucking for more $.
As long as Uncle Sugar is handing out food coupons they will dip into that trough.
And that trough is such good stuff that I'm sure there are employees who's only job is to leverage to keep that trough full.
I have seen companies run similar programs (ugh excuse me, maintain the appearance of running a program) just to be able to continue to dip in that trough.
Rick B.
This is not news or surprising. The implication in the headline is that this is somehow different for other new vehicles. Every new vehicle has some development costs, some more than others. There is also retooling, etc. The first cars sold ALWAYS lose money. It is ALWAYS an issue of selling enough cars of a particular model for that model to EVENTUALLY become profitable.
nope, steer or ox
Like anyone can even know that
No, steer.
They have 4 economical fuel efficient cars. YET they have 5 different Corvette models.
You do realize that the level of horsepower found in Corvettes is by highly efficient engine designs, right? Did you know that most Corvettes achieve 30+ MPG on the freeway? Sure, those V8s can suck gas when pushed to their limits but they are very good at taking small sips for everyday driving.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
I think that's pretty plausible, actually. Also, something the GP doesn't point out - even if the Volt isn't profitable in the gross margin sense now, it's quite possible that it will become so. As economies of scale begin to kick in for the suppliers, the price for components is likely to drop - so that even if GM is losing money on every car today, that situation may well turn around as sales increase.
Of course, it's a given that the workers are at fault here, because it's unpossible that management could have screwed it up. Give me a fucking break.
My 1986 F-150 ran for well over 225k miles. My 1999 F-150 is currently at 178k and still going strong. And I doubt I'm especially unusual here.
Just because people CHOOSE to replace their vehicles after 100k miles doesn't mean that's as long as they can run.
So where corrupt union officials failed the US Government has succeeded. Toss out the CEO and replace him with an Obamite, place key union officials in charge of corporate finances (paying them off with stolen tax money before REAL investors) and force the company to ramp up production of a vehicle whose time (and technology) has not yet come whose market is as imaginary as the Hollywood image that's been created.
The destruction of an auto mobile company 1, 2, 3. Henry Ford should have been so effective...
And future taxpayer bailouts.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It must be difficult to make a profit on selling volts, because you never know how many ampères your customers are going to pull and for how long. Now, selling joules, or watts by the hour, seems a better business model to me.
Flourescent (adj): smelling like ground wheat.
Then they can buy many more melons from the Farmer. Since the farmer can unload his whole lot quickly, he'll sell them to them cheaper. Maybe they'll only have to pay $0.50 per melon. Then there is the cost of maintaining, fueling, driving, loading/unloading the truck. If this comes to less than $0.50 per melon on average, then they can make a profit.
Only here the car is the handle and the battery pack is the blade.
Typical government program.
I smell another bailout.
About the only GM car I'd have would be a vette...and if I ever got one of those again, first thing I'd do is rip out the fscking OnStar system.
I was shocked last year when looking at them...and asked the salesman if I could order a car without the OnStar option, he said with a puzzled look "No..it comes stock on all models".
When did they start doing that? I sure don't want them to be able to monitor conversations in my car...send a disable signal (or someone else to do it if they learn to hack into the system...etc).
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
because they know they will be bailed out again.
Just like its bad to have banks to big to fail its bad to have an industry leader who is too big to let them fail.
Contracts come up next year, should be fun to watch
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
http://www.facebook.com/revengeoftheelectriccar
Troll it may be, however, it's probably closer to the truth than most people wish to believe.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Its a GM product produced in the Microsoft Windows concept. LOL
Joe Investor
Toyota lost money on every Prius it sold when it came out to. It was the cost of establishing a presence in the market. I don't know if this is still the case or not.