Will the Chevrolet Volt be a failure or a success?

10,000 cars for 2011. In 2008 toyota and gm said they would have plug ins in 2010. What source do you have for huge sales in 2011? Is it john? At the begining of 2010 they dropped it to 5k in 2011, but raised it up again.

I also recall people thinking they should kill the volt as part of the bail out. This includes the WSJ editorial page and Forbes. I seem to remember jobs as the reason. If it was the volt how did chrysler get bail out money, they did kill their hybrid in the bailout?

The corvette is built as a performance car halo. The gm plan was for the volt to be an eco halo. I never saw numbers touting it as a prius killer from the business press. That projection seemed to come from people that want to kill the volt. The highest sales projections have been recent with a ramp up to over 100K vehicles a year in 2013 as an optimistic projection.

 

Lexus sold more CT200h in the first month (2,199) than the total Volt sales combined (1,536) from 2010 and 2011.

How is that for a perspective?

CT200h has lower emission than Volt. There is value in low emission. The cleaner it gets, the more it is worth.

 

From http://www.whitehouse.gov/assets/documents/GM_Viability_Assessment.pdf (linked to from Obama's Auto Task Force Questions GM Volt's Commercial Potential : TreeHugger and others),

and

Chrysler killed their only hybrid after being produced for a very short time (Chrysler Hybrids Dead With Plant Closure - AutoObserver). They didn't file for bankruptcy until April 30, 2009.

I'm not sure if they had any other hybrids under development but the above was based on the infamous two-mode system (http://green.autoblog.com/2007/04/30/chrysler-announces-aspen-two-mode-hybrid/).

 

1,210 Volts sold so far in Q1 2011.

8,790 left to sell in 9 months to reach the goal. That's at the rate of 977 per month.

 

yep. I'm not sure what about a slow ramp is hard to understand. I would only expect 600 from public statements in april, then the numbers to go to at least 900 in may and increase a little from there. Production costs will drop as they move manufacturing of the engine to the united states and battery manufacturing facilities are completed.

Then again if the volt really had anything to do with the fire in the news, 10,000 is optimistic.

As cwerdna's quotes from the time of the bail out show, large sales in 2011 were not projected in 2008 nor was short term profitability for the volt.

 

The mainstream minimum of 60,000 per year (5,000 per month) was boasted about relentlessly for second year expectations. Then talk began of doubling that.

With such a slow start, despite so much hype, what will drive such a dramatic increase?
.

 

Chevy Volt production could hit 60,000 year-exec | Reuters

 

+1

Quite right, showing that the people bailing out gm did not think hundreds of thousands of profitable cars would be rolling off the volt line in 2011.

Chyrsler had 2 hybrids in development that they killed after the start of the bail out. If the bailout had been contingent on hybrids and plug ins they would not have killed those cars in development.

 

They are making the Bose sound system optional for the 2012 model. That will lower the price of the base model. With that lower price, the sales is expected to increase by 450%.

 

I would hardly call it hyping 15000, when it says maybe 10K-15K. Are you saying that that statement means they are going to produce 15,000 this year?

 

I am saying your proposed excuse for GM current Volt production rates is BS already, and in 8 months GM is going to be a laughing stock. If not already.

Unfortunately, the joke is on the taxpayer.

 

They also made navigation and the dvd player optional, I wouldn't be surprised to see a base under $40,000.

And their sales are currently running at or very close to 100% of units produced, its not sales that needs to pick up it is production.

 

^^ Yep. How many people are going to want a car close to $40k without nav, but a crappy sound system included ? They might as well remove the passenger seat while they are aggressively cost cutting. You know, what this really says is that GM is unable to lower the cost of the PHV technology.

 

The guv officials at CARB are so far behind that they haven't figured out how to grade vehicles which has a true AER such as the Volt. Operating in CD mode, the Volt's GHG emissions is 0 unlike the CT200h or any of the HSD based vehicles.

The flip side to this argument is that a used CT200h will fail smog far more easily than the Volt and thus cost more to maintain. Why do you think the warranty is mandated ?

 

They need to offer HID or LED headlight like the Prius or the Leaf.

 

Are your planning to *ever* make any sense ?

 

Let me guess, you've never owned a car which failed CA smog.

 

It seems these arguments are made with the assumption that the "rest of the country" is equal to California, New York, and the coasts in general. They are not.

Most of the population lives on the coast. The middles of the country are barren wastelands. No they are not the "heartland" they are the wasteland for the majority of those that live here. I live in the "heartland", and apart from my neighbourhood and one across town it is just one giant ghetto. You won't see a Volt being driven outside these 2 zip codes around here. The story is more than likely the same from here back to either coast.




It might be nice to idealize that the average Nebraskan can afford a $40k vehicle, but seriously?

 

GM CEO Says Volt Minivan by 2012-2013 and 25,000 Volts in 2011

Akerson said he expects 2011 production to top 25,000.

These numbers are barely over three months old, I think the newest estimate anybody has posted here as we've gone back and forth with how many GM plans to make. That means they need to create about 2k/month through the rest of the year, or about 3X more than they did last month. Maybe they can, we'll see.

As recently as 2008 projections for the Volt's price were $30k and then in 2008 at some point they raised that by $10k.

In aug, 2010 (article mentioned on wiki), GM CEO: "I wish we had thousands more (Volts) but we don't. I think it's a very fair price. It's the only car that will go coast to coast on electricity without plugging it in, and nobody else can come close".

Now that is some amazing spin. Actually, that's not spin, that's just lying. Oh, hold on, he means the electricity produced by burning gas in the engine? That is so incredibly disingenuous.

 

What did you think he meant, that it had 3k miles of range on the battery? You can drive coast to coast without any mechanical assistance from the ICE relying solely on the electric motors. Its not lying, its not even spin, its just trying to explain to the world that has never seen one that even when burning gas the car is running as an electric.