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Chevy Volt Meets High Resistance, GM Suspends Sales

Posted by timothy on from the get-it-resistance-ha-ha dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "The Hill reports that GM has announced to employees at one of its facilities that it is suspending production of the Chevy Volt for five weeks and temporarily laying off 1,300 employees. Back when GM launched the beleaguered electric car, it boldly targeted sales of 10,000 in 2011 and 60,000 in 2012 but GM only sold 7,671 Volts in 2011 and just 1,626 so far this year. 'We needed to maintain proper inventory and make sure that we continued to meet market demand,' says GM spokesman Chris Lee. 'We see positive trends, but we needed to make this market adjustment.' Although President Obama promised he would buy a Volt 'five years from now, when I'm not president anymore,' the Volt has come under criticism from Republicans in Congress because of reports of its batteries catching on fire during testing. Ironically, the shutdown comes as gas prices are soaring, exactly the time when an electric car should be an easy sell." If it's still true that GM was taking a loss on every Volt sold, perhaps this is a blessing in disguise.

3 of 599 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Japan and Europe is where the industry is by Siridar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Last time I went to a auto show, they had the then-new Ferrari 575.

    I waved the sales guy over from beyond the velvet rope (the unwashed crowds not being allowed to mix with the "real" customers) and asked him "how much is a 100,000 kilometer service on one of those things?"

    the reply?

    "none of our vehicles /ever/ do that many kilometers."

    Delivered with just the right amount of "how dare you even THINK about driving your Ferrari that much? For shame, sir. FOR SHAME." sneering.

  2. Two words by cortex · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Tesla Motors

    Telsa is planning on an ~$30,000 model in the next few years. If they achieve this price point and maintain the quality of their current models, I think that they will have an all electric car that many people will want

  3. Re:Too expensive by Rich0 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Probably because in Europe they actually use clean diesel fuel. All those EPA laws that resulted in smog reduction on cars were never applied to diesel, because of lobbying by the trucking industry. If you applied the same standards to diesel fuel as unleaded it would be plenty clean.