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Chevy Volt Meets High Resistance, GM Suspends Sales
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.
Suspending production != Suspending sales. The two mean quite different things.
Anyway, 7671 volts is more than they used in an electric chair.
The lawyers saw this number and stopped production: a customer might get hurt and sue...
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Less economical than a Prius
Not as good as a Prius
Costs more than a Prius
Buy a Prius.
To use a reverse car analogy, it's Motorola Xoom to iPad2.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
It's kind of a do-nothing-well car for $40,000USD
Without significant subsidies GM would have sold even fewer cars. The subsidy is a just transfer payment to the well off. High efficiency diesel engines are probably the most cost effective option for the masses and our stupid EPA requirements keep best ones out of the USA.
I can buy TWO Ford Focus 40mpg cars for the same price as a Volt.
Unlike other districts, there are no subsidies for the Volt in Saskatchewan.
$20,000 buys a HELL of a lot of gasoline.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The Volt costs $40,000 before tax rebates and only gets you 35 miles on an electric charge. Then 35 MPG city/40 hwy (gas) for 375 miles.
The Toyota Prius starts at $24,000 and goes to $30,000 for their top end. Mileage is 51 MPG city/48 hwy for approximately 600 miles.
So Chevrolet's market was people who have lots of money, are willing to spend it with abandon, want a car, but don't really need to drive much. In short, semi-rich idiot hipsters.
I think they probably just saturated their customer base.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
When you make a product for political reasons, not because there's a market, and then subject it to the market, it tends not to do well. Huh.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
Cannot get 4 adults plus dog plus ancillaries in a Yaris. But that, or. Fiat 500 twinair, will be our next town car.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Volt meets Resistance. I couldn't resist.
On a serious note, GM does not have a good record with respect to embracing effective change. Its management is still intellectually corrupt, except it is no longer led by executives who came up through sales/marketing and now has had government surrogates put in their places.
GM has never had a working grip on the obvious, and I'm old enough to remember when GM-made cars were more than half of the world's output. They no longer have a monopoly, nor the world's biggest dealer network, and only, apparently, one profitable brand of auto -- Cadillac.
So, as I told a friend who had inherited money in 2001 -- "Sell GM short. They're going down."
It's true again, How long must GM wait before it can return to the courts for relief?.
How much resistance was there exactly to cause no current to flow?
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Hyundai, BMW, Toyota, Honda, etc. all have plants in America. So we have those, at least. Apart from that, the coolest American car is probably the Tesla Roadster. Maybe a Jeep.
With the globalization of the auto industry - like every other industry - and the consolidation of the parts makers (down to VDO, Bosch, Walbro, and a couple of others), more than likely those "American" cars are also, German, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Swiss, English, Mexican, and Canadian.
The do, and people do.
I don't live in the US any more, but I'm hardly unique (ie, there are people like me still there) who would really love to go electric since our driving patterns are ideally suited to having a small, quiet, economical electric car that you recharge at night at home. (DISCLAIMER: yes, I'm aware, you need to tow your boat from LA to NYC every 2 days while simultaneously carrying 8 people and their luggage and there are no charging stations on route... electric cars useless for everyone etc etc, no possible use case etc etc...)
However, the current economics aren't making them viable - they're just too expensive at the moment but it's a chicken and egg problem since it's early generation tech and in low initial demand.
Don't mistake slow sales of a very expensive electric vehicle as definitive proof of a lack of interest. When (if?) I can buy one for a similar cost (also factoring in fuel costs) to the 2 litre turbodiesel minivan I drive right now (53 mpg EU / 44.1 mpg US) that can easily haul 5 adults and luggage then I am sure sales will pick right up. Cracking that early adopter and economy of scale problem is not easy though. Bear in mind that I also pay around $8 per gallon for diesel in the UK and it's still cheaper than going all-electric right now (or even to hybrid).
Ford is the second best selling car brand in europe.
Hollywood and Predator drones, so watch your fuckin' mouth.
You are welcome on my lawn.
My 2002 generic Chevy Impala is going strong with 220K miles and orig transmission. My '92 BMW 850 (V12) bit the dust at 100K. Shit car for the price.
Aren't Fords made in the US ?
The ford focus is quite a nice and fairly popular car.
As far as I know, the mk1 Focus was developed/built in Europe in 1998, and then Ford US built it in 2000, too, with some changes. The mk2 Focus was developed independently in Europe/US (US model was very different from Europe model and only a restyled mk1). The mk3 Focus was a joint development between Ford US and Europe, and is built both in US and Europe. So the Focus is not really a good example of a good car developed solely in the US.
I just bought an American made car last week, a Honda Odyssey. It tells you on the window sticker these days where stuff was made. Assembled in Lincoln, Alabama USA. Engine constructed in USA, Transmission constructed in USA. 70% of all parts for it come from the USA, 15% from Japan, and the rest from "other".
That's good enough for me to call it American.
I can buy TWO Ford Focus 40mpg cars for the same price as a Volt.
Wow, I haven't heard anybody else suggest that simple technique for getting 80 mpg.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
...low current ensues.
Plug in hybrids make a lot of sense in the USA. Out West it can be 200 miles between towns. Until and unless every gas station also has a battery-pack-exchange facility (I give you my empty pack, you give me a charged one for a fee), cars with a 60 mile range are not so practical.
There's a large chunk of potential car buyers who would look at the specs of a pure electric car with even a 100 mile range and say "Wait, so I can drive this in the LA area, the SF area, and the Boston-DC corridor, and that's it? Screw that, Imma buy a Prius."
Until a huge breakthrough is made in battery technology, electric cars are doomed to fail, no matter how high the price of gasoline.
Electric cars are too expensive -- it's cheaper to just pay the high gasoline prices.
Electric cars have an extremely limited range and take too to charge -- people will pay for gasoline as a "convenience fee" to be able to go farther, faster.
And even if those two problems are somehow fixed, the elephant in the room, that everyone is desperately trying to ignore, is the enormous cost of replacing the batteries. A conventional gasoline engine, which proper maintenance can last a very long time. And if you do have problems, you can replace/rebuild/replace parts as needed. Worst case -- you can go to a local junk yard and buy a used engine for a few hundred dollars.
With batteries, there is no repair or rebuild or get a used one from a junk yard. Once the batteries reach the end of their life they have to be replaced at a very high cost. As a result, the re-sale value of an electric car is going to be pretty close to zero -- who would want to buy a used electric car knowing that they are guaranteed to get hit with a bill for several thousand dollars in the near future.
Chevy Volt meets high resistance... Makes reductions in Chevy Ampere.
No, get it right
Endependantie Republique du Quebec!
At least in their minds...
1311393600 - Back to Black
While Volts sit in dealer's lots gathering dust,
I went to the local GM dealer, and while they had one, they said it wasn't for sale. And if I wanted to buy one I'd be put on almost a year long waiting list. He basically said they were near impossible to get so dont bother right now.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
After how GM completely mishandled SAAB, and continue to mishandle SAAB in my hometown, I have no sympathy for them (but of course sympathy for the workers).
the only reason the Tesla got any attention at all was because it looked like a sporty Lotus!,
had it looked like the current crop of retarded looking square boxes and it wouldn't of batted an eyelid.
That is because the roadster is just a Lotus Elise with batteries and electric motors.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
There are always flukes. I once saw an Escort with 410k on it. As for your BMW... Duh, dude. A V12, seriously? No engine that tuned for performance will EVER last long. How many Ferraris do you know of that make it to 100k?
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
I just bought an American made car last week, a Honda Odyssey. It tells you on the window sticker these days where stuff was made. Assembled in Lincoln, Alabama USA. Engine constructed in USA, Transmission constructed in USA. 70% of all parts for it come from the USA, 15% from Japan, and the rest from "other". That's good enough for me to call it American.
Following your reasoning, an iPhone could be considered as a Chinese (or Brazilian) phone...
If it's still true that GM was taking a loss on every Volt sold, perhaps this is a blessing in disguise.
This is because the beancounters have set too short a time for the RoI. Large-scale long-term investments like tooling up a car need a long-term RoI. A realistic term would be 15-20 years, given that the immediate product (the Volt) is likely going to have to go through numerous mutations before it settles on a money-making model. Expecting to make back the setup cost in a year or two means that the beancounters or VCs have lost all grasp on reality, if they even had it to start with.
My 2003 Monte Carlo has 220,000 miles on it. I did choose to replace the motor and trans (both used) at 200,000 miles though instead of rebuilding the trans when the pressure control solenoid gave out and repair would have cost as much as the replacement motor and trans together, so those only have around 72K on them. Runs like a dream and by the condition of the interior and exterior you would never know this car had anywhere near 100K miles much less 220,000. Any car from the "big three" built within the past 20 years that is worth buying these days can go 300,000 miles with basic maintenance. Cars were garbage in the 80's and I think a lot of the mentality around longevity in the US these days is still based on experiences with those cars.
This cannot be 'current' news.
> Chevy Volt Meets High Resistance, GM Suspends Sales
There are a lot of hybrids that look like normal cars (toyota camray, ford escape....).
I like hatchbacks, but the prius shape now screams I like the environment. It makes a statement which probably shouldn't be discounted as a reason people buy them.
Plus that shape is areodynamic, thus the honda insight looking almost the same
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.
...That's good enough for me to call it American.
Congratulations. I, myself, bought a Honda Pilot four years ago. The window sticker also had Alabama as the car's "port of entry", or whatever the term was called; and also showed, as I recall, that only about 15% of its parts came from Japan, and the rest was built in the US.
It's now four years later, and my Pilot stills runs like new. I'm not kidding, or overexagerating. I can barely hear the engine on cruise control, and the transmission still shifts gears like it rolled off the dealer's lot yesterday. This is the best car I ever had.
America sure builds damn good cars these days.
Reminds me of the time some old lady chastised me for taking jobs away from American autoworkers.
"Look ma'am, my Honda was built in here in the USA. Where was your Ford built again, Mexico?"
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
This guy has a nice analysis of why it costs over $6 per mile to drive his Lamborghini:
http://supercarrentalsinc.com/lamborghini-gallardo-buyers-guide-part-v-ownership-cost-estimate/
Of course, if you drive more, you'll bring the cost per mile down.
I am looking for an electric car now (I just got solar panels and I want to reduce my driving expenses). But I would never consider the volt. It is $40,000 and its range is only 35 miles. For $5,000 less I can get a leaf that goes 80 miles per charge and for the same price I can get a focus that gets 100 miles per charge.
The volt is a completely new class of car. It's a trailblazer. The first year is always a challenge.
You can't compare a Volt to a Prius or Leaf any more than you can compare a Corvette to a dump truck. Yes, they both have wheels, electric battery packs, and doors, but they are entirely different classes of vehicles.
The Prius is still largely a gasoline-only vehicle. Yes, the plug-in version is out this year, but it only gets you 8-11 miles, vs. the Volt's 30-40 miles. .
The Leaf is electric-only. For the vast majority of Americans, it's stuck as a second car because you can't practically road-trip in it with the current American infrastructure.
The Volt seeks to address these shortfalls.
It is the first production extended range electric vehicle. You cannot compare it to a Prius or Leaf, which are two different classes of vehicles altogether. The Prius's battery pack and electric range are only a fraction of the Volt's. The Leaf is just an electric car that requires charging stations. The Volt is actually engineered for the current infrastructure reality of the US - you can get gas everywhere, and you can only charge your car in so many locations, so it's a "crossover" vehicle that can let a broader class of folks adopt to a MOSTLY electric style of living.
GM knew full well going into the project that it was risky and it caters to a VERY specific audience of "Green Early Adopters" - folks that are willing to pay a premium for cutting their petroleum footprint.
If you don't like the Volt, you are obviously outside the target demographic. The Volt serves a lot of purposes outside of selling a EREV (Extended Range Electric Vehicle) - it also helps get actual production units to start building the battery production capabilities and infrastructure needed to sustain an electric vehicle fleet. Yes, the Prius has laid some inroads here, and the Volt is another push by another manufacturer.
If you study history at all, the Insight and the Prius were in very similar positions when they came out. Both were sold at low-to-no margins and had relatively crappy first-year sales.
The First Generation Honda Insight (the first mass-produced hybrid) only sold 17,000 units over several years.
The First Generation Prius was initially sold at low-to-no margins by
There is unanimous consensus among the engineering an scientific community that we need to reduce our petroleum usage. There is also a general consensus that an electric vehicle fleet is the most practical way of achieving this goal (and this includes fuel cells which are nothing more than expensive batteries).
Let the technology bake. The battery cost is rapidly falling. Get a few model years out. You may be pleasantly surprised. If it's outside of your budget, don't buy it. It's not for you anyway. You will still benefit from the technological advances of the vehicle. You can't afford a space shuttle but you still benefit from the fringe developments of that program. These types of projects are critical to the development of our electric vehicle infrastructure. You can't convert the American fleet to electric overnight anyway, the grid would have some major problems anyway with a million vehicles charging on it suddenly; they need a few years to get that upgraded. The Volt is the first step of many.
If you're going to be running on gas often enough that the Volt compares to the Prius in miles-per-gallon, the Volt isn't for you.
I would love an electric car. If I total the car I currently have, I will definitely buy an electric to replace it. But the Volt really turns me off. It has bucket seats my aged parents couldn't in and out of without pain. It has less glass than I would want. It's made by GM, who have showed us time and time again that they couldn't find their ass with both hands. And it has an internal combustion engine I'd have to haul around but never use.
I have a Scion Xb. If I could find something like it -- upright, not made for speed but for utility, small, light, tight turning radius (my Xb has a tighter turn radius than either the volt or the leaf), I'd buy it. But I can't afford to do so unless my Xb gets totaled, or shows some expensive wear, or the EVs get cheaper.
Give me a converted Scion Xb or a 1961 BMW 2002, and I'd be ecstatic. Seems like everyone's trying to sell cars with chassis made to hold internal combustion engines and go 90 mph for cars we're just going to drive around the city in. We need to go 80 MAX in them, and then only in the worst pre-rush hour speeding on highways. Mostly we need to go 60 or less, and we need to be able to see. We need room for passengers and groceries. We need to be able to park them easily. We don't need trucks or sports cars. We need a smaller version of a mini-van built to be safe and support and electric drive.
The Volt is the wrong design by the wrong company at the wrong price.
I suspect that the next car I buy will be European (not just a VW, for example, but one sold in France/designed for Paris driving) or Chinese.
But with the leaf, you range is 80 miles PERIOD. If you get caught out and run out of charge, you're screwed. if you want to take a road-trip that is longer, you're screwed.
The Volt is no-compromise. Drive just like any other car, without worries. Go any distance. Refuel anywhere you need to (gas or electric).
That peace of mind and freedom of movement and convenience is definitely worth a premium over something like a Leaf, which has a very limited practical use.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
How many engines have you gone through to get to that point?
I can't say for AC, but I've got 225k on my 1996 Ford F150 on its original engine -> 4.9L straight six. Most reliable gasoline engine ever built, IMHO. Of course, Ford stopped building it after 1996...
this signature has been removed due to a DMCA takedown notice
I'd never heard of this car before. So I checked out its wikipedia entry... and noted that absolutely none of any of the controversy about it is listed there. There is a great deal of information about the car -- marketing information, that is. I can find out how many awards it has won (like that really matters), I can find out how good it is at so many things.
What I can't find, is any objective truth there. Admittedly, no surprise, since I've never seen any wikipedia car entry that isn't so-obviously written by a fan, or the marketing dept of the manufacturer. The Volt's page was clearly written by someone with connections to GM. Just like so many other wikipedia pages. It's a complete waste of time using wikipedia for anything that has a fanbase, commercial interests, or political implications.
The problem is the $40K price. We're still in a major recession.
If you bought a 1994 with 52k miles and it blew up, you did something wrong or the previous owner did. Do you know how many crown victoria's there are on the road that went from police service to taxi service? Do you know why taxi services all pick up used crown vic's? Because they're RELIABLE. Parts are CHEAP. It's extremely uncommon to find a crown vic taxi on the road with under 200k miles. And if they required engine rebuilds at 50k, you can bet your ass both police forces and taxi companies would have nothing to do with them.
Your experience is abnormal. Your opinion is biased.
GM brakes are absolutely garbage. My dad and brother had the misfortune to buy year 2000+ GMs thinking they got a good deal. They have had to change or turn their brakes once every 2 years and they put Half the K's on that I do. I change my brakes on my Mazda once every 6-7 years and my Nissan only because I get gravel in the pads.
I guess this proves the point that selling cars does not necessarily mean you understand cars.
Disk brakes are designed to be easy to maintain at the expense of requiring routine maintenance (pads) at relatively frequent intervals.
GM uses the same brake calipers and rotors and pads as everyone else. They don't make their brake parts, any more than anyone else does. US makers tend to use TRW, in Europe it's Bosch and a few others, in Japan it's probably Nippondenso. All the engineers do is open up those product catalogs, call up the vendor's salesperson, and come up with which one of their (for the most part, standard) brake systems they will "design" in.
The only way the automotive engineer can screw up, really, is listening too much to the bean-counters (or being an idiot themselves) and choose a brake system inappropriate for the weight or intended use of the vehicle. What you are not taking into account are factors such as vehicle weight, number of miles, type of driving (city driving being harder on brakes than highway driving, for (what should be) obvious reasons), type of roads (dust and dirt wear down brakes, too!) style of driving (hard braking, riding the pedal, etc.). Oh, and this doesn't even get into the differences in various pad/shoe materials (fibre, semi-metallic, metallic) and the quality of the replacement parts (did your Dad always buy the cheapest pads/shoes he could find?). All of these factors, and even others I've forgotten to mention all can dramatically affect the lifetime of brakes.
Kia is Hyundai.
No they aren't.
You are both PARTLY correct.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kia_Motors
49.2% of Kia is held by a holding company named Hyundai Kia Automotive Group, a group of affiliated companies interconnected by complex shareholding arrangements, with Hyundai Motor Company regarded as the de facto representative of the Group.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyundai_Kia_Automotive_Group
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
This guy has a nice analysis of why it costs over $6 per mile to drive his Lamborghini:
http://supercarrentalsinc.com/lamborghini-gallardo-buyers-guide-part-v-ownership-cost-estimate/
Of course, if you drive more, you'll bring the cost per mile down.
Buying a high-performance sports car for everyday driving is like using an F-22 Raptor instead of a Jumbo jet for commuting. Or, like marrying a supermodel instead of a normal woman.
Of course it isn't going to be cost effective or reliable! But you have significantly more performance at your command.
You aren't spending your money properly if you don't use (or at least appreciate) the extra performance and complain then about the cost.
I see those Crown Vics with 200k+ and I raise you the Greek taxi fleets of old Diesel Mercedes, a number of which are still in service with well over a million miles.
My definition of "reliable" and yours clearly differ by a very large margin. Fords are cheap. When they break, they just buy another one for the fleet. And police departments use them because they're what Ford offers with the "enforcer" engines. It's not the same ones you get in stock CV's.
I admit I had abnormally bad luck. But the engineering quality difference isn't any less for it.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
1) Hybrids do get better gas mileage.
2) The second law of thermodynamics does not claim that all engines are equally efficient. It only says that when you use an inefficient engine, the energy goes somewhere; up in smoke, converted to vibrations/sound, extra heat that didn't move the piston with any extra force, etc, etc. You seem to understand this in the context of waste heat, but in the context of a hybrid car you get all wacky.