Posted on 07/02/2008 3:21:51 AM PDT by CutePuppy
"Violent change" in consumer tastes is not a new challenge for the car business. The phrase is Lee Iacocca's, from his autobiography, referring to public demand for small cars after the 1979 oil shock.
Less violently, a sudden shift in taste for smaller, more fuel-efficient cars amid the recession of 1958 helped doom the Edsel.
The 1950s also happen to be the last time GM's share price sank as low as $11 per share. Two morals must be drawn.
One is that GM's ability to avoid bankruptcy has again become doubtful in the minds of investors. The 1950s comparison indeed overstates the company's well-being today. In inflation-adjusted terms, today's share price is closer to $1.50 in mid-1950s dollars.
Secondly, any forecast calling for a "permanent" shift in auto tastes based on a quantum as volatile as the price of gasoline is nuts.
GM's leaders are not nuts, and yet to pour hundreds of millions into a race to launch an electric car, the Chevy Volt, guaranteed to lose money on every unit sold, begins to seem a peculiar strategy for a company in dire liquidity straits.
With each hectic advance in the development process, the expected sticker price to consumers has gone up. Reportedly, off-the-shelf electrical fixtures, such as headlights and taillights, won't suffice because they draw too much power. At last leakage, GM is saying now the Volt may need a sticker price of $45,000.
At best, the Volt will be an affluent family's third car. It will have to be plugged in for six hours a day – i.e., it will be a car for a suburbanite with a sizeable garage wired for power. It won't be a car for a city dweller who parks on the street or in a public lot.
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(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Iaccoca couldnt run a lemonade stand.
Violent change?
Remember the K Car? That was violent change.
Iaccoca didnt have a clue what we wanted. He went from selling crappy land yachts to selling crappy shoeboxs on wheels.
Chrysler finally started making decent cars AFTER Iaccoca was gone.
Frankly, they would sell about a zillion of them if they made them still today. An awful lot of people just want inexpensive, utilitarian transportation.
The trabant of America
The Chevy Volt is the first smart thing, GM has done this decade.
Sheesh.
Some people will complain about anything.
Were are you gonna get the electricity?
It does grow on gum gum drop trees ya know.
It comes from coal largely, and they are shutting down our ability to use hydrocarbon everyday.
Its a goofy idea unless you can get them to build nukes.
Hmmm. Let's go to the tape:
GM is saying now the Volt may need a sticker price of $45,000.
Yeah, that's gonna attract those who are cringing at the $4.00/gal gas prices.
It will have to be plugged in for six hours a day
Maybe I can take a portable generator with me?
It may not be your cup of tea, but it was good, cheap, reliable transportation. If you think cars should be rolling art, expect to pay accordingly.
If you have to park on the street, there's generally public transportation to get you around. What's the point of even having a car if you live like that?
I've never lived in a city like that, but this criticism just seems dumb. Leaving your car plugged in overnight just doesn't seem like a big deal to me.
At best, the Volt will be an affluent family's third car. It will have to be plugged in for six hours a day – i.e., it will be a car for a suburbanite with a sizeable garage wired for power. It won't be a car for a city dweller who parks on the street or in a public lot. It will travel 40 miles on a six-hour charge. After that, a small gas motor will kick in to recharge the battery while you drive. Some reports claim the Volt will get 50 mpg in this mode, but that's hallucinatory: If using a gasoline engine to power an electric motor were so efficient, the streets would be full of such vehicles. (Our guess: The car will be lucky to get 15 mpg under gasoline power.)
[snip]
And for those who think the Volt's justification is greenhouse emissions, notice that electric cars play Three Card Monte with energy inputs: It all depends on where the electricity is coming from. (Ditto, by the way, GM's long-range faith in hydrogen fuel cells – it all depends on where you get the hydrogen from.) On the other hand, if you replaced the world's coal plants with nuclear plants, it would have a huge impact on greenhouse emissions regardless of what cars people are driving. If curbing CO2 is your goal (however quixotic), power plants, not cars, should be your focus.
GM produced an electric car before, and had to stop it because it was too expensive to produce and buy (and because gasoline was inexpensive). Liberals of course excoriated them because they stopped producing it. You can bet that the whole electric car issue is because they want to look good in the eyes of the greenies. It’s a marketing ploy meant to position them as a high tech car producer, and curry favor with liberals.
Decent design, but crippled by horrendous quality and weak engines. My father bought a Dodge 600 (a stretched K chassis) in 1986 and hung onto it for five miserable years before accepting failure and buying another in a long line of Toyotas.
The market for inexpensive (relatively) and utilitarian transportation these days is being served by the down-market Korean car companies like Hyundai, Kia, and Daewoo.
}:-)4
I tend to be utilitarian but the K car was a piece of crap.
The VW Bug was a better car and it was designed 40 years before the K car.
What a piece of crap
Wait till you see your electric bill.
Electric cars are the dumbest idea since electric hybrids. Any electrical system that has a rechargeable battery at its core is going to be expensive and impractical.
The only reason, in my opinion, that electric cars get a lot of hype is because many people think that electricity is "free." They don't think that each piece of equipment they plug in costs them more money on the electric bill. Plugging a high-drain device in every day for 6 hours (which will go up as the battery deteriorates) is going to really hit a lot of people in the wallet.
I'd like to see how a Chevy Volt (or whatever the gimmick electric car of the week is) stacks up to any modern fuel efficient vehicle using a miles per dollar metric.
My father owned one...
He called it his goldmine. That’s because he sunk so much money into it to keep it running that he couldn’t afford to get rid of it!
I will never own a Chrysler product. They are only slightly better than Ford.
Rural mail carriers covet them any chance they get....
5 min to fill up or 6 hrs....Hmmmmm...
450 mi range or 100....Hmmmmm....
Then there are those pesky batterys.
Got any battery power tools that are worthless because the battery’s are dead?
You do realize that on top of all that there are energy LOSSES making electricity and Losses in transmission and losses in conversion from AC to DC.
Electric is not as efficient as Petroleum.
There is a reason we have used it all these years
You can keep it.
Toyota is no more than a year or two behind on a Volt-equivalent car. If GM drops the ball on this, it boots the best and perhaps the last chance it's going to get to reestablish itself as the industry leader.
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