GM's Volt numbers for August: Not Pretty

I found a March reference to the Volt's transmission but nothing else.

 

i know 3 people locally who are interested in the Volt, but they have checked around and the current markup is pricing them out of the market. 2 are pretty firm and able to wait it out. i expect the markups to disappear when the Volt production increases to where they are widely available.

one is caving and i think he might be convertible to the Leaf. in our area, new public charging is announced almost daily and that is causing to rethink his plans. i personally dont know what his issues are. he would have about a 50 mile RT commute which is well within the Leaf's winter range but trying to convince him of that is not as easy as it seems.

 

People are willing to take a chance on GM. GM's sales are quite good outside of the Volt. The Volt is overpriced and the 37mpg in CS mode is not helping. If the car was $29k after tax incentive it would sell much better.

 

I saw information from one of our member stating that even the GM management did already claimed the Volt is a failure shortly after the real sale.

 

And there are more like him.

 

I've seen both Volt and Leafs at dealers with "DEMO ONLY" signs on the windows. I've seen it with my own eyes. Let me know if you want me to go snap photos.

 

I Think it boils down to the $45,000.00 What do people get in the market place for $45,000.00 ??
They will spend that amount for a car that can go 200 miles on Electric, but 40 miles than MPG's no better than a Prius?

 

Really, I think of the CS mode as closer to the 40mpg highway. After all, going beyond the AER would, I'd think, occur more on longer trips with more highway miles.

 

Demo only? The volts i checked out at several fairs and festivals had no such stickers, only window stickers and could be yours driving away for a mire $48 thousand. No thanks i'll keep my "Geekie " Prius, Comrad Government Motors.

 

My wife is one of them. I'd be able to get her into a PHEV but not a BEV.

 

Giving the driver choice of EV or hybrid mode will be key in getting the most out of a PHV's economy. I wonder if anybody is already looking at hacking the Volt for it.

 

Also, there are others who would not be caught equally dead in a Volt!

"Prius is a niche product with no future mainstream widespread potentials"
It seems that they have already lost that bet.

 

This^^^

Consider. Currently GM cannot make enough vehicles to send even one Volt to each and every dealer. Thus there is a limited rollout in the initial time period. But even moreso if every dealer was allocated exactly one Volt....why why would they want to promote it?

If that dealer spent money promoting its lowest selling vehicle then when that one vehicle was snapped off the lot what would they do for the rest of the month?

Then there's pure basic Capitalism. When the Prius was launched here in 2000 ( I sold the first one in the region in July 2000 ) no one in Management and no other sales person even wanted to hear about the Prius or try to understand what it was all about. This went on for 3-1/2 years. Why? There was no money to be made talking about somthing so limited and so fraught with uncertainty.

Everytime someone would call in or stop in to ask about 'the hybrid' or the Prius everyone just deflected all inquires to one person..... However because of our early start and constant work over 4 yrs when things really did get tight we became the major provider of Prii to the region for a long time even up to the present, typically ( 5:1 ) ratio over most other stores.

That didn't even change much until mid 2004 after the Prius became a raging phenomenon throughout the world winning nearly every award possible and being on back order for 6-12 months....at full sticker, with addendums in most places. California was different to be sure but east of the Rockies...this was the case until late 2004.

Concerning the Volt, I'm not surprised by its slow start. GM doesn't have the background nor the lot traffic in this segment that TM had in 2000. GM's lot traffic is still looking at trucks and utility vehicles. The Cruze is beginning to change that but it's akin to TM / H in 1992.

But to me the main reason that the Volt might fail is..... 5 DIMES!!!!! To drive one off the lot one has to commit to spending $50000....and to qualify for much of that as a loan ( a HUGE impediment for much of the US population these days )....or lease one and lose the tax incentive. By comparison the first Prius in 2000 sold for $19895. If it fails the Volt will fail because of GM's pricing strategy IMO.

 

Hype prevented enthusiasts from listening to words of wisdom like that,despite countless attempts to share that history... and the problems Two-Mode rollout faced.

They just assumed Volt was "vastly superior" and therefore would be an immediate high-demand vehicle.
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I think that IS the 'demo only' sign.

 

The dealer by me has a demo and it has "VOLT" in large letter along the side.

 

i agree with every word of this post except the part i have notated in bold.

GM CHOSE its production. it was not limited by lack of resources. it was based on

lack of guts
lack of conviction in its products
lack of commitment to make the product work.


now, lets look at another company in Nissan who also released a revolutionary product. they posted very ambitious #'s. now granted, those #'s have not been realized but considering their $2B investment and the fact that over a billion of it can be seen on google maps, i would venture to say they will deliver somewhat close to the 150,000 domestically they predict.

now they came in at a mid level price point (after incentives of course) which generated the interest they were hoping for. now, it may have been an unsustainable price when they put it out or it could be due to the huge devaluation of the dollar against the yen, either way; that price is no longer available.

the 2012's that most will have a chance at, comes in above the mid level, but the interest has already been planted and its only continuing to grow.


what if GM had decided to do the same thing? release a Volt at 28-30,000 after incentives? after all, how much money could they lose on volume under 5,000??

sorry, but everything GM does seems to be with their eyes wide open and its not too hard to see what direction they are moving in.

 

Purely speculative, I wonder if the Obama administration required GM to set the price to at least break-even. This thought crossed my mind when GM lost the support of the White House for the Volt around the time pricing was announced.

When you consider the horrible pricing strategies GM has employed in the past to keep plants running and PR blurbs about market share, a requirement to stop bleeding money still sounds pretty reasonable.

 

Volt production was definitely limited by the natural disaster in Japan. Key components are sourced there. This is obviously a double edged sword considering how badly the dollar has tanked relative to the Yen over the last year. So even when they can get parts, they cost a lot more.

You also have to consider the fact that this is first or second generation technology for GM (depending upon how much EV1 learning assume went into this vehicle). It's cost position is going to be much worse than the Prius, which has 10 years and lots of retail sales under its belt. GM will continue to pay a price for a while for ignoring hybrid development for so long.

I love the fact that GM (and Nissan for that matter) is trying to do something different. Simply copying the Prius won't move electrification technology along at the same pace. Right now the Prius is the most efficient answer. But will it be king in 10 years? Probably not. Which is why all of the automakers (including Toyota) continues to develop and invest in a variety of future technologies.

Competition is good. Maybe GM will be the Android to Toyota's iOS?