Crazy Volt incentives makes me want to trade

Yes, I could look them in the eye and tell them buying stock is like gambling.

 

This is getting off the topic (which is why I ignore some people), but I'm going to chime in. You might need better math and/or a broader statement to defend yourself. Living (or anything else) is like gambling as there there are always risk/rewards. So in that sense your statement is factually correct but very misleading.

Yes there is risk in buying stocks, but gambling in Vegas (or anywhere) "expected outcome" is by design (and also born out in historical data) that the house makes money and people gambeling will, on average, lose. If you go to Vegas you should expect to loose money. In the stock market that is not the case as the historical returns are quite positive. In fact I'd go the other way, not investing in the stock market has greater risks than investing in it.

Of course any particular stock can be a winner or a loser so diversification is key element of any good investment strategy. I don't feel sorry for the bond holders, or anyone that bought GM stock between the crash and the bailout, they were playing with fire hoping the government bailout would be a boondoggle. only people I feel for are the retirees, especially from GM, that had earned a lot of GM stock and were caught unaware. My grandmother earned a lot of stock working in the factories (and I still have her Ford stock) and kept her investments mostly in those companies because she felt connected to them. Knowing when to get out of a stock is important and something that should be rational, not emotional. Keeping a portfolio where the risk are something one can tollerate is important. But too many people don't know the risks they face and are more emotional in their strategies, that's just human.

Also there was nothing really special about lossing money on GM here, the whole market lost value/money.
My overall portfolio dropped 30% in value in fall 08, but has recovered and is well above the pre-crash level. By 2011 it was high enough I was comfortable paying cash for my Volt -- though the current incentives make it more attractive, at least I had the pleasure of a volt for 18 months.

Gm Many other companies were also lost, there were 161 signficant backruptcies in 2008/2009 (List of business failures - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) and their investors lost as well. More to the point it that, in case of financial firms there was often more "blame" in the company, but the Old GM, like 120 of the 161 failures, was a causality of the Wall-street mess, not a cause and not even really a contributing factor. Those trying to politicize it have other agendas.

That being said, that anyone with a lot of GM stock/bonds either understood their risk or lost out is because they did not take the time to really understand their finances for retirement and were under-diversified. Either way they own the largest share of their financial failure. However, don't expect them to admit fault, or ever see your view. If they were not smart enough to diversify, comments about gambling won't make them feel better and won't change their mind.

In summary, buying stock is not like gambling. Gambling will, on average, lose money and so gambling should be view as for entertainment only. Stocks, on average, have historically had positive yields and are thus a meaningful investment, though like any investment it takes some care in planning.

 

Ironically, no answer came from the one-size-fits-all comments.

 

Bisco - Yup you only got the $2500 Fed credit . I am thinking ItsNotAboutTheMoney is talking about the Toyota discounts that came out in addition to the Fed tax credit.

 

I'm going to disagree somewhat. When stocks had meaningful dividends and the ownership was limited enough to allow the stockowners to control the company, it was not gambling. You could plan on dividend income (never a negative number) and shareholder driven corporate accountability. Those days are long gone and have been replaced with a new model.

The new model has the following features: The value of a companies stock is entirely based on perceived financial reward (just like a poker hand). Far more effort goes into managing this than internal efficiency. Control is limited to very powerful multi-billionares with a huge amount of corporate control managed from within. (Look at any stockholders annual reports. More pages are expended on CEO compensation than how the company maintains efficiency.) Finally - The biggest effect on any companies stock price are overall economic conditions. Also note that stocks fluctuate more based on variations from Wall Street earnings estimates than actual revenue. All of which means the investment return on stock is based on how these factors fluctuate and none are predictable enough to be assured of income. It may be low risk gambling if done right, but it's gambling.

 

I was referring to gm retirees pensions being revoked, and the pre-bankruptcy gm customers losing their warranties.

So, knowing that, would you still be able (as a part of gm mgnt) look straight in the eye of a gm retiree, or pre-bankruptcy customer and tell them they lost their pension and/ or warranty?

DBCassidy

 

I assume you mean your comments in this post
Crazy Volt incentives makes me want to trade | Page 14 | PriusChat
to which I not reply to your general ramblings because they were irrational. You cannot meaningfully compare the Prius sales of today with the Volt. The volt is a new concept and new launch so yes its not at 5K per month. It took the Prius 8 years form its home-country launch and 6 years from the US launch to reach that level. The volt sales may be below some early eager projections, but its on track for a new vehicle, comparable to the sales levels for Gen1 Prius.

Furthermore, GM has many different electrified vehicles, not just the volt, with the Spark EV launching soon as well as the ELR. Diversification does not mean many variations of one thing, it means having investments in multiple areas, which GM does. But I'm not going to try to defend GM overall.. the tread (and my interest) is about the Volt.

 

Nope. It was what ultimately resulted in the following.

That reality continues to be avoided.

The plug-in Prius is portrayed as a afterthought, when the big picture clearly reveals it isn't.

Just read the recent article from Detroit in reference to Ford's plug-in C-Max. It carefully avoids mention of battery-capacity by directing focus to "all electric miles" instead.

Excluding information is what?

 

Well I cannot even begin to see

as being related to

Your post of

as that has nothing to do with "one size fits all".
But since you seem to want a reply to it here you go..
I did not say plug in prius was an afterthough, I said it was band aid. It was the obvious thing to do as people had been adding external plug-in batteries to Prius for 6+ years before the PiP was released. If toyota had released the PiP in 2008 it was would have been a fast follower to Hymotion, but still a good advance. Finally releasing it more than a year after the Leaf and Volt launches, hence comes across as an attempt to stop the hemorrhaging so they don't seem out of the race and can keep a few of the loyalists like you in the ship. Maybe they expected the Leaf and Volt to never reach the gate. I don't think they believe in EV, just like the majority of car companies did not believe in Hybrids.


Camry is a nice hybrid, though I've never seen anything from Toyota suggesting it could be a plug, can you provide a reference showing its "planning ahead". Sure it has a battery and they can make that bigger. But from what I've read I don't think its current gearing could handle it at any reasonable speed EV (2013 limit is 25mph EV). Sure they could slap on a bigger pack and take a few years to reengineer just like they eventually did for the Plug in prius. People have been adding After-market kits to the TCH for a while, so one would hope Toyota could apply another band-aid in a few years.

 

When a technology matures, being capable of delivering high-volume profitable sales, business calls it "mature". Enthusiasts label that very same situation "obsolete".

The usual trophy response is no surprise. We've dealt with it for years. They see affordability as a low priority, an engineering effort that will come later. In the meantime, they downplay that cost shortcoming and belittle the competition. Fortunately, that approach has proven to fall apart about 2.5 years into the rollout. At that point, the market begins to lose interest and moves on to something else... which is exactly what we're seeing with Volt now.

That's why audience is so important. For sales to grow, it must appear to the masses. There's a disconnect between enthusiasts and middle-market. Evidence of this come from the "raising doubt" tactic, when sales don't meet expectations.

Looking at Prius, we see that the C and V models did not steal sales away from the regular model... despite countless claims that would happen. Instead, they reached out to a new variety of consumer. The plug-in model will do the same thing. The mature technology enables that growth.

Looking at Volt, we don't know what the heck to expect. Hearing the next-generation goal of price $7,000 to $10,000 lower makes you wonder how it will actually be configured and what that will do to new & used sales in the meantime. Knowing that the tax-credit of $7,500 will expire by then, there's still the question audience still remains.

Who?

 

As much as I'd like to see more around here, that's not really a good idea yet. Just look at how many "range" discussions there are still.

Only within the last 2 weeks have we been able to get a handle on effect winter has on capacity. Prior to that, there were only a handful of us (literally) that had any real-world data to share, and that data was extremely limited. Waiting for an entire annual cycle to pass is mandatory. There's no way to accelerate that collection process. Then there's the act of actually spreading the word.

It means we couldn't realistically expect the next phase of rollout until Summer 2013, which would complicated by end of model-year clearance. To further complicate matters, we have Volt, Leaf, Tesla, along with the C-Max and Fusion plug-ins all sending their own particular marketing messages to consumers.

Sadly, waiting until Fall really is a sensible choice. In the meantime, we can establish some clarity about what to expect from a plug-in hybrid.

 

It's based on the location of the dealer, NOT the resident. Anyone in the USA can buy a car from a dealer anywhere in the USA. No problem with the warranty. You know that "excludes estimated delivery charge of $x", well, that $x is about what it costs people to ship, which is typical less than $1k. gm-volt.com (and the Voltites here can confirm) has plenty of people who've shipped into order to get the volume-based incentives that only volume dealers can offer. Hell, Wayne Gerdes (hypermiler, owner of CleanMPG*) recently replaced his wife's car with a PiP (because his wife's currently in CA). He lives in IL, bought the car from NY and drove it to CA.

My future new cars will be test-driven at the nearest dealer, I can find one, bought from the cheapest dealer I can find in the country, serviced at a local garage when possible and at a local dealer only when necessary. Screw the franchise system and in-state buying.

* Disclosure: I'm a mod on that site.

 

I think sales numbers for plug-ins in general are so low Toyota decided not to go nationwide yet with PIP. Here in Florida we have SouthEast Toyota which is separate from Toyota.com.

 

True you can buy what you want, but if it does not meet your states reg you may pay a lot becaose of that (e.g. CARB compliance is taken pretty seriously in Cali).
The real point of concern is not shipping it is is service. Sure you can buy it anywhere and get it shipped, but if there is an issue who will fix it? I waited until my local dealer was qualified for work before I was willing to go 900 miles away to get a new car (of a new model..).


What is Toyota's official policy on service outside of the supported states. I've seen multiple posts but dont recall any replies on an official policy ( (And Wayne taking it to Cali does not really cause an issue since they were already on sale in Cali.. just must have better prices in NY). I'd consider going to Cali for a Rav4EV.. but when I asked about it at my local dealer they said they would not be able to provide service (I did not push them, and of course they then wanted to sell me a regular Rav4.) PiP might be easier for out of state srvice since its so close to the Prius and dealers may expect they will eventually get to sell them so getting a tech certified may not be as big a deal as it was for the Volt or more so for the Rav4EV which is not likely to be anything but a Compliance vehichle. ..

 

All states supported PHV right from the very beginning. Dealers were required to be up-to-speed right away.

Not only were we officially informed of nationwide service availability, we were also provided with help finding dealers for out-of-state purchases.

Toyota wanted those of us with the desire to have a way pursuing the opportunity. Like in the past, they've found it very supportive to establish a owner-controlled support-base prior to going all out.

 

I don't recall any entheusits here calling maturing technology obsolete.. just matured and unlikely to signifcantly change. Who's called it obsolete?

Not sure what evidence you have that has has fallen appart after the roll out. Here is a chart of various vehicles sales in month from launch, as disussed at RealClearEnergy - Early EV Sales Match Prius's Start

Volt sales still well ahead of Prius HV sales after its launch. Not meeting some press releases issued before the market crash is a far cry from falling appart.

So if the V and C did not steal the sales from the prius, why are liftback sales down 20% YTD compared to last year or the year before? Is that because of the other choices taking up more of the market?

Jan-April 2011 Liftback sales were 55,256
Jan-April 2012 Liftback sales were: 59,094.
Jan-April 2013 Liftback Sales were 47413, or 11681 units less.
So how do you explain this?

After complaining about affordability and tacticts of "raising doubts" , you compain about reducing costs by throwing FUD about what will be the configuration. You should know better.

But glad to see that you think tax credits will be used by the next generation, since that implies you expect GM to sell 160,000 more Volts (and ELR/Sparks) by 2015 or 2016. I'm glad to see your optimism for the success of GM and the Volt!

 

I talked to my dealer and they said they had Toyotas training Shortly before I purchased my plug-in, and said they were ready to take care of me. I don't have anything in writing, just there word, but I have been buying cars from them for the last 12 years so I believe them. So far the last year everything has been fine.

 

Back to ignore. I'm not playing this game again.

 

Gm, continues to flounder with failing to clearly define the market segment for the volt.
As mentioned in past posts, expired leased volts are going to saturate a crowded market. This will put additional pressures on gm and chevy dealers with inventory that won't move off the lot.

This does not bode well for the volt.

DBCassidy

John,

He just loves to play games, twisting the facts to his own liking.

How sad.

DBCassidy