Posted on 03/17/2011 8:07:04 PM PDT by fightinJAG
Who is going to buy all these cars?
The Chevrolet Volt is beginning to look like it was manufactured by Atlas Shrugged Motors, where the government mandates everything politically correct, rewards its cronies and produces junk steel.
This is the car that subsidies built. General Motors lobbied for a $7,500 tax refund for all buyers, under the shaky (if not false) promise that it was producing the first all-electric mass-production vehicle.
At least that's what we were once told. Sitting in a Volt that would not start at the 2010 Detroit Auto Show, a GM engineer swore to me that the internal combustion engine in the machine only served as a generator, kicking in when the overnight-charged lithium-ion batteries began to run down. GM has continually revised downward its estimates of how far the machine would go before the gas engine fired, and now says 25 to 50 miles.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
If you really need or want a hybrid:
2011 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid $25,795 MSRP, 40mpg, 206hp, seats 5. Built in Alabama, USA by non-union workers.
http://www.hyundaiusa.com/sonata-hybrid/
The downward revisions on mileage happened after they drove it outside in cold weather and realized that batteries don’t work as well.
A well connected corporation getting government support and buying its own product makes perfect economic sense.
lol
Man! for 3k more than they want for the Volt you could have a new Vette!
Not to mention the fact that when you get into an accident with a vehicle made of Reardon Metal, you get wiped out.
Still shaking my head at this one. There are so many hybrid cars out there now and they come up with this piece of crap. I read somewhere that the old Saturn electric vehicle (Ev1) they made for a couple of years in the 90s performed far better than this Volt.
It’s a scam.
The Gubermint will buy them up, with our money.
Hep Me Hep me! I am Hepnotized!
She looks like she has St. Vitus dance.
Hyundai has come a long way. I would buy one. Not a hybrid or electric anything but a Hyundai yes.
It doesn’t sound like the government’s “Clunkers for Cash” program is going to take off. Of course, a lot of people may be waiting for the pink Energizer Bunny Special Edition model.
The dopes are already promising this SUV Volt. Can you imagine how worthless an SUV would be based on the small Volt? GM SUX.
“The Gubermint will buy them up, with our money.”
....yep....I expect the Obama administration has already put the word out to all government agencies to put Volts in their auto fleets.
“The Gubermint will buy them up, with our money.”
....yep....I expect the Obama administration has already put the word out to all government agencies to put Volts in their auto fleets.
I had that dumb retro Chevy Woodie thing that looks sort of like that SUV Volt.
It was almost impossible to see out of. I had it for a rental and got pulled over. The cop let me go but at night the visibility was horrible.
I have to admit that if Ford had produced this thing, I might be rooting for it. I just can’t support a taxpayer-funded liberalmobile.
Bastard child of the Corvair and the Vega. I suspect an Edsel in the woodpile.
Their Genesis line is a Lexus for the price of Toyota. Starts at $22, 250 for the coupe and $33,000 for the sedan:
http://www.hyundaiusa.com/build-your-hyundai/
Premium fuel to boot.
www.wrightfornevada.com/chevyvolt.png
GM only sold about 1200 Volts between 12/10-3/11 ...
This article is stunning! Share it with everyone you know.
Lexus hybrid betting 45 MPG
I long for the days in the fifties and sixties when the cars were big and beautiful. Life seemed designed for people then, now it’s for plants,trees,frogs everything but people.
If I wanted a car at that price that required premium gas I’d buy a Lexus...and probably get better mileage.....
Would that be “Associated Motors” or “Amalgamated Motors”?
How far can you drive that Hyundai without putting gas in it ?
It’s a hybrid, like the Prius and others, not an electric/gas thingee like the Volt.
And the Vette (at least the base model) gets over 30mpg on the highway (I dunno how the Z-06 and the ZR-1 do). Admittedly, passenger space in the Vette is at something of a premium and the tire bill is nothing to sneeze at.
forgeddaboutit. Here is the car of the future. go see this video of a working hydrogen powered car.
http://www.flixxy.com/gm-hy-wire-concept-car.htm
And its built by GM, strangely enough.
Recently, President Obama selected General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt to chair his Economic Advisory Board. GE is awash in windmills waiting to be subsidized so they can provide unreliable, expensive power.Talk about back scratching!Consequently, and soon after his appointment, Immelt announced that GE will buy 50,000 Volts in the next two years, or half the total produced. Assuming the corporation qualifies for the same tax credit, we (you and me) just shelled out $375,000,000 to a company to buy cars that no one else wants so that GM will not tank and produce even more cars that no one wants. And this guy is the chair of Obama's Economic Advisory Board?
Sadly they do not offer an all wheel drive option for the Genisus or the Equus or I may have bought one.
U.S. government to purchase first 100 Chevy Volts and thousands of hybrids
GE Announces Plans to Buy 25,000 EVs, with 12,000 of them to be Chevy Volts.
(US Government and GE, not much difference)
Immelt from GE got some commerce job from Bamster.
Then turned around and said GE would buy a bunch of them.
So - there ya go.
We need the Volt to go across the Mackinaw Bridge in November to see if it joins the fishes and the Yugo in the Mackinaw straits. Volt/Yugo - both have 4 letters in their name. Not good. I’d bet the Volt goes 50 yards before it jumps the guard rail and becomes a boat. Does it float better on its roof?
The Sonata is a very nice car.
So it’s not really an apples-to-apples comparison ? The Volt is a electric car that can be driven between 25 and 50 miles between recharging depending on conditions, and can be driven an unlimited distance if you want to put gas in it every few hundred miles. So it is really two cars in one, and nobody seems to want to acknowledge that.
It is not a $30K Leaf that can be driven 80 miles and then is disabled while waiting for an 8-hour recharge. It is not a $25K Prius or Sonata that can’t drive anywhere without putting gas in it first.
The Volt deserves more respect than it is getting. It still isn’t worth $40K, but it is a better value than the $30K Leaf.
Except that the Volt is a Chevy Cruze, their current Chevette, albeit with an electric motor in addition to a gasoline engine. The Hyundai Sonata is not their starter model, rather it is right in the middle of their model line, their Taurus or Camry, as it were.
Well, I’m not in the market for a car right now so I haven’t compared the Volt to the Cruze side by side in fit and finish quality. I suspect that there are significant differences, structurally and with the interior. The weight distribution, climate control, sound deadening, dash controls etc. are necessarily going to dictate big differences. A Cadillac Escalade and a Chevy Suburban probably share more common components than the Volt and Cruze, but have very different levels of comfort, fit, finish, quietness, etc. I don’t know that the Volt being “based on” the Cruze automatically means it will feel as lowbrow as a Chevette.
A vehicle LIKE the Volt, with a 25 - 50 mile all-electric around town range independent of fuel but unlimited range with fuel makes a lot of sense to me. 90% of my days I’d be able to avoid using any gasoline at all. Unfortunately, CA has ridiculous electric rates, so I wouldn’t see the kind of savings that I would if I lived in NV or somewhere with $0.10/kwh rates. At $40K, it would never save enough money for anyone to justify it on that basis. Barring significant differences in quality and comfort, I think the Volt at $25K would be my choice over the Sonata.
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