If there was No Prius, There'd Be No GM VOLT !

The Long History of General Motors has been one of making low quality gas guzzlers. Even when the US Government gave them a grant to develop an electric car, or hybrid GM used the money, made the car and then abandoned the idea. The Japanese seeing this gave a similar grant to Honda & Toyota who then began developing the Honda Insight, and the Toyota Prius. So we may thank GM for the Prius, and it is the success of that Japanese design that made the Chevy Volt a necessary GM project.

If there were no Prius, there would still be No Volt.

With enthusiasm like that is it any surprise that GM's Volt is far too expensive, too little, and far too late ?

 

GM used the governments subsidy to build a very credible electric car they called the EV-1 Then GM refused to sell them, gathered them all up from the people they had leased the cars to, and crushed them all rather than offer any of them for sale. If GM had used that research and experience to begin the development of a hybrid, or even and electric car, we might all have bought cars made in the USA rather than Japan. Alas, that was not in the GM Management playbook. Now they offer us a vastly expensive, short ranged, and probably unsuccessful design that most will simply reject. GM has offered us years and years of promises about the New Coming Soon to Your Dealer, Chevy VOLT. I can't wait till Consumer Reports tests one.

 

Undoubtedly that is true. Toyota took their governments subsidy, and very unlike GM, used it to do something new, different, and exciting. If GM had not gotten the US government subsidy, Japan would never have responded by offering its car makers the same thing. The Prius is proof of the value of long term thinking and planning versus the culture of How Big Is Next Quarters Profit ? Toyota served its nation and their people well, by using the money for good purpose, as these Forums illustrate so convincingly. GM took our nations money and simply wasted it.

 

Unlikely !

If Henry Ford had not created the assembly line, someone else making cars would have done the same thing soon enough. Mass production is too common sense not to have been recognized by others. Henry was the first, but certainly no greater genius than many others who would have done something silmilar.

In a nation as capable and driven as this one, it seems pathetic that the Volt is overpriced, short ranged, and no credible contender to the Prius. That GM was the responsible designer, sadly surprises me not at all. The Volt tells me we might have been wiser to let GM disappear after all.

 

The EV-1 was never a production model, it was test platform, and for a test platform of a radically new direction and technology for automobile design 100 grand a copy is not bad. It is certainly better than 40 + Grand for an actual production car that has been touted for years to be a contender, when it obviously will not be a contender at all. GM had a break with the Abandoned EV-1. Toyota took the same kind of 'Break' at turned it into the Prius, Hinda the Insight. GM then had an even Bigger 'Break' when our taxes bailed them out of certain bankruptcy. We Do Not owe GM any more Breaks.

Who in their Right Mind could justify spending 40 Grand on a car that is limited to 40 miles on electricity, and a maximum of 300 miles. A Maximum of only 5 hours of driving per day ! Please show me the market that such a car will be drawing its customers from ? And when the PHEV Prius is available in a 2 or 3 years what lunatic would be glad they own a Chevy Volt instead ?

 

How Can Discussing the New American Made, Long Touted, "Prius Buster" to be made by the genius's at General Motors be OFF-TOPIC ? ? ? ?

The Prius is in production for a decade and more, and the US Made alternative car finally announces it is going 'ON SALE', after YEARS Of Articles Prdicting How Much Better the VOLT was Gonna Be than a mere Toyota Prius ! This weeks Big News is that the Price is for a Massively More Expensive Vehicle with Great Limitations, and this Topic is NOT RELEVANT to the Prius ? ? ? In what Universe ?

 

Up against the Prius, the VOLT as announced would probably prove a failure if they were sold TWO FER $ 41,000.00. 40 mile EV range ? For a production car of that price ? Not a Chance.

 

Evidently My First Posting at Refuting Your Ridiculous Criticism Failed To Convince You, so here we go again.

The Chevorlet Volt Is NEWS . . . TODAY . . . They Just announced the Pricing for the Great GM, Long Touted PRIUS BUSTER. Thus this NEWS should Be Read By ALL PRIUS OWNERS, But Most Especially By those of us who own OR who would COMPARE The New Volt from GM to the New, AS IN GENERATION 3, Toyota Prius. It may have escaped you that Totota Dealers now No Longer Sell Generation II Models that might Compete with Brand New Competitors like the VOLT. Ergo Generation 2 Discussion would be asinine for this TOPIC ! Sorry I have to be the one to make YOU Cognizant of that REALITY.

Also Precisely BECAUSE The Main GENERATION 3 Forum gets, as you say, The MOST EYEBALLS, a News Worthy CURRENT TOPIC like this one should not be Squirreled Away in some alternative minor discussion about the Volt. The Discussion is a CURRENT ONE, as in TODAY's NEWS, that Remains Highly Relevant To All of those about to own, or who recently Purchased a Generation 3 PRIUS, the car to which the VOLT is Always Compared even Long Before the Volt could be ordered, purchased or test driven. So AGAIN your criticism is Both Lame & Irrelevant. This Thread is Exactly Where it Belongs.

 

Undoubtedly you are correct, but GM crushed and scrapped all the Ev-1's ostensibly because they would then subvert all who might wish to capitalize on their technological investment (which was actually the American Taxpayers investment and not theirs anyway)

I suggest that GM was probably worried more that someone take the cars and make it obvious they were viable, and could be mass produced and sold in a day when GM was all about raising CAFE standards, not proving with Electirc Cars that CAFE standards should be far Lower than they already were. The Detroit Political Lobby would Not have been pleased by a Viable Electric Car, and GM wasn't about to let that cat out of the bag. In this day and age they seem to advanced little on the idea, evidence the disappointing performance figures and exhorbitant price of the EV-1's Successor, the Chevrolet VOLT !