Is it fair to say GM will eat a lot of money on battery warranty work?

If anyone wants to upgrade their car, come and drive my Jeep TJ for a day. Every car feels like a luxury car after driving the Jeep.



Tom

 

I see your point. But just a personal preference, I never cared for VW's interior layout (to some extent, Audi's as well even though they receive almost universal praise.) On the topic of Cruze, it has a nice interior for the money and especially considering it is designed from the same company that produced Corvette interior!

 

The Volt has driver and passenger knee air bags and was scored by EuroNCAP as providing good protection like the CT 200h. According to EuroNCAP, the CT 200h scored 3.5 for good rear-end collision whiplash protection while the Volt scored 2.9 and the Prius scored 2.1 for marginal whiplash protection. The difference between the Volt and CT 200h scores should be somewhat mitigated since the Volt is 600 pounds heavier than the CT 200h and so will do better against an average vehicle in a rear collision due to basic physics.

 

While certainly the volt and ct200h are more "luxurious" than the prius, I hardly think either fits the luxury moniker. They both offer one thing true luxury cars don't which is fuel economy. I would call both cars luxury economy and they don't have the acceleration or comfort that a luxury car has, but give the driver something else. I don't think having more air bags will make a car more luxurious than a 10 year old amg mercedes. But this is far from will GM batteries cost them a great deal on warranty:focus:

I don't think GM will sell enough cars in the first 2 years to really cost them a lot if they replace every battery. By then I expect they will know if there are any problems and fix it in design if there is a flaw. I'm not expecting any big flaw, I expect LG chem did their homework, but there will be some replacements.

 

your mom would definitely guess. Have you driven a volt? It has those star trek panels and electric acceleration. If she is like my mom she would be smart enough to know the more expensive one in a second, then she would also prefer the more traditional cruze and not want that high tech junk The volt is only going to appeal to people that want a phev - and to them its likely the best one unless they invested in fisker. It is not a luxury car by any means though, but has may luxury features.

 

I don't believe the 12v is quite that big.

 

Right now the main issue is with the NTSB related fires they are looking at a possible re-design. Right now their plan is tentatively to remove the batteries from the cars, take them apart, and laminate the exposed circuitry inside the battery. They also want to re-enforce the cooling lines. Last estimate I saw is this was going to cost about $1000 to do per car. Still no official word on that though. As far as replacing the batteries for other reasons there have been 2 or 3 of those so far. All of them for some temperature sensor inside the case. Dealer could have replaced, but for some reason GM wanted the entire assembly back. So at the moment they are changing batteries for issues whether they really need to or not in order to analyze them for production/quality deficiencies I suppose.

 

Big Deal - Dealerships will tell you to come in and have 6K mile 12K mile 24K mile 'services' etc, ... which have NOTHING to do with validating / invalidating warranties. You need to read the Galaxee's Prius thread, "service - what you need and what you don't"
http://priuschat.com/forums/gen-ii-...70-what-services-you-need-what-you-don-t.html
Same thing applies to the Leaf - and all manufacturer's cars, for that matter. You have to go in for a 12K mile traction pack 'check-up' for instance (which is btw, FREE), but no, you don't have to dump brake fluid at 2yr intervals. That's simply what they want so they can get your money. In fact, that's just wastefull. Kind of an irony for a car that touts being green. Go down to the dealership and ask for ONLY the things you need to keep your warranty valid, and watch your service department squirm.

.

 

The only thing that GM requires is that I rotate the tires every 7500, and change the oil every 2 years at a minimum.. Does that mean big bad GM actually isn't trying to rip people off?

The 12,000 battery service for the Leaf actually is mandatory. If you miss that your warranty is invalid. That is what I was told by a dealer when I inquired about it. It is so they can track how you are using the battery, and whether you have abused it at all. It almost has like a black box similar to the Nissan GT-R (remember all those people denied warranty claims on their transmissions for beating the car?)..

 

I agree! My first two cars were CJ-5 Jeeps. I bought them because they were the only 4WD cars I could afford, and I wanted 4WD in rural North Dakota & Minnesota. They were sparse and uncomfortable and unsafe and they leaked in the rain and didn't have enough heat.

Once I locked my key in the car. I borrowed a wrench and took the door off. The hinges were on the outside. It was easy to unbolt them. That's the only good thing I can say about those horrid cars.

 

Put back the whiz-bang tech that is optional on the Cruze and you have a car pushing $24k. Factoring the cost of the battery with its support systems, and the Volt is fairly priced. It's still too much for the masses, but it is new technology. I think we are better off with it available than if the manufacturers waited on it.

 

I do not disagree that the Volt is fairly priced given all of the innovation needed to produce it and all of the materials used to build it. Whether the market feels that it is worth it is a different matter all together and the less than stellar sales that have been reported lead me to believe that the market is leaning towards not worth it.

What I had written was in response to another poster calling the Volt a near-luxury car. From my understanding of what the industry calls near-luxury, cars like the Lexus ES, the Volt is nowhere near. The drive train is not a luxury item.

I have said before I think that in a decade when people look back on the Volt program it will be a success, even if the market never takes to the car. The technology developed, the corporate knowledge and culture developed and most importantly the patents will help propel GM forward and I think that will be the lasting benefit of the Volt.

To give a more concrete example of the same thing that I just mentioned - who makes more $ when a company like HTC or LG sells an Android phone (just the sale, not lifetime of the device)- Google who owns Android or Microsoft? Google makes nothing on the sale of the phone since Android is open source. They hope that being tied into the Google eco-system will turn into future revenue - it may or may not. On the other hand it has been reported that Microsoft has licensed patents used in Android and makes something like $6 for each phone sold.

 

Here is where we disagree; I hope you really would take some seat time in a Volt to see that it's not "no where near an upscale small car." The little details of the instrument panel and interactions with the interface IMO is part of evaluation of interior. But I agree we should use PM to discuss this and let the tread
:focus:

 

I do not believe that I ever said that the Volt is "no where near an upscale small car." If I did I apologize - while I do not really disagree with that statement, it is not an argument that I'd make because it is unlike anything currently on the road. Perhaps part of the problem is that America really does not have any premium small cars other than the Mini and perhaps the A3.