Posted on 03/20/2012 6:35:17 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
President Barack Obama says he wants to buy a Chevy Volt when he’s out of office in five years. If getting into a General Motors electric automobile means so much to him, he’d better hope he loses in November. What the president dubbed the “car of the future” in a visit to a Volt plant may not make it to January 2017.
The partially government-owned General Motors has suspended production of its government-approved miracle car and temporarily laid off 1,300 workers at a Detroit plant. The halt is the result of a piddling detail lost in the gushers of praise for a big, bad car company supposedly learning the error of its environment-destroying ways — people don’t want to buy the damn thing.
GM hoped to sell 10,000 Volts last year and sold only 7,500. It planned to sell 45,000 this year and is scaling back production to meet the real rather than the imaginary demand. The Volt is the Solyndra of automobiles, another Obama-touted recipient of government subsidies that was succeeding as a great paladin of the future in all the speeches and press releases until it ran into hard market realities.
The Volt is too expensive, too small, and too complicated to appeal to all but a tiny slice of what is already a tiny segment of the car market. Hybrids have never been more than about 3 percent of all U.S. sales. To buy a Volt, you need the money to splurge and the exquisite environmental consciousness to think plugging in your car will help save the planet, even though about half of electricity comes from coal. The Volt is as much affectation as car.
It costs more than $40,000. At that price, perhaps GM should have made it part of the Cadillac brand rather than Chevy. Most buyers dropping that much prefer to go all the way and buy something really nice — say, an Audi or a BMW.
According to GM, the average income of a Volt purchaser is $175,000 a year. These well-heeled buyers get a $7,500 tax credit for selecting a car out of reach of many Americans, a trickle-up redistribution toward the upper, politically correct end of the car market.
It’s not that the Volt isn’t a fine piece of machinery. It is a smooth ride and has been well-reviewed. It’s just not going “to make Big Oil sweat,” in the words of a smitten writer for the New York Times. Big Oil presumably has other things to worry about than a rounding error in the more than 12 million vehicles sold in the U.S. every year.
As Henry Payne of the Detroit News argues, the Chevy Volt is basically the electric version of the gas-powered Chevy Cruze. Despite the Environmental Protection Agency’s rating that the Volt gets 60 miles per gallon, as a practical matter it’s more like 35 (it can go less than 40 miles on battery alone and then needs to switch over to gas). That’s comparable to the Cruze, which costs half the amount, has greater range, seats more people, and is easier to operate since all it requires is a visit to the filling station. GM sells more than 200,000 Cruzes a year.
The Volt is looking like Obama’s Edsel. What the president so confidently deems “the future” when he talks of energy and cars is his ideological vision dressed up in the language of historical inevitability. If he had been told in 2009 that the real future of the car market would be trucks, SUVs, and the like, which again ticked above half of sales, he surely would have blanched. If he had been told that technological breakthroughs would bring a future of new oil production, he would have been no less insistent on funding the likes of Solyndra.
For all his smug confidence about his vision of the future, he doesn’t truly know what car he will be driving in five years. If he stays true to his word, it might have to be a secondhand Volt.
— Rich Lowry is editor of National Review
Rush needs to launch a fund to “Buy Obama a Volt”
Everybody can spare a dime and pitch in.
We can make this happen.
Instead of “Hope and Change” we can call it “Spare the Change”. We can give obama a Volt of his choice of color- a white Volt or a black Volt, or maybe a red one.
Why, I remember when Rush started a fund to pay for Dick Gephardt’s mother, to buy her the medicine Dick said she couldn’t afford.
Any leftover money can go to the Georgetown “Condoms-for-Coeds” fund
Ping.
They haven’t replaced the White House limo’s with Volts?
> The Sad Plight of Obama’s Edsel (The Volt won’t make it to
> 2017 — the time he says he’ll buy one)
How convenient...
...for him.
Second-hand Volt? I don’t think there will be very many of those, since the ‘First-hand’ Volts will be still sitting on the lots with their batteries corroding away...............
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!
This is the most pathetic car ad I've seen. It must’ve been written by the White House.
McNamara had his Edsel literally when he was at ford before becoming SecDef, now Obama has his in the volt...
Da, comrade.........
Government Motors “Volt” car runs on a LOT of electricity, and must be re-charged frequently.
Since half of America’s electricity comes from utilities burning 98.7 % carbon, maximum known Carbon Footprint, old-technology, fossil fuel, dirty-air COAL, then which half of the Government Motors “Volt” car should we despise?
Which half of the “Volt” should be praised for it’s “Greenability” for the future of Mankind, as our Czars know that it SHOULD be?
These questions must be answered, so our Dictator Baby-Doc Barack can dictate how we are to think about the companies that he puts OUR tax dollars into.
BTW, wasn’t the “Volt” supposed to jumpstart, stimulate and otherwise “grow” the Economy? Maybe something “shorted out” between The District of Corruption and REALITY?
That is a great idea, but you should have pinged him to it.
I guess you did
I didn’t know ‘he” was a freeper
The idiot does own a Ford Escape Hybrid. I like the Escape, but it’s stupid as a hybrid.
I’ll bet that puppy will soon be coming up on needing a battery replacement.
Been seeing that one ..... it would be laughable if I didn’t know Obama is trying to cram this cr@p down our throats by cutting off the oil lifeblood of the country. There is a female version as well .... I think ‘Sandra Fluke’ every time it runs.
Makes little sense to me. Of course, I'm no off-grid, free-loving, sandal-wearing, bong-sucking, rarely-bathing, tofu-eating, microbus-coveting, earth-worshipping, whirled peas visualizing, tree-hugging, hookah-toking, hemp-growing, koolaid-swilling, Nader-voting, Lennon-singing, herb-squeezing, ganja-rolling, solar-collecting, foil-ovening, cave-dwelling, peace-signing, backpacking, brokebacking, flag-burning, quiche-gumming, Volvo-loving, hybrid-humping, earth-shoeing, God-hating, gun-grabbing, pony-tailing, thumb-sucking, navel-gazing, Obama-fawning, granola-crunching, earth-first vegan hippie commie deadhead loser, either. Although I did test-drive a used Volvo once.
How many people have a Volt as their only vehicle?
If they have another vehicle, what is it? Hummer?
Chevy Volt battery warranty
snip
“Chevrolet Volt Coverage
Propulsion Battery Warranty
Policy
Like all batteries, the amount of
energy that the high voltage
“propulsion” battery can store will
decrease with time and miles
driven. Depending on use, the
battery may degrade as little as
10% to as much as 30% of capacity
over the warranty period. A dealer
service technician will determine
if the battery energy capacity
(kWh storage) is within the proper
limit, given the age and mileage of
the vehicle. Typical tests can take
up to 24 hours.
Repair
If possible, components will be
repaired or replaced, and the
original battery will be returned to
the vehicle.
Replace (If Necessary)
Under warranty, the high voltage
battery will be replaced with either a
new or factory reconditioned high
voltage battery with an energy
capacity (kWh storage) level at or
above that of the original battery
prior to the failure.
Your Volt battery warranty
replacement may not return your
vehicle as an “as new” condition,
but it will make your Volt fully
operational appropriate to its age
and mileage.”
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