How will the Chevrolet Volt be better than a Toyota Prius plug-in hybrid?

So 160 is mostly fleet sales somehow? Jumping to conclusions is fun for all I suppose.

 

Re-Volting Development: Chevy Volt Sales Surged in March - Forbes

Re: Mostly fleet orders can't be good.

It currently states:

 

You forgot to mention the Volt gets $7500 tax credit , the Prius $2500 that gets it a little closer

 

Heavy dependency on federal subsidies is a bad sign.

$33 is what the US government purchased each of the 500 million GM shares for. Today, their value dipped below $22. The selling of those shares was planned for June 2011, but ended up being delayed due to the size of the loss that would be incurred. No improvement over the past 10 months is another bad sign.

Being "better" isn't exclusively about engineering. Business requires profit from high-volume sales. When will that happen from Volt?

 

At least in the EU; when they lower the ridiculously high price for Opel Ampera, which is 43.000 EUR = 56.000 US$.

 

lol. How very, um, nice try. You sound a lot like bob lutz on the prius.

The bailout was about jobs and the UAW lobby, not the volt. How much would higher unemployment cost us? I am still against the bailout, but how was it about the volt.

The stock is lower because european losses. GM is making money in america. The stock would drop further if GM cancelled the volt. So much for you looking after the tax payers investment. For me, I would like the country to just take its losses and get out of the auto business.

Volt sales are much higher than you and those fox news guys were wining about. Its a first generation car. Its subsidized like the rav4 ev, prius phv, leaf, tesla S, etc, to help transform the country off oil.

Do you think all things should be about short term profit, and not investment if fuel economy advances. That sounds a lot like the old gm which would quickly go bankrupt again.

 

Amen. If gm wishes to succeed, it needs to forget about the crap vehicles they tried to force down our throats, and start focusing on the future. And love it or hate it, cars like the volt are the future. GM has the revenue from markets like China, where they can't keep buicks in the showroom, to invest into stuff that would work here.

 

I'm gonna disagree with Austin here. The shares are worth less today not because of GM's sales or the Volt. GM has had record profits. Rather the shares are worth less because when the IPO was being priced (and the government as a major shareholder would have been part of that) it was over priced. The initial IPO pricing is based on the pricing teams future value expectations -- and clearly they were not well founded. Its not uncommon for such pricing to have a lot of optimism and hubris and be focused on raising money at the IPO, not matching long-term actual value. They price was not that far off as the market drove it up for a short bit. But in general 80% of IPOs are below the IPO price after 6 months. So in pricing its not uncommon for the locked-up share-holders to have to wait longer to recover the IPO price. Anyone not expecting that to happen does not understand business and the general actions for IPOs.


Predicting the future is impossible, but given the way products work, I'd guess high-volume sales of the Volt will happen with the third generation, similar to the high-volume pickup of the sales of the Prius.

 

Not even close. Much has been forgotten and changed.

All along, Volt was promoted as a vehicle for the masses. Sales were to become mainstream the second year, not the second generation. The hope abruptly shifted upon learning what the price would be. Then it really got ugly when the EPA revealed their estimates.

There's a drastic difference between early-2012 and early-2010.

You have to choose a point-of-reference for expectations claims.

 

The concern was "too little, too slowly".

Watching Cruze & Malibu become strong sellers without Volt, as consumers embraced fuel efficiency, wasn't part of the plan. That was a change which came about after rollout.

Having to wait several more years for something that still may not be competitive and settle for vehicles with combined estimates in the low to mid 30's for MPG in the meantime validates the concern.

Profit is now being made from vehicles that don't actually meet intentions.

 

We didn't say anything about bringing back those high quarterly dividends. We didn't say anything about being an industry sales leader either...


It has always been about replacing traditional vehicle production with high-efficiency choices.

Remember Toyota's goal of 1,000,000 annually by the end of 2012?

Unfortunately, impact of surprise scandal & disaster seriously hindered the effort. Despite that, there were 252,528 Prius were sold in Japan and 136,463 in the United States last year. And with the popularity of the new models, achieving two-thirds of the original goal by the original deadline is still realistic.

Those are actual numbers, not some vague hope.

We still have no clue what to expect from Volt. To make matters worse, we see GM investing in eAssist & diesel along with a push for more small car sales. What kind of future is that?

 

Austin is right at this point. right or wrong, the Volt is here to stay. it does provide technology and the opportunity for GM to segway that technology into their other product lines which will benefit GM in the long run (if they choose that route)

and yes, the stock was a bit overvalued when Uncle Sam bought it, but that is how most stock is during IPO's. its like buying gas 2 years ago. we know its too expensive and we have options but none that we considered viable without extreme compromise but we buy the gas anyway.

either way, the Volt opens another door into the possibility of product innovation from other companies. would we have the Fusion Energi if not for the Volt? maybe, but probably not as quickly. all these products have been on the backburner for years, but no one wants to put them out. i believe Ford is doing it partially to be CA Compliant but also to be competitive in the market place. they probably did not believe anyone would pay $40,000+ for the car. GM has shown there is a market for the car. its a niche and always will be, but its a worthwhile niche

 

Guess you read a different plan or have selective memory. From the early launch days, the volt has been viewed by many folks in GM as a green halo car, something to show their engineering abilities and make the company look good which will help sales overall. They hoped for high-volume but its primary short-term goal was a halo.. where it did well. I'd be happier if they price was 10K lower, if that was profitable, but and the market changed dramatically in fall 2008, and GM is rebuilding so its more important that grow in a fiscally sound manner. I'm disappointed in the march/april shutdown as i think it did hurt sales, but I'm not really in a position to discuss if its was a good business decision. But your comments provide no insights into Volt vs prius, its just you bashing GM yet again for not following your business model.

I must presume that by "competitive" you mean cost competitive. If so then well then yes people will have to wait for the hybrid premium to be reduced. Still waiting on that for the Prius too. The premium on the Volt is a bit higher, but then again it is much more advanced tech and provides far lower average gas usage.

Then again as you often do you are mostly arguing about GM, not actually about the Volt.

 

We've heard countless reports of people supposedly trying to kill Volt, but none of them appeared to like green vehicles anyway. I want to know who in support of plug-ins actually said Volt wouldn't survive... because it's often implied they were the ones.

People like me were saying the current configuration of Volt is far too expensive to reach middle-market. Even with cost reductions, it would still be far from competitive with GM's own offerings. How long must we continue to wait and for what specifically?

We never saw Volt going away. It was always a matter of having to realign to actually met the mainstream needs. The niche appeal would force the offering of a model with a balance similar to other high-volume vehicles.

It's how many, not if.

 

No. It was to leapfrog Prius in every way, including sales. And what does "in GM" have to do with the way Volt was hyped & perceived by consumers?

60,000 was planned for the second year.

The hope was for double that the third year.

 

I'd like to know if anyone with PiP can put up MPG numbers like drinnovation. Looking at the spreadsheet, IRun26.2 leads with 185 MPG. The average is 80 mpg. It is not necessary to even read the this thread from start to finish to know which car better meets the needs of someone trying to get back and forth to work without using a drop of gas. That is a large niche which grows with the price of gasoline.

And no one seems to recall that we are in the Great Recession. Car sales will be slow no matter what.

 

The volt was the subject of some marketing, and hype always is a part of that. Even your beloved Toyota could be viewed as hypeing things.. its hard to actually predict the future so car makers make predictions. If those predictions are a bit off people some people, like you call it hype.

I think your perception of the Volt marketing was/is skewed. I've followed it pretty closely and I don't think anyone at GM was serious saying it would leapfrog prius sales in a short period of time. It was supposed to, and did, leapfrog the Prius in technology and reducing the need for gas. So maybe some press took the leapfrog and projected in ways it was not intended.. but that is often what the press does.


My comment about GM is because you complain they are selling Cruze and Malibu rather than massive number of Volts.

Yep, 60K was the target, set in 2007, for year 2, which is not going to happen. Then again in 2007 people were not expecting a financial crash to lead to a recession. And in 2007 the expected price was lower, but as it evolved the price went up a bit. Not like other car companies actually hit all their targets -- or more likely they don't even announce them. We'll see what the full year brings, but its likely to exceed 15.6K units (Prius fist year of nationwide sales) as Volt sales are already at 5.6K now.

 

i agree the Volt pricing is a bit high, but not overly so. i am frankly shocked at the general cost of new cars today. i REALLY question people who thought i was paying a premium for my Prius when only 3 years later the average new cost of a car has reached that point.

but the Volt being in the mid 30's after incentives is really not that much money and for some (i know people averaging nearly 1000 MPG in a Volt) the pay off will be VERY quick.

but time, streamlining and volume should lower the cost of the Volt to the mid 30's (in today's dollars) . it will take a few years, but it will happen just like the Leaf will be "cheaper".

Last month, the average cost of a new car (excluding pickups which average $50,000+ for higher end models) was over $30,000.

so in 3 years we will have cars costing as much as a Volt does now? maybe.

the auto companies are fighting batteries every step of the way. the New Malibu touts 37 MPG highway and no doubt will be a popular seller but how much cheaper is it really?

the potential gas savings would far outweigh the difference in monthly payments

 

Thanks for the comment.. though I'll be the first to point I'm a not near the top of the leader board at voltstats.net, where there are 120 people (about 12%) with more than lifetime 500mpg.

More importantly, its not really a competition between prius and Volt. There are both good cars. The PiP is better match for some people's needs, the Volt much better for others. I see the point of the thread is to help those that are unsure about the cars to help decide what better matches their needs. Bashing one or the other serves no real purpose.

 

I'm not sure who we are. Do you have a mouse in your pocket?

When I say you talk like lutz, it should be clear. You are claiming the volt is a failure because it doesn't make a profit in its first years. This is exactly what lutz said about the prius. In fact you are probably following words from his press releases. The prius was not profitable for its first 7 years. Why would the volt need to be?

OK, then why are you focused on high volume and profits. That seems to be against what you are asking for.

1 million what? a meaningless number. Toyota has not made an end of the year statement.

umm, I don't score things that way, I think you still are scoring in a funny way.

actual numbers are japanese production likely has a loss. nissan has a operating margin of 7%, hyundai 10%, and toyota has reached 4.5%

Sure we do. operating profit was $2.2B last quarter, we don't expect volt to change that. Revenue was $37.8B. If Gm was on track to sell 80,000 volts this year instead of in the 20s, then operating profit would not move, Revenue would jump from $37.8B to $38.4B. In other words with great, way over expectation numbers for the volt, the financials would actually look a little worse. All I can assume is that you don't understand the scale and impact of the volt on profits, and thus are putting forth very bad numbers.

For valuation, its easy to read the quarterly report, things are bad in europe, and may get worse. GM wrote down $590 Million in assets in europe and had an additional $256 Million in operating losses there. Its easy to see how this is the problem with valuation. Only the ignorant would blame the volt for valuation problems.

On prospective sales, at IPO time GM was estimating 30K volt sales in 2013. They did up these estimates in 2012 to as high as 60K, but I don't think you or any of the analysts thought they were likely. Did you? I remember something else. I expect them to come in, in the 20s of units in volt sales. Not far off of IPO number. Toyota did not get a higher valuation for the prius in 1997 or 1998 either.

But then again why are you blaming people that buy the volt for gm's bailout. Why did you pivot here? That is why I responded. It seems like just anouther reason for you to deflect.

Both the volt and prius phv help move us to using less oil. Why not end the silly false arguments. They are quite transparent. When you bring these things out you do sound a lot like fox news and bob lutz. Just know that.