Coach's test drive of the Volt

I bought mine and I'm still glad that I did.

 

All we need is one more satisfied owner, and the guy on CNN is outvoted. Actually, these sorts of news items are worthless because the reporter will find someone to say whatever s/he wants to report. I'll bet a reporter who wanted to, could find someone to say they once found a mouse in an apple pie and therefore apple pie is dirty and nobody should ever eat it.

And for ANY car (even a Prius or a Tesla) you're going to be able to find someone who bought one and wishes they hadn't. The Volt isn't the car for me, and I don't trust GM. But one person saying they don't like their car is meaningless.

 

probably had to fix something on the line...

 

Hope it is not a fix to the battery fix.

 

Taking navigation out of that as standard is unforgivable. I have never bought a car with navi, but that thing already has the huge screen in place and is in the price range it needs to be standard, plus it used to have it and they killed it? Not cool.

That guy who wishes he had bought it...if only something in the contract allowed him--oh wait! Yes, he can buy it at the end of the lease. Kind of a strange complaint, really. I have buy-out option on both of my cars. When the cost of a lease is only incrementally more than it is over purchase, as it was in my case, it makes no sense to purchase, as the lease gives you after 3 years the painless choice to keep it or ditch it without having to sell it.

 

Didn't I read that sales are so slow they've just got too much inventory? So they stopped production for a while to allow inventory to drop.

 

Its the tax credit problem and a major complaint with the way the leases were set up.

If you buy you personally get the $7500 tax credit (provided you had at least that much tax liability), if you leased then the leasing company gets the credit, but they applied it to the residual to lower lease payments.

I don't have my paperwork with me, but my estimated residual was something like $17,500, but the residual used to calculate the payment was $25,000, effectively financing less depreciation for lower monthly payments. The problem is they set the buyout at the $25,000 figure, so if you lease and then buy out you lose all benefit from the tax credit.

 

Actually the statement is that they are balancing supply and demand.. Part of that issues is they have greatly improved their production efficiency. Last year they were building 2000 a month. The plant can now produce 4000+ a month so from Feb 6 to March 19 it will have produced something close to 6500 volts/amperas + what was in supply in Feb. Even if March and April sales are a new record (2000), they'll still have enough to cover.

I'm not happy with it as I think they should produce more and ship to EU, where they have a better ROI, but then I'm an engineer not a MBA.

 

I'm both, and let me try to explain it to the engineering side of your brain.
High inventory at dealers is bad because -
1) Parts may change, leaving inventory with the wrong parts
2) inventory costs money to hold, and old inventory may not sell at all without large discounts if changes make the new car better
3) It may be at the wrong dealer - then you are relying on the dealer network to trade cars, and they often do this inefficiently

You do need a certain level of inventory since replenishment takes time, customers need test drives, and dealers try not to sell what they don't have - close it today, there may be manufacturing difficulties.

Toyota was one of the first companies to embrace the lean production ideas from deming. This system not only reduces inventory costs, but allows a company to make changes quicker and improve quality. For a product like the volt, gm needs to embrace these principles. For a mass produced slow changing car it is not as important, but toyota as been hurt by straying.

Toyota Debacle Proves Deming Management Works

At least domestically GM seems to have set the restock level at 4000 cars. Gm did react rather quickly to change the design of the battery brace and cat. Its higher levels of inventory though mean that it was more costly retro fit cars in the field for the brace, rather than simply build new ones with the new brace design. The new changes for SULEV leave inventory in the field not up to the latest and gratest version.

From a lean manufacturing point of view, GM should have taken the bad news of lower than expected demand earlier. It should have then lowered expectations, slowed the factory down, and continued with a regional roll out. This would have set a lower inventory level for the changes that happened. Then as the new componts were ready for february manufacture, done the national roll out. Inventory levels are still not all that high, so it was not a bad mistake, but a mistake management needed to correct. When the factory re opens, they should build to demand, not to keep the line running at a certain speed. That will allow them a better transition to te 2013 my. Hopefully they are listening to current customres and making changes to improve the car for the next my.

 

Thanks, though that was not my point. I get lean manufacturing and all (i'm an entrepreneur too). My point is that its unclear their "stock" is being measured meaningfully. They give dealer allocations and then they dealer cannot order more until they get new allocations. They are not matching supply with demand, they are matching supply with a biased estimate of demand.

A friend in germany went to try to get an ampera.. was told it will 7-8 month wait because that is when the expect to be able to get more. Folks on gm-volt.com in Canada still are no delivery dates for cars they ordered in October!

The engineer half of me does not understand their allocation system that is making the management of inventory inefficient. the ROI is much better in canada and germany, but last year all of canada was allocated 237 cars!

 

Certainly these things have to do with the way GM is rolling out the cars to Canada and Germany, and not a lack of production capacity. If they actually are allocating parts correctly then it should take about 2 weeks from order. But it may require change overs because of differences between the US to Canadian to German car. This needs to be scheduled out. There is also transit time to Germany. If the car was rolled out, but no allocations, a german car should be able to be ordered/built/delivered in about 3 months. Under a good pull system things would already scheduled so it would be more like 6 weeks. From these estimates we can determine that a temporary halt of production has nothing to do with an 8 month waiting time, but other logistics within gm.

ROI should have nothing to do with it, since there is over capacity in manufacturing. The low tide has exposed logistics problems with GMs allocation scheme. Without being inside and looking at the numbers its tough to know what is wrong. Allocation problems were exposed as early as last summer. My hope GM gets some good people looking into the problem.

 

Not to necrorise the thread, even though it is only 3 days since the last posting, but I thought it would be better to post here than to make a new thread for the same thing that coach did.

I did a small test drive of the Volt today and I will have to say that it is definitely zippy, but I did also have some cons that I was not too overly thrilled with the vehicle despite how much the sales Guy was trying to get me to go with one, even with the california incentives.

Not to be labor the rear leg room as I did not even look at that. I was not too keen on how they did the rear seat opening up to the cargo area. While the Prius has that, it is also required to lower the seat to expose the cargo area to the rear seat area. The volt also had the same problem I had with the standard Prius, which is the bar in the middle of your rear view, (while I understand that this is there for safety reasons, it is still a distracting point for me.)

The other thing that has me a little concerned was when I mentioned the noisemakers that the Prius would need to have for the pedestrian issue, he said there was a 'horn' for the pedestrian warning, which didn't seem too keen for me, I rather prefer something a bit more subtle in the announcement of a vehicle versus a horn.

The shifter is also a bit weird for me... a 'gun' like stick shift, but I don't think that should be the deciding factor for people, just more of a thing to be aware of.

Between the Prius v and the Volt, I will have to admit that the Volt does seem very nice and zippy, as the torque on the volt is much higher than what I feel with the Prius v, but I will have to say I will stick with the Prius v until they consider making a wagon version of the Volt and also not having to have the standard sedan seating, as I ran into the problem of someone parking right next to me and having a limited room to open my door, but I was able to get INTO my Prius v because my seat was higher and not being in a sedan setup.

Oh, I will say that I was impressed with the idea of purely using the internal combustion engine to be a generator for the car, which I can see why Toyota did not use it with their hybrid synergy system yet, as their battery pack density would probably not allow for it and the electric drive might be put under a heavy strain in the earlier days. Whether or not this will be the point for the volt is probably something to look into.

 

Thanks for your review..

The "pedestrian friendly" horn is not really the horn.. its a much softer /shorter sound but based on the same tones. in MY2012, its a button on the end of the left stick). When I used it to get my wifes attention while she was landscaping, she later commented it was wimpy.. i said it was not the horn, just a friendly noise.. Next day I gave her the horn.. and she gave me the thumbs up..

The shifter is a bit weird.. I'd have rather the loose it and put the cup holders there. That said I do like to slam it into L when taking corners using regen rather than breaking when I'm taking them fast.

Your space/size issues are not an uncommon issue an a good reason especially if you went v and not liftback. Much more room there. Enjoy your V.

 

Personally, I find the car pretty nice, but unfortunately, not to my tastes and my Prius v fits some of the things I will need.

 

Yeah I was looking at a V today. It looked nice, but man 11.5s 0-60 is so high compared to 9s for the volt, or 6s for a sporty vehicle. I understand it is a trade off. I was walking with my wife when we checked it out and we both thought at the time it would likely be the next thing we got, but like I said after looking up the specs it would be a harsh change.

 

Battery pack density is not the reason why the Prius does not use serial hybrid ("using the internal combustion engine to be a generator.") HSD is simply more efficient than serial hybrid. Note the much higher mpg in Prius than in Volt in CS mode. The PSD in the Prius splits the torque between MG1 and the wheels, so that at lower speeds more power goes through MG1, and at higher speeds more goes mechanically to the wheels. This results in much greater efficiency.

Volt is more efficient when it's running on pure electricity, because EVs are more efficient. But once in CS mode, with energy coming from the ICE and gasoline, the Volt's serial operation is far less efficient than Prius's "serial/parallel" (HSD) system.

 

Ah... I would have thought that the Electric motor, having the better torque wouldn't have been governed at around 43 mph for EV mode due to the energy density, after all, with the Prius Plugin slated to be around 63 mph for EV Mode and it is also boasting a lithium ion pack as well.

 

MG2 is too small for full-on serial hybrid. But that's not the reason they don't use serial. They could have used a bigger MG2 if that had been their goal. But their goal was low pollution first, and high FE second, and serial/parallel is more efficient than serial.

 

Why do you keep perpetuating this silliness daniel? It has already been pointed out to you repeatedly the volt is not a serial hybrid.