Volt Sales Figures

If you just emphasize CAN, Then its perfectly fine for us to say the Volt CAN be driven 75miles on a charge. I have.

That is not what people expect when they see numbers being tossed out, they expect numbers to mean standard. People here continuously beat up that GM has said 40miles.. (which I get regularly) but EPA was only 35. That is only 14% error. Toyota's estimates were 36% off. Just to apply a double standard -- if what Toyota did is fine then so was all the early GM press.


On the other hand for what it is intended to be, a slight enhancement of the Prius family, its a perfectly fine car and will help address the problem of short tip MPG impact, something the EPA does not even try to measure, but that is important in real life.

 

That's because the "40" was portrayed as an all-condition minimum. And what did you just do? It certainly looks like "35" says the very same thing.

In reality... which GM even now says... it's range. Remember the 25 to 50? Do I need to point out often less than 35 happened during this mild winter? What about warmup via the engine?

See how focusing on GALLONS and KWH helps to avoid misleading expectations?
.

 

The "40" was no more or less portrayed as a all-conditions minima by GM any more than the 15 was portrayed that way by Toyota.

35 is the EPA which is a standard point of comparison. It compares with 11. Everyone knows YMMV from EPA, but need to set the expected value for the variation. When people here were comparing 15 PHV vs 35 Volt it was simply wrong.


Focusing on gallons and KWH does nothing meaningful to avoid misleading expectations. It does make any 2 cars in general incomparable so that might eventually get people to stop trying to compare. But other than that people will want to set expectations for G and KWH. Setting explications is human nature. In doing so, some people see it half-full, others half-empty.

 

John said

I spent some time yesterday looking at GM press releases about the Volt from 2009 and 2010. Except for one exception they all said *up* to 40 miles AER. I was really surprised. Somehow GM managed to be fairly honest in one venue, while the popular press (not to mention the idiots on gm-volt.com) took away a very different message. I suspect GM managed it through other direct media, but I have not found old GM websites yet.

By the way, remember the GM snafu of 230 mpg ? That press release very clearly says they expect the Volt to consume 250 wh/mile in EPA testing. Somehow that bit of almost-honest (for GM) reporting also was washed away for years.

 

Detail feel on deaf ears. GM was quite ambigous along the way too, always leaving aspects a bit unclear or incomplete. You could find some stuff in fine print if you hunted for it, like the 230 MPG only representing city estimate, but there wasn't actually anything provided for highway.

In other words, they had horrible expectation management and allowed the hype to get way out of control.

Then when you attempted to point out the information being misinterpretted, enthusiasts would shot the messenger claiming they're really just implying that Prius is superior... which is how their stance of Volt being "vastly superior" came about.

It was quite a saga, where hope clouded logic.

The best example of the reality denial was when I provided display samples from Leaf pointing out the range reduction caused by heater use. They simply dismissed it and called me a troll trying to harm Volt. I was astonished by their reaction. So... the excuses being posted now about sales trouble is no surprise.
.

 

I believe GM was somewhat ambiguous b/c they did not know exactly what they would get, and they did not want to tell others as it became more clear exactly what they wanted to do.

 

Doesn't it fascinate you that Ford keeps almost totally silent in comparison?

It never ceases to amaze me how different the two Detroit automakers are... one quite quiet and the other very loud.
.

 

Nah.

They omitted details they had in hand, so that people could misinterpret the released data. Classic GM

is a youtube video of Frank Weber in 2/2009. He starts out his speech saying how sub components have to be efficient if the Volt is to travel up to 40 miles on one electric charge, but then for the next 15 minutes he omits the "up to" part of the 40 mile meme.

 

Another classic GM is to allow misinterpretted information to turn into rumors, rather than just release clarification.

Sadly, we knew something was wrong when almost the entire development management left the program prior to rollout. Why not see it through? And who would undertake the next generation improvements?
.

 

Volt was hyped to be in short supply and high demand. 15 months of data shown visually explains why they decided to shutdown the production.



Source

 

You got to know how to read a chart. Production does not = inventory. It is shipped. Looking at that chart, assuming normal shipping time, and dealer misalocation (cars at the wrong dealer), the volt would be in short supply until October of last year. I would not call short supply a thing to hype. Its more of an excuse or explanation for sales being lower than expected and represents a manufacturing or allocation, that is execution problem. The shift toward national sales seems to mean a bloating of inventory because you are putting cars at dealers that may not sell them. This again is a logistics problem. A real look at inventory levels on a pull system would look at restock level and pull.

For the nation wide system gm seems to want about 4000 cars. Then to build as many cars as are sold. but, there is a change to SULEV status. This means that GM needs to get rid of the non-SULEV cars. Again this is a logistics problem. I expect specials to sell the non-sulev first. I have no idea of proper inventory, but given the change I would expect GM to have over 4K volts in inventory, until the pre-february cars are sold.

 

GM should never have built non-SULEV Volts...

Let's see when they try 2nd time.

 

non-SULEV Volts are sold in every states other than California. What's the problem?

 

60% of leafs were sold in California. Not a problem in many states, but it makes you get rid of the California inventory. I'm sure there is a disproportional amount of volts at california dealers. This pushes your 4000 restock level hgher. If chevy had executed better and kept a regional roll out as originally planned, these cars could be sent to the new states as california pulled new cars. That's why I think they are building until 3/19, to get the SULEV cars out there.

This is an execution problem as they knew the new cars were coming, but chose the national roll out. Now gm could have kept the workers in the plant and avioded the temporary layoff talk, but they needed to suspend the line after initial stocking. Regional roll out would have moved the bad news to october, but from a SCM POV at would have been better to take the lumps back then. November and december sales would have been slightly lower, but gm could be announcing good news instead of bad news in march

 

Not all but there are many chevy volt supporters who are absolute fanatics. I created an account on the chevy volt forums a while back just to give an opinion on a topic because I couldn't stand reading the disingenuous spin in a thread, it was really over the top crazy stuff people were posting. I was banned shortly thereafter for trolling--first time I think that's happened in over a decade of posting on forums. And my "trolling" was basically countering some posts in that thread not only with opinion but actual facts. However, they're so trigger happy about seeing a junior member disagree with something written that is pro-volt that I must have been a troll. At least one of the members there did question the decision, but the mods wouldn't hear it.

No way. When that 230 number came out I remember laughing at it, it was such obvious rubbish right off the bat.

Hyped like nothing else. This time last year they couldn't make them fast enough, no inventory. Then as it dragged into summer and still inventory couldn't seem to catch up--and yet production wasn't very high, it started to seem fishy like maybe they knew if they increased production they'd suddenly glut the market. But of course that's not what the GM hype machine continues to express, and yet that is exactly the case and I think they knew it.