Volt 2.0: Ruess "It will leap-frog... the competition"

I think you have moved into a quite unhelpful place john. You seem to be back before launch when you were going on gm sites, and just getting angry.

GM has helpfully provided us with a lot of real world data now. We can slice and dice it in many ways, but we can't dismiss it as hype or horrible.

GM should be aiming for more volume and leveraging improved batteries, engines, and motors to build the niche. But none of US work for gm, so we can ask what they are doing, buy not what they should do.

New engine, likely the one gm wanted to begin with but didn't have the money to develop during the bankrupcy.
Next-Gen Chevy Volt To Be First U.S. Model With New 1.0-Liter 3-Cylinder Engine
The electric range will go up, but we don't know whether that is to 40 or 50. I don't think gm knows the numbers exactly yet until they test the car. The price will drop, but it already has, so it won't be that much. It likely has different packaging of the battery to have a 5th seat in the back, but it won't be big enough for a fat adult anerican male.

They also will have at least 2 cadillacs built using the technology.
The sparc ev will share the same battery cells, and there will be anouther longer range ev that should drive the lg battery prices lower. The nissan rumor had lg batteries perhaps as low as $275/kwh. If that is true, battery cost for a 18 kwh pack would be around $5000, allowing further cost reduction (while credits are available the feds would kick in $7500. That is more than the new battery cost).

 

How is reflecting upon what happened last time and asking how it will be different this time unhelpful?

Looking back, trying to seek out how it will compare differently now is constructive.

Notice how the expectation questions go unanswered...?

 

John, he answered those very questions, to the best of his ability, in the very post you quoted.

What is Toyota's plans for the PiP? Since they missed theire initial home market predictions I haven't heard any more?

As for information, GM releases far more information on the Volt than I have ever seen on the Prius, PiP or expect to see on their hydrogen vehicle.
I wish Nissan and Tesla would also release more real world performance data.

 

The point was, it shouldn't have taken so much to get that.

There is still no clarity WHO the intended audience will be either.

 

John,
For years now I have watched you ask these questions, but I always think I do not really understand them from your POV.
Would you mind asking and answering for the PiP ?

 

I finally got the answer for Gen-1, then never asked again about it. Must we have to go through so much for Gen-2 too?

As for PiP, it is rather ironic getting asked the same questions over and over again.

It should be crystal clear that Toyota targeted consumers who would have purchased a Prius liftback. They even stated a pricing target for the option: $3k to $5k.

btw, my POV is getting something for the masses, a choice for ordinary consumers. I understand offering nothing for middle-market is not acceptable. How in the world will an automaker support itself without a high-volume profitable vehicle?

 

I think I follow now ... you think a car company (or at least GM) needs to successfully compete in the large volume segment in an era of expensive fuel, and GM is not positioned for that future.

Am I understanding ?

 

At this point in time, is it too much to ask GM to step up to the plate and have a well defined market audience to sell to?

I, for one, with the passage of time, view GM as missing the mark with the marketplace with the Volt.

Bad timing, lack of definition (of their target market), only adds to erosion of corporate confidence in the Volt.
Look at the minimal / non-existant commercials for the Volt. You, do not see this with other GM products like, the Cruse, Impala, Silverado - they stand on their own legs and produce profits.

DBCassidy

 

Unfortunately, the future was 2 years after the initial rollout. That didn't work out. We move on.

Now, gas is cheap and EV marketshare is growing. How will the next Volt fit into that picture?

Seriously, what will its position in the GM product-line be for the 2016-2021 run?

 

If you accept my POV that the Volt was simply the engine that pulled the bailout, the rest follows quite nicely.

 

How about a 5 seat midsize cleaner than a no-plug 55 MPG gas hybrid (Gen4)?

I would like Volt 2.0 to be more efficient hence lower in emission. So, mass volume sales would make meaningful impact.

I am sure that will be Toyota's goal for next gen PiP.

 

No problem.

It is tentatively called 'G5 Prius'

 

Why take a step backward (other than the 5 seat part)?

 

To raise fleet MPG to something not embarrassing ?

 

The current Volt is as clean as a 45 MPG gas hybrid.

Why would it be a step backward?

 

Let's look at it this way. If gm were to create a competitor to the Prius liftback it would probably take them 5 years and would not be as good. But say it was exactly as good, which is a stretch in my mind, would it grow the hybrid market space? Probably not. We should remember gm's experience with the corola, where they were building them in exactly the same plant with the same workers, but the gm versions the geo prism did not sell well. Now for something more iconic like the prius, I doubt gm could grab 20% of the US sales and none of the Japanese or European sales. It just doesn't make any sense to abandon the volt, which over the years is number 1 in us plug-in sales, to try to build a me to product that would likely be unprofitable.

The typical car in the volt catagory gets 30 mpg and gas is around $3/gallon right now. The plug-in segment is rapidly growing, as aoposed to the hybrid segment that has slow growth, and will even decline this year. While gm is unlikely to have many conquest sales in hybrids, about 70% of volt sales are conquest sales. On a 15,000 mile user a typical new ice only car will burn 500 gallons of gas, a prius user 300 gallons, and a volt driver 125 gallons (large variance with some burning only a few gallons and some burning a couple hundred). One of the main reasons sited by plug-in drivers is to reduce oil dependance. The next gen volt should reduce that consumption even more. ghg production was not high on the list as a reason to buy a plug-in, but certainly as the grid continues to clean up in the US and more plug-in drivers buy wind and solar, the ghg of plug-ins will be less than gasoline cars. There just isn't a good way to greatly reduce ghg emissions without substituting away from gasoline.

 

So... Mainstream consumers, who have very different priorities, get nothing?

 

A new model, with a significant change to owner behavior (plugging in vs fueling) can't appeal to all priorities right out the gate.

If the priorities are for saving on fuel and the driving patterns are average, and the customer can pay in the 30s rather than the 20s, the Volt works great.

Toyota did the same thing. First the Prius, and then to widen their market they expanded into the Prius family. This formula sort of worked for Toyota.

I don't understand why you expect any car to meet the needs of the entire "mainstream market"

 

I don't understand this obsession that car A is a bad car because it isn't "mainstream". Ofcourse if someone has the priorities for a prius liftback, they can simply buy one, without gm trying to make a copy ;-) GM copying the prius instead of building the volt would reduce choice not increase it.

If your definition of "mainstream" is over 50K units per year, then if gm does a good job on the next volt will be "mainstream" under that definition. It looks like the tesla 3, will be even more "mainstream" in terms of volume but not in terms of demographics. If it means average education, age, and income then no, plug-ins don't fit.

When looking at demographics the plug-in buyer is much more likely to own a home, have a higher income, higher education, be male, then the average car buyer. Sales are very low in the 18-25 yo bracket, and concentrated between 35-64yo. Prius buyers are skewed in similar ways, but are skewed even older, and not as high as a income. Neither of the groups buy their cars for hauling or towing.

A couple of these things are linked. Home ownership and higher education plus non-retired 35-64 yo natural skews towards higher incomes.

As an ex president said "america has an addiction to oil". a different one said
"We may be at a point of peak oil production. You may see $100 a barrel oil in the next two or three years, but what still is driving this globalization is the idea that is you cannot possibly get rich, stay rich and get richer if you don’t release more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. That was true in the industrial era; it is simply factually not true. What is true is that the old energy economy is well organized, financed and connected politically."

It is fairly mainstream america to want to reduce this oil adiction, but not give up our cars. Purchasing cars based on ghg is not a mainstream idea at all, but one that seems to be pushed. If america is going to reduce ghg by 80% a non-mainstream idea, it simply is not possible by adding hybrids. The drops can't get the country close. Substituting eletricity, and cleaning the grid, has some possibility and is much less expensive per ton of ghg reduced.