The 1st Volt: Off the Assembly Line Today

I applaud GM. The series hybrid is a very nice design and potentially much, much simpler mechanically, which should ultimately translate into lower purchase and maintenance costs. But the proof is in the pudding and $40K US? I'm from Canada and that usually translates into another 25% or so...and we don't have a huge EV rebate here (only a mere $2,000 provincial rebate where I live). At that price we won't see too many in Canada.

 

When someone says "$25K Leaf and $40K Volt", that is not a fair statement.
You can't include the $7500 tax credit for one, but not for the other. Simple math distortion to fit someone's agenda.

The Leaf's price put pressure one GM to price it closer to $35K before tax credit.
That makes it about $3000 above Leaf in MSRP, which is reasonable for the trade-off we all know about.

Anyway, check if you were hit by AMT for the past few years. If you did, forget about the tax credit or the extra $5000 for CA residents.

 

I thought this was another April Fool's thread, but then I noticed that it was posted yesterday

 

There are alot of people out there paying 30k for a prius then spending 5k to 10k more to add new batteries to it. The will be a good size market for the Volt. And gm needs to price it to make a profit.

And the leaf does not compete with the volt that much, You can't drive a leaf out of town or out of state. Some people couldn't live there daily lives with the leaf.

And i'm sure GM will not build that many of them for a few years, they need to charge a price that turns them a profit, and people will be waiting to get them. I don't remember GM having trouble leasing EV1's.

 

Since everyone's talking about the assembly line, if you want to see the pre-production process of the Volt, if you receive NGC, do catch http://priuschat.com/forums/chevrolet-volt/78136-ultimate-factories-man-made-chevy-volt-ngc.html that's being rerun today. It was very good.

So much stuff is hand built and built in tiny quantities. They were trying to work out all the kinks before going to the real assembly line.

 

Thanks for the info I set my DVR.

 

Hah good timing

 

I was looking for a conventional sedan and i bought a Prius, so it does happen that people will spend more to get more.

Don't you think toyota will have trouble selling their plug in Prius?

If it turns out to be a nice car i would take the volt anyday!!! Those other two cars can't compete with The volt on cost of fuel/electricity per mile-Same reason I drive a prius.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I know GM can't sell 300,000 volts a year, but they could sell 30k the first year then 40k the next, maybe they will improve it and be selling 300k or 400k of them a year in ten years. Kinda like what happened with the Prius it will take time for people to get on board.

 

I believe the sales problem with the Prius was shortages on the production side. In 2006 if a Prius sat on the lot for 2 weeks that was a long time. It has only been in these last couple years that there wasn't a line waiting for a car and a need for ads.

 

I watched the National Geographic Ultimate Factories show about the Volt last night. At the end it shows Andrew Farah, the Chief Engineer driving one of the new Volts around GMs Milford Proving Grounds test track. The monitor shows that he has driven 22.0 miles on the battery alone (Trip 2) when the gas engine starts up and Mpg and Gal are both Zero. The range indicator shows 151 miles left until refill is required. I sure hope he hit the reset or switched from Trip 1 to Trip 2 in the middle of the test, or it doesn't seem like they are going to hit their "40 miles on batteries" target. Or maybe the battery wasn't fully charged to begin with? But I don't know why they'd take the camera crew along without having fully charged the battery.

 

I liked the part when he saying, the batteries are empty so now it should switch over to the gas generator..... It says i have o miles left on the batteries so it should switch over to gas.... It might maybe switch to gas...... ..... ...... There it is i felt it brushing the sweat off of his brow..... lol

 

My netbook manual said the battery won't reach full capacity until a couple charge/discharge cycles have been done.

 

They also have cafe standards to meet. In the short term the volt doesn't help gm. In the long term it is part of the strategy to get gm back to profitability.

I really don't like the US taxpayers owning GM, or the unemployment if GM had dissolved. I would have preferred no government ownership. But I prefer government subsidies for domestic electric car production than waiting to see if free enterprise can get them viable without subsidies.

 

I hope to never drive a netbook.

 

And I htink I lot of people will like the Leaf because it has the potential of killing us slower.

But nobody cares about health, of course! It is ALL about range.

 

i say, let the american car companies go out of business, tear down the buildings and bring back the american farmer. someone else can build our cars.

 

My netbook can go 9+ hours on a full charge. That's far longer than a Volt while running, and it costs $39,700 less.