Another example of why Chevy will never really make it

I thought #1 was BS. Both HCH and Insight proved it to be a BS.

I think #2 should read "overestimate" instead of "underestimate".

 

It is all idle conjecture on my part, but I fervently believe I will survive to see the day when oil based transportation is not financially feasible for the driving public. At some point (and again IMHO soon) the scarcity and demand will diverge to such a great extent that no sustainable amount of subsidy will keep gasoline prices reachable by the average citizen.

That is to say at some point consumers won't have a choice, they'll be able to drive electric to work or buy a horse. I believe that point to be within the next 40 years.

I wince whenever I hear the NG commercials "we have enough energy for 100 years right here". REALLY? You want to use complete exhaustion in less than 1 century as your planning tool? The country's going on 240 years old now, that is ridiculously short sighted. How much do we want to spend on infrastructure that will be useless junk our grandchildren will need to dismantle?

 

First generation honda insight was unique like the prius. The problem was market segment. People were willing to give up a little fuel economy to have a back seat The honda civic hybrid looks just like the regular civic, while the gen II prius looks nothing like anything else toyota made. The gen II insight looks so much like the gen II prius, that many confuse them. Its not a me too product, not unique when it came out. Given a choice people decided to pay more for the better hybrid. I'm not sure what about that you read as bs, but ..... What message do you think honda should have learned?

Lutz greatly underestimated the market for hybrids and called them a marketing ploy. This led GM to under invest in the technology and manufacturing. The public statements led many to believe the 2-mode was also just a marketing ploy. New leadership at gm seems to believe in hybrids and plug ins and are devoting both engineering and manufacturing talent to producing vehicles. Its amazing that the volt survived the deep budget cuts during bankruptcy.

They did overestimate the number of people that would spend 40K+ on a hybrid pickup truck. This is in number 3, poor segmentation. Their bigger market for 2-mode is the luxury SUV, but the 2-mode seems overengineered for this. Lexus does better with the much less expensive RX hybrid.

 

I've got to say I find the "moon Shot" talk troubling, as this was the basis of the failed pngv project and continued in the now assumed to fail freedom car program. Bush and Obama policies later have shifted to plug ins. These don't require a moon shot mentality, just continuous improvement and competition.

Will $10 gas get the majority to switch to BEVs? No of course not. But some wanted them at $2 gas and jumped through hoops to get them. Far less than 1% of the US fleet is hybrid or plug-ins and that is a little depressing. But it also doesn't mean that their can not be sucessful plug in cars just like their are sucessful hybrids.

Its good for government to have a vission, but it needs to be able to pivot to the technologies that seem to be improving fastest. For right now that means support for plug-ins

 

Read my blogs, which are loaded with observations of GM actions, matching Two-Mode almost step for step at times. And you know me, I love climbing up on the soapbox pointing out stuff like that.

What they say (which is horribly vague in many cases) is not always what they actually do.
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GM did learn, and not just about the business side (which austingreen already addressed in comments). Far more importantly they learned about engineering issues and that a modest evolutionary innovation with modest improvement, while it may have a larger impact if widely adopted, does not produce radical change. The Volt's design is not just a little better hybrid (what two-mode hoped to be), it's EREV is a more radical design.

With respect to your lecturing us on what is good business or similar business to past history, let's not forget that despite their behavior, that GM is the largest vehicle manufacturer in the world. Seems they do know something about business.

 

I would love to be able to drive Electric to work everyday, but I can't afford the upfront cost of the vehicle. I actually, down the road, want to have a BEV and a cheaper ICE only car like an Elantra/Focus/etc.

I like your last paragraph. Unfortunately, I foresee within that time, at least WW3 if not WW4 by then, and most likely such chaos and turmoil that it won't matter by then.

 

In two years the first Volts will be coming off lease and there will be an interesting time of affordable electric vehicles on the market. The residual on my lease is $17,500 (roughly), that would be a pretty attractive used car that would still have a very low TCO.