By Rob Janicki
We haven't reported anything lately about one of favorite automotive boondoggles from General Morons. Yes, I am talking about the GM Volt , the hybrid electric/gas car that you can light your cigarettes from the battery fires some Volts have experienced.
WSJ
[...] What happened to the strong demand for electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids that was supposed to turn cars like the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf into hot sellers?
Well, neither is setting sales records and Chevrolet said yesterday it would temporary halt production of the Volt because it simply has too many cars on hand and has been turning them out faster than it can find buyers. [...]
Yes, GM is once again halting production of Chevy Volts for, what is this, the third time?
[...] The Volt starts at about $40,000, or twice as much as the company’s high-mileage Cruze Eco compact sedan.
Even if you never used gasoline in the Volt, you’d wait about 12 years before you saved enough on gas to make up for the Volt’s price premium. [...]
I wonder if that takes into account the number of expensive battery change outs that would have to occur over that 12 year period of investment recovery?
[...] Chevy sold 7,671 Volts last year. Nissan’s all-electric Leaf didn’t do much better with 9,674 sales — less than half what Nissan had expected. Car makers often give up on conventional vehicles that post such poor numbers. The company sold 231,732 copies of the Cruze last year. [...]
It should be remembered that the Chevy Cruze Eco gets 40 miles per gallon. How much longer can GM support a failure such as the Chevy Volt, especially in light of the fact that GM is teetering precariously on another possible bankruptcy situation? Will GM be forced to continue carrying the Volt as long as the federal government is a silent partner in this failing enterprise?
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