Chevy Volt sighting thread

Saw one (in black) for the first time a couple weeks ago parked at Kroger. The next day I ended up behind him going to work.

 

Saw a beautiful red one in Yuma, Arizona last week.

 

Oh look another day where DBCassidy is so desperate to bash the Volt they have to report, again, they did not see a Volt. Maybe it is a conspiracy and Mitt has enough influence to keep them scarse in your neck of the woods.

I think the point is to report when you do see one..

 

that made me laugh.

 

GM Recently reported that they are selling 14 Volts per day. At that rate the sightings aren't likely to dramatically increase anytime soon. BTW - at that rate, GM will sell fewer Volts this year than last. I often wonder what they might have achieved had they foregone the added cost and weight of the traditional i/c drive train and replaced that with additional battery capacity.

 

One imagines they would have sold less given how much other vehicles have sold thus far. Unless they wanted to sell at a loss, which they did not.

 

Depend on your definition of 'recent' I suppose. Or the definition of the person that told you this.

I suspect your information came from this thread at another forum? GM Volts Shocking: GM Literally Sold Out of Them - US Message Board - Political Discussion Forum

Which links to its source ths post: GM: Volt virtually sold out | Drive For Innovation – AVNETExpress

Which is from August 2nd 2011

 

+1
The battery is the most expensive part of the car. There wouldn't have been any cost savings, and it would have a limited range. Look at the pricing for the Focus EV and Rav4 EV.

 

one silver volt southington ct and one black volt west hartford ct.

Plus one new charging station in west hartford.. not yet open but will be in two weeks..

posted to plug share

 

You are correct. That information was reported verbatim on another website yesterday without the source date. I should have suspected something because I do recall that the Chevy Volt had its best sales month ever in March of 2012. That being said, you likelihood of spotting a Volt anytime soon remains quite low.

 

Yes, but one central concept of the Chevy Volt was to overcome "range anxiety." Would it not have made more sense to build a pure EV with enough range to overcome that anxiety? Let's assume for a moment that the i/c engine costs an additional $3000. How much extra battery and range could one get for $3000?

 

They could get a battery about the size of the PiP. So that would take it to 20kWh. 50 miles of range instead of 40.

Yay.

 

Price estimates for battery vary a lot.
As recently reported by ford
Ford’s CEO reveals true cost of electric vehicle batteries | SmartPlanet

If you average those to 600, the 23KW pack costs about $13800, which gets on about 76 miles, or about 3miles per kWh in the pack. (remember they don't use all the pack's range)

So if ford were to add $3000 in battery, you could add 5kw, to 28Kwh pack taking them to 92 miles, or about 16miles more.

Still not even close to get me to the local airport and back.

Range anxity depends on where you might need to go. For me, round trip to the airport is 130 if I go alone, 150 if I pick up one of my usual crew, 180 if I pick them all up. If I want to go to one of my other campuses, its 130 R/T or 190 R/T.

Only BEV I could use is Tesla's signature which has a 265 mile EPA range, is only $87900.

 

I was guessing a range of 44 instead of 33, but our methods of estimation appear to be similar. Either way, someone out there knows what percentage of the market could be opened up with that extra range.

It would be rather interesting to see how many Chevy Volts live in a single automobile household. If forced to bet on this, I would put that figure at close to zero. In other words, Chevy Volt owners have a different strategy for dealing with range anxiety.

 

I would agree that there are not many in a single car family. I know a number of leaf + volt households and some Volt + prius. But with high average family income its likely its not the only car for most.


Chevy volt owners don't suffer from range anxiety.. we can go as far as we want. We may suffer from gas anxiety.. many of us dread having ot use any gas. But when we do its not near as bad as many prius posters like to think. Check out this tread.. http://priuschat.com/forums/chevrolet-volt/108629-volt-mileage-data-130-mile-trip.html
And since this is the volt citing thread I'll add that in that 130 mile trip I saw 2 volts.... but the driver would not even look over when I honked and gave them a V for Volt.

 

Not quite the right thread, but I just saw a Chevy Spark driving next to me on the expressway. I recognized it since there will be a BEV version of it sold in the next year or so. It isn't sold in the U.S. yet and the license plate looked unfamiliar. I'm guessing it was someone visiting from Mexico. The car looked new and the new "M300" version of the Spark has only been sold there for the last 18 months.

 

I suppose we could sit around and play Monday morning quarterback on the Volt until the cows come home, but two things are clear. First, the people who own them seem to love them. Second, there aren't a whole lot of people buying them. The latter would be entirely different if the car sold for $20,000 instead of $40,000.

 

Sales are modest but still around the rate of the initial US launch of the Prius. And so far this year it outsold the honda civic hybrid, the honda insight, the ford focus, Kia optima, honda CR-Z, Toyota Highlander, Lincoln MKZ hybrid, etc.. In fact its overall at #7 in hybrid sales just behind the Lexus CT200h. Its doing pretty well for a non-prius hybrid in sales.


Yes if people could get a 40,000 car for 20,000 they would be selling very very well, but it would not be sustainable. Monday morning quarterbacking applies even more to arm-chair pricing.

 

I've seen more Volts than Mini Coupes or Prius v's.

At this point in time, to quash range anxiety, a BEV would need a range of 300 miles. That seems unreasonable, but so is the anxiety. $30k to $40k only gets you a BEV that does around 75miles at this point in time.

 

Saw 2 volts last night, both silver and parked.

Saw zero Prius (PiP, V, C or liftbacks). Then again I only looked up from my computer when my wife spotted a volt.