Posted on 01/23/2012 9:40:26 AM PST by jazusamo
With NHTSA's closure of the investigation into the Chevy Volt, General Motors is now trying to rebuild the plug-in hybrid's image . But a new stumbling block has appeared on the road to higher sales — dealers turning down Volts from GM.
General Motors sold only 7,671 Volts in the United States in 2011, well short of its 10,000-unit target for the first year. GM spokespeople have attributed weakness in demand to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's investigation into the risk of fires in the car's battery pack. But I'm not entirely certain that can all be blamed on that considering the weakness in sales existed well ahead of the NHTSA investigation.
Now we're hearing reports of dealers who don't want to buy the cars from GM because customers just aren't materializing for the Volt.
Automotive News gives an example this morning in the New York City market where last month, GM allocated 104 Volts to 14 dealerships in the area and dealers took just 31 of them, the lowest take rate for any Chevy model in that market last month. That group of dealers ordered more than 90% of the other vehicles they were eligible to take.
But the New York area — with its well-documented electric car infrastructure problems — isn't the only place dealers are saying no to GM.
In Clovis, Calif., Brett Hedrick, dealer principal at Hedrick's Chevrolet, sold ten Volts last year. But in December and January he turned down all six Volts allocated to him under GM's "turn-and-earn" system, which distributes vehicles based on past sales volumes and inventory levels. GM's "thinking we need six more Volts is just crazy," Hedrick said to Automotive News. "We've never sold more than two in a month." Hedrick says he usually takes just about every vehicle that GM allocates to him.
But, dealers so far admit that GM isn't trying to ram the Volts down their throats — instead they think there are likely other regions that will pick up the slack in demand. I don't know where those regions might be, but they've got to exist, right?
This comes a week after GM execs told us in the media that they would no longer be aiming to meet their initial Volt production target set for 2012 of 60,000 units globally and 45,000 units of which would be for U.S. sales. Instead they've vowed simply to build as many as customers want.
Well, if that's the case, maybe they might need to think about cutting some production — because the dealers seem to be saying that Americans just aren't ready for an electric savior quite yet.
Research seems to indicate that too. Bloomberg tells us this morning that consumers, citing price and questions about unproven technology, are growing less likely to be interested in buying a plug-in vehicle, according to a survey released this month by market-research firm Pike Research of Boulder, Colorado.
In that 2009 survey, 48% of respondents said they would be "very" or "extremely" interested in buying a plug-in vehicle, Pike Research said. In 2010, 44% said they were in those categories, and at the end of December of last year that figure fell to 40%.
Hmm, I feel like I've read that somewhere already.
Everyone should be contacting their representatives in congress to support Rep. Mike Kelly’s bill to kill the $7,500 tax credit.
This tax credit is for all EV’s that qualify and includes the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf.
Moving on to Volgas or Trabants?
I’d buy a Chevy Volt if I could be assured they’d ship Obama’s ass back to his Kenyan homeland permanently.
I’d make the sacrifice with you. LOL!
I’d buy a Chevy Dolt if I was mentally deranged and incompetent.
Expect to hear that these dealers are being audited by the IRS and that OSHA is shutting down their service areas for "violations". The Regime will not stand for this.
Brought to you by the Kenyan Dolt.
Government Motor’s shows again how Obama fails at everything he touches. Now the Dealerships will be in revolt, over the Obama Volt.
At the first sign of revolt, SWITCH, and nobody goes anywhere.
Well said, you’re dead on the money.
What dealership would want a lot full of cars they can’t sell? The Dolt is a waste of our money.It will be hard seeing one and not have the urge to run it off the road since I did pay for it.
If GM is so sure there will be demand for the Volt, why don’t they give the car to the dealers on consignment?
Oh, I see...that would require the free market decide the fate of the electric car - can’t have that now can we?!
30 mile range ?
That’s a laff.
There was a time when dealerships HAD to sell a quota of unpopular crap cars (like the Volt) in order to get the supply of popular cars and trucks that people actually wanted to buy.
And if that poor dealer didn’t move enough of the crap cars - they got squeezed out by bigger dealers who could absorb the losses by having too much junk in their inventory.
I imagine things are pretty much the same in that industry.
I agree with you. A few weeks ago, I ran some rough numbers comparing volt to Chevy Cruze (same platform) In rough numbers, the payback would begin somewhere around 150,000 miles (not including the cost of new batteries)
There is simply no way to economically justify a Volt.
Reminds me of a girl I used to work with. She told me she was going to lease a new Jeep Cherokee. I asked where she lived and it was 25 miles away. I grabbed a calculator and told her that if she never planed on going anywere witht he car and I do mean anywhere, she would just make it on allowable miles. On a 12,000 miles lease, her miles to work were 12,000 per year.
It’s never going to occur to these Einsteins that the problem is the Volts just cost too damned much money for the car you get. You could subsidize the price to almost $0 and you still won’t get many takers.
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