Will the Chevrolet Volt be a failure or a success?

The Volt is in the early stages of market acceptance much like how the Gen I was when first released.
In fact, some of the exact same buyers of the Gen I Prii (which are at the end of life - the Prius that is ) appear to be considering buying the Volt.

On the flip side, the Prius architecture already has 3 generations of fine tuning and optimization so a valid question is whether it has reached the end of its development and evolution.

 

tpfun - I do not suppose that GM is comforted with your "early stages" of Volt development comparison to a 10 year old Gen I. BTW, Consumer Report recently tested a 10 year Prius and found it still to be reliable, and economical.

GM must have learned something from the EV1 project, as well as they surely studied all available technology pertaining to hybrids. Whatever the reason, I suppose they deliberately designed the Volt just the way it is presented. Personally, I have not seen a Volt in person, but I accept that early owners seem to be satisfied. It just does not meet my "needs or wants."

I am very confident that the Prius has not reached the "end of its development and evolution." While the law of Physics cannot evolve, certainly every aspect of battery chemistry, materials of construction, electric motors, fuel, combustion, tires and on and on will continue to develop. I have in my possession an article written in the mid 1950's that states that it is physically impossible for a dragster to ever exceed 150 mph in the quarter mile, citing friction, traction, horsepower and torque. Dragster routinely go twice that fast in a quarter mile today. It would be a very sad to think that engineering has reached the end of development. In fact, I read that man's knowledge base doubles every year. I feel very positive that eventually all passenger cars will be EV's .... but first, "cold fusion" must be solved to provide the electricity.

Just my opinion.

 

41 pages later and we still can't answer with certainty whether or not the Volt will fail or succeed? How can that be?


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The wonders of the internet. Both incredible fact and knowledge and incredible spin and BS, they coexist and are symbiotic.

 

Everybody's stalling for time. It will either succeed or fail before this thread has concluded anything.

 

No, not even remotely close. Read the blogs from back then. The market was very, very different.

There were a ton of misconceptions to deal with and every other automaker except Honda was fighting against hybrids.

Guzzling was an American way of life. Oil dependency wasn't a concern. Emissions were dismissed as a non-issue.
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Which stocks are going to do really well this year? If we can predict the future, let's use it to make big bucks and forget discussing cars.

Tom

 

Prior to rollout, a few of us asked over and over and over again what the goals were. That way, we could avoid the endless debates afterward.

It all came down to sales. Demand would be so strong, there would be no question of success. That didn't happen. Failure loomed immediately from enthusiasts disappointed with the price.

Remember how GM selected the rollout locations so they could serve the highest demand markets first? They claimed a huge wait-list; what happened to it? How come Volt are now available on dealer's lots for immediate purchase?

How is this any different from what we saw with Two-Mode, which also won praise and many awards upon rollout? It too had a prohibitively high price and very low initial sales, despite so much hype during development.
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Looks like they moved a couple grand worth of electronics to the "optional column", will be interesting to see where the price ends up on a base 2012 (AT-PZEV model)

http://www.gminsidenews.com/forums/f...lineup-102250/

Deletions

(AFE) Jet Black seats with Ceramic White interior accents

New Features

(gas) Summit White exterior color
(GTS) Blue Topaz Metallic exterior color (late availability)
(AFD) Jet Black and White seats with Ceramic White interior accents
(AFG) Jet Black and Spice Red seats with Dark interior accents
(UP9) Chevrolet MyLink, includes Bluetooth streaming audio for music and select phones; voice recognition for phone, music and radio; Pandora and Stitcher smartphone compatible; Gracenote (Playlist+, Album Art); software updatable for radio software and Gracenote database (Not available at start of production. Requires (UFU) AM/FM stereo with CD player and MP3 playback.)
Passive entry for all doors and liftgate
Turn-by-Turn navigation included in OnStar
(RVF) 17" aluminum wheels with Black inserts (late availability) [Color inserts available as a LPO accessory in Silver Ice, Cyber Gray and Viridian Joule]
(RXL) 110-volt/120-volt additional charging charging cord, LPO

Changes

Standard Radio: (UFU) AM/FM stereo with CD player and MP3 playback and 7" diagonal color touch-screen display and (UZ6) 6-speaker system are now the standard audio system
Available Radio: (UFV) AM/FM stereo with Navigation, DVD-ROM and MP3 playback is now an available option and includes 30GB audio data storage hard drive and NavTraffic and Local Forecast and requires (UQA) Bose premium speaker system
(UQA) Bose premium speaker system is now an available option
New! (UP9) Chevrolet MyLink, includes Bluetooth streaming audio for music and select phones; voice recognition for phone, music and radio; Pandora and Stitcher smartphone compatible; Gracenote (Playlist+, Album Art); software updatable for radio software and Gracenote database (Not available at start of production. Requires (UFU) AM/FM stereo with CD player and MP3 playback.)

 

definitely a failure. what about us folks who have to park our cars on the street every night?

 

Where ?
A couple of weeks ago I called two dealers that were advertising cars on cars.com. Neither had a Volt on the lot. I am not saying you are wrong, but I at least cannot conclude anything about lot inventory from the internet alone.

 

Watch forum posts on GMI and GM-VOLT. Every now and then a member or dealer will chime in saying a Volt is available. Autotrader has quite a number of them listed too.

Whatever the case, the production & supply pattern fits remarkably close to Two-Mode history.
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That is a lot different than your earlier statement.

For now the 'case' seems to be that national demand exceeds supply. However since GM has only built the equivalent of 1.5 days of Prius production in 6 months, that is not saying much.

 

I didn't know it would be understood that way. All most definitely was not the intended meaning. Some dealers still have waiting lists. But with AutoTrader currently listing 414 available, there most definitely is an inventory problem of some sort. Perhaps GM is just doing a terrible job of sending vehicles to the right place.

Nonetheless, this is what we saw with Two-Mode. Why were those problems allowed to persist?
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This video review from AutoWeek should add to the discussion.

They drove a Volt and a plug-in Prius from lower Michigan to the UP and back. 600 miles total. It ran out of gas at 326 miles. The PHV was used to rescue it. You can imagine Volt enthusiasts not exactly being thrilled by that.

36 MPG was the overall Volt efficiency for that road-trip.

Unfortunately, the PHV results weren't mentioned. They could be saving that tidbit for their next publish. Whatever the case, I personally have witnessed 50 MPG from the PHV and routinely see higher from my 2010.

I see this as pointing out how those with longer distant commutes will favor Prius (either plug or cordless) instead. Engine efficiency from Volt is clearly not a competitive trait.
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This is exactly true, but they stated some things like the engine choice and cost containment were rushed and will be changed. We should see a gen 1.5 addressing some of the rushed items next year, and hopefully an improved gen II updated batteries, engine, and motors in 4 years.

The laws of physics as they are known to man do change but slowly. Since the prius was introduced we have found evidence of dark energy and decided there is enough of it to accelerate the expansion of the universe. This is opposed to the criticism of relativity that the cosmological constant was a fudge factor to allow Einstein to keep the size of the universe static, the theory of that day.

I like your dragster example. The prius is not nearly at the end of life, it is on the path to main stream. We already know of the phv, V, and C in development. Materials could definitely be improved. We know Toyota has better battery and engine technology for gen 4. Volumes are high enough that they have gotten rid of most of the hybrid premium.

 

If autotrader is relying on the same database as cars, then a listing is not always equivalent to a car sitting on a lot somewhere waiting for someone to want it. This might be the case, but it can also be a car already assigned to a buyer, somewhere in the path from assembly line to dealer lot.

Actually, so far as I can tell a listing goes up when a car VIN is assigned to a dealer, and the listing stays up until the car is bought and contract finalized. That leaves a lot of uncertainty when we are trying to gauge whether demand is satiated. This is why I decided to watch for listings below msrp, on the assumption that those cars are not pre-ordered.

 

Sounds reasonable. Of course, I can just ask the very same question that was asked of Prius years ago... since claims continue to be made that Volt is now in that position.

Volt, is it UP TO THE CHORE ?
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The battery was depleted in 18 miles. I wonder if they started from a full battery.

 

They also intentionally forced it dry, depleting the battery further after there was no fuel in the engine to a State of Charge level that should never be reached under normal conditions, undoubtedly they had to use some extra power after the fill up raising the state of charge back up to normal CS mode levels.

That said I don't pretend the Volt could compete head to head with the PHV prius in CS mode.