Posted on 12/23/2011 12:23:12 PM PST by jazusamo
Recently the Chevy Volt, General Motor's (GM) venerable electric-hybrid car, turned one-year old. This marks an important occasion for GM that they have been able to sell and bring to market this electric-hybrid car. The real question for GM, what's next?
To date GM has fallen short of it's lofty sales target for the Volt. They expected to sell 10,000 Volts in a one-year period, but they have fallen short of that goal by about 40%. They have only sold around 6,000 Volts around the country. (Not surprising from a company that keeps making promises it cannot keep.)
For GM, the Volt is an important car that represents technological advancements and goals for the future. It also has helped keep up the company's image against rival automakers.
GM felt the impending power of the Toyota Prius and all the love, attention, and prestige Toyota got from building that hybrid. The Prius is undeniably the most recognized “green” vehicle on the road. Toyota now plans to turn Prius into a whole line-up of vehicles.
As well the pressure also came from Tesla, a silicon valley upstart that is building slick and fast electric cars. Tesla has changed the car industry for the better and forced GM to rethink how they think about building cars.
While GM's image has improved with the Volt, to a certain degree the company's image is still marred by the EV1 disaster. It is hard to forget how stupid a decision that was. As well as the imagery of the cars being crushed and EV1 drivers protesting GM taking the electric cars back.
GM now longer has to fell behind in the electric car market. (GM execs, should be on your hands and knees thanking Bob Lutz for that!) However, the Volt represents a big dilemma for GM.
While it makes good PR, will it make money? The answer is most likely “No”, even with the $7,500 a consumer can apply for when purchasing a Volt.
GM still owes huge debt to the government and Treasury. It has yet to payback large portions of the taxpayer backed loans, and GM's stock price is not going anywhere, anytime soon. Most likely meaning the government will not be able to divulge shares, unless they want to take substantial losses.
If the company wants to actually make money, they need to be focusing on cars people can buy and drive everyday. They have had good efforts, such as the new Chevy Sonic. However, having driven the Sonic against the competition, there is no way I would recommend buying one. Ask a majority of automotive media and they will tell you that the 2013 Chevy Malibu feels dated. This is a car that will not even be available to buy for awhile.
GM made the right decision building and selling the Volt. Dan Akerson, GM's CEO, hopes to get 60,000 Volts on the road. Of course this is just another empty promise from a company that needed my money and your money to stay afloat.
Wait till all those coal fired power plants are gone. Nowhere to recharge that Volt!
I, for one, would like to know if the first production Volt is still in service.. (um, with no rebuilds)
The Volt has been discharged..................
These Dolt vehicles will be valuable collectors in the future. Only a few of them made, only a few sold. They’ll be like Edsels, Corvairs or DeLoreans. Pick one up today for $40000, sell it in 25 years for $50000.
If they can lose a million dollars per unit on an electric car, just think how much money they could lose on an atomic car!
What about a diesel hybrid with a well-designed diesel engine (not the 350 cu inch V-8 gas engine that was a disaster during the late 1970s)?
One what? One sale?
When does GM go out of business?
Yep, should the EV goal set by the turkey in the WH bet met the elimination of coal fired plants will be a real problem. That extra electrical power sure won’t be supplied by wind or solar and it’s evident the enviro nuts will fight more nuclear plants.
According to this link, the Volts cost the taxpayers $250K each:
http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/16192
What was the stupid part? Stopping production — or starting it in the first place? Who was the stupid party? GM for attempting to build an EV, well before its time — or the government of California for creating a mandate for “zero emission vehicles”? Who was stupidest — GM for actually manufacturing an EV; or critics (such as the producers of the propaganda movie about killing the EV), who were harsh on GM, but didn't criticize manufactures who never even attempted to build an EV.
EV1 had an incredibly sophisticated chassis and body, for the time. It was a very expensive vehicle to manufacture (estimates are $1 million/vehicle actually produced, and no clear way to bring the cost down to an affordable level, through mass production). The problem was with the battery technology of the time. There simply was no way to manufacture a viable, and affordable EV with lead-acid, or NiMh batteries.
When you add up all the subsidies, governments at the state and local level have subsidized each Volt sold to the tune of $250,000. Without subsidies, each car would cost about $300,000 each to produce.
The government is incompetent when it comes to industrial policy. It should resist the temptation.
It's too PIG to fail.
GM still sells plenty of SUV's and trucks. They are not alone in fumbling the domestic sedan market, or overestimating the appeal of EV's.
They need to downscale production targets pronto though because there is no significant market for plug in electrics in the US outside of a few urban centers.
Not sure who besides the administration is leading them to believe otherwise, it certainly isn't consumers.
“What’s next?”
They go out of production?
sad, I was in the nuclear industry for decades..
When does GM go out of business?
They can not fail as long as long as we have a short sighted PRO-regressove running things.
They will take money from healthy companies via taxes and give it to companies that should be left to die like they let Terry Shiavo die.
Who knows, they might be able to modify it so the battery can be used to recharge cell phones and i-pads and such. That would make it at least a little useful until it's relegated to a trailer park yard ornament. Junkyards will probably charge you to haul it off - not enough in production to make the usual parts useful and probably a lot of extra expenses to quarantine the battery...
If there's one thing Silicon Valley upstarts know, it's vaporware.
Tesla is not in the business of building cars. Tesla is in the business of bilking investors. They will produce just enough cars to keep the investor money flowing. But they have no rational business plan that results in them mass producing and marketing automobiles, beyond what is necessary to rip-off investors looking for the "next big thing".
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