Posted on 07/14/2013 6:00:48 AM PDT by Kaslin
LogicDesigner wrote: It seems that John Ransom is at it again. I can just see his thought process. "Oh dangit, the GM has lowered the price of the Volt and now they had a record sales month. I better find some way to spin this story into how the Volt is an utter failure! If anyone disagrees with me I'll just call them a troll and question their conservative credentials!" (It seems John also deleted his comment where he called one of his critics a troll and accused them of pretending to be a conservative). "Someone should give me a Pulitzer Prize for my outstanding journalistic integrity- Chevy Volt Heads for Fiery Crash
Dear Comrade Logic,
Logic? That’s kind of pretentious for a guy who doesn’t use any facts to rebut my article, don’t you think?
But what would liberals be without their pretenses?
I don’t delete comments on Townhall.com or Townhall Finance. I don’t have time to moderate the pages as I did in the past. In fact, I just asked the moderator to lighten up on deleting posts because I like the debate.
But as you know, your comrades have spent time mucking up the pages with off-topic posts, trolling their way on page after page, writing vile retorts often laced with sexual overtones and racism. Like liberals everywhere, they ruin it for all of us and the claim “Who? Me?”
GM HAS lowered the price on the Volt with incentives, that may of may not be temporary. As I wrote in my article, they did it because despite a record year for car sales, Volts sales were only up year-over-year by 1.7 percent according to the company as of end of May 2013. They were looking to go into the 2014 production year in July with 9,000 extra Volts in their inventory.
That’s even after idling production several times because Volts weren’t going out the door fast enough.
According to Inside EVs that’s almost 40 percent of the Volts produced in the model year 2013 through the quarter ending in March. In 2013 the company had produced 23,107 Chevy Volts in three quarters of production.
“But fresh inventories, and a national $3,000 off rebate program didn’t help the Volt much in March,” writes Inside Evs, “as year-over-year sales fell for the first time ever, by 35%. In March of 2012, GM sold 2,289 plug-in Chevys.”
It wasn’t I who said that GM’s Volt program was threatening to get “unplugged,” but rather NBCNews, which is NOT a conservative news outlet.
“With signs that sales of its Chevrolet Volt battery car could be coming unplugged,” reported NBC News in June, “General Motors is offering potential buyers as much as $5,000 in incentives – making it the latest maker to try to cut prices in a bid to boost lagging demand for electric vehicles.”
In June the company reported 2,698 Volts sold thanks to those drastic discounts by GM. In fact, all battery-powered cars have seen deep price cuts due to disappointing sales.
“For the first five months of this year,” said NBC News, “GM has sold only 7,157 of what it prefers to call an extended-range electric vehicle, or E-REV. May sales, in particular, fell 4.3 percent, to 1,607. By comparison, the overall U.S. automotive market was up 8.2 percent for the month. According to a report by Inside EVs, Chevy dealers have more than 9,000 Volts clogging inventories, vehicles they need to clear out before the 2014 models start rolling in.”
You know it’s a real low when you question my “journalistic integrity.” I have worked very hard to make sure that people know that I AM NOT NOW NOR HAVE I EVER BEEN a journalist.
I’m a writer. And I also do a radio show.
I would never be journalist. That’s kind of like being a used Volt salesman, which has to be bottom of the barrel.
VoltOwner wrote: "The battery costs about $8,000 to replace and lasts- in principle- about eight years. "How stupid this is! The WARRANTY is 8 years/100K (10 year/150K in CA) and it covers capacity loss (to 70%) so the battery will give you at least 28 miles of range or it gets replaced with one that does. Saying I have to spend $8K at the end of 8 years is idiotic. Sure I may not get as far without using some gas, but so what! The car is not broken, it's just aged a little. People drive gas cars all the time with things like oil being burned due to bad rings and they don't immediately run out and do the work required to fix it, they just get used to adding oil more often, same deal. -- Chevy Volt Heads for Fiery Crash
Dear Comrade Volt Owner,
The real idiocy is that you spent $8,000 in ADVANCE for the Volt battery.
The point here that you seem to get stuck on is that battery might last longer than eight years. I’m glad you’re confident, but GM decided to only warranty the battery for eight years—likely with good reason.
Volts that spend more time in temperature extremes will likely have shorter battery life. But of course no one really know what will happen because no one has ever driven a Volt is real world conditions for eight years.
“GM says 70% of battery capacity, at least, would be typical for a Volt at the end of its lifespan. Your mileage may vary,” says Extremetech.com. “Some Nissan Leaf owners were annoyed that their EV driving range had fallen dramatically a year or two, from a Nissan-specs range of about 85 miles per charge down to about 60 miles, especially with Leafs in hot weather cities driven up to 20,000 miles a year.”
I have to assume that most of the useful life had completely depreciated by the time the warranty runs out, because that’s what GM has done.
You depreciate the asset over the life of the warranty for a reason. It’s not that you have to PAY $8,000 and the end of eight years, it’s that you ALREADY PAID $8,000 by the end of the life of the asset, which in this case is when the warranty runs out.
Jwallace341 wrote: John Ransom, You are really doing harm to your country by stirring up all this anger. Right from the start, just by your story heading "Volt heads to a fiery crash". I know you republicans very well, I was one of them, but I never thought republicans would stoop so low as to put down and go against your own country. You are the same type of person that would complain about someone getting lower taxes by buying an electric car, yet you itemize your tax return to get a maximum deduction. You try to pay as low of a tax as you can, even claiming charitable donations and you never gave a penny in your life. I have watched co-worker republicans do this all the time. Yet you sit on your high horse and tell someone that is buying American and employing Americans that somehow they are using other people's money. Some of you people will even have off-shore bank accounts to avoid paying taxes. You claim to be so conservative but you fail to understand how electric cars will lighten the load on supply demand of gasoline which will lower prices for all, for that amount of less demand. - Chevy Volt Heads for Fiery Crash
Dear Comrade Wallace,
I doubt very much you were ever a Republican, but if you were, thanks for leaving the Grand Old Party.
Anyone who thinks that the Chevy Volt is the same thing as the country belongs to the Other Party, the Party of Dopes and Chains.
Do your co-workers know that you are spying on them on behalf of the IRS as you watch them claim charitable deductions when they have never given a penny in their life?
Maybe you should go work for the NSA.
And by the way: Offshore bank accounts aren’t used to evade taxes. Evading taxes is illegal. Offshore bank accounts are used for what’s known as asset protection.
Many professionals, like doctors and lawyers use them to make sure that knuckleheads like you, who think that EVERYTHING is their business, have no means of suing them and then using the proceeds to buy a boat or a new car or something else you didn’t work for. That’s the liberal way, right?
Any way tax evasion is still illegal in this country and even Democrats use offshore accounts to protect their assets.
In fact, while I’m not a lawyer, I would tell anyone who has accumulated over a million dollars in assets to consider domiciling their assets offshore while complying with all tax codes.
It’s the best lawsuit protection you never have to buy.
Ferris wrote: I have an MBA from the Ross Business School (UMich) and I dare you to go into a dealer and price out a lease for a Volt. I pay $170 per month and have zero costs for gas. Explain to me how Volt isn’t a good deal. - Chevy Volt Heads for Fiery Crash
Dear Comrade Farris,
I dare you to go out a price out an MBA from the University of Michigan. Because… you got robbed. That is if you really do have an MBA from there, which I doubt because you have a whole bunch of other facts wrong too. You probably used to be a Republican too, you troll.
Go away before I delete you and taunt you a second time.
The cousin to the Chevy Volt, the Chevy Cruze is now being offered at $149 per month on a 36 months lease with about $1200 due at signing.
The Volt’s latest lease deal, on the other hand, according to PluginCars.com, looks like this:
“The Volt also can be leased for a compelling $269 a month for 36 months, with $2,399 due at signing or can be purchased with zero percent financing for 48 months and receive $3,000 in cash off the price. The financing and lease deals run through July 1. These offers put the Volt within striking distance of the batch of pure electric cars—LEAF, Spark, 500e, Fit and Focus Electric—available at or near $200 per month.”
So basically you are paying $5,520 more for the Volt than you would for the Chevy Cruze over the same period. Since the lease terms are 12,000 miles, this makes the math very simple.
The Cruze gets 28 city/42 highway miles per gallon, so lets call it 30 just to be conservative. Over 12,000 miles the Cruze will use about 400 gallons, with the average price of gas at $3.62 cents, that’s $1,448 in fuel over the life of the lease.
The Volt gets about 38 miles per charge, if you don’t use any other electric options like air conditioning or heat and each charge costs between $1.00 and $1.50 depending on where and who you believe.
At a $1.25 per charge, you’ll spend $393.75 over the life of the lease for electricity.
So the savings on pure fuel costs are impressive at $1,054.25.
But unfortunately you’ve spent $4,465.75 more over three years on the lease terms after you subtract out the savings for gas.
If you add up the per-year amount over the warranty life of the car, you get suspiciously close to the replacement cost of the battery pack that powers the Volt.
The Volt battery is 16KWh. A report by McKinsey and Company says that lithium-ion batteries, like the ones that power the Volt, cost $500-$600 per KWh although they could drop in the next five years.
But as of right now, they have the same problem they have had for over 100 years: They are too expensive to compete with the internal combustion engine.
That, in short, is why your Volt sucks. And I when I say “your Volt,” I mean it in a very personal and real sense.
Thanks.
That’s it for this week.
V/r,
JR
Nobody with half a brain is going to pay $40,000 dollars for a Volt when they can buy a Prius for $23,000.
I love it when a writer slices and dices the dullard progressive using razor sharp witted Conservative reasoning... leftards are always heavily outgunned.
:-)
LLS
At state run colleges and universities, the Cadillac Escalade is the clear winner for department heads and regents.
“At state run colleges and universities, the Cadillac Escalade is the clear winner for department heads and regents.”
Would that be the hybrid or the all out assault vehicle version?
So do I
Pea-seized brain liberals do
A smart guy would go out and buy Volts then part them out. They cost about $60K to produce, probably 20% is labor.
Chevy had to limit the battery to max 50% loss before it shuts down. That’s because battery life diminished greatly when it went below 50% and they couldn’t handle the 8 year warranty.
Lady Dolt owners should rest assured their battery will still have a 50% charge when they are out on a lonely road in pouring rain in the middle of the night and their car won’t go. Chevy has got your back when the beat up white van with no windows pulls up next to you and a guy with handcuffs, duct tape and a club asks if you need any help.
Picking up a some of the energy used in braking is a losing deal. As Ransom would point out, they would not recoup the cost of the battery since the energy capture from braking is minimal. Real savings come from spending less tie on the road, not sitting in traffic braking a lot. Plus the Prius gets lousy mileage when driven at high speeds (78-80) on our highways, In some cases in the city the Prius makes sense. Otherwise not.
As long as you have gas in the tank, the Volt will go.
They came after me. No they market it to you.
Now why would I buy a Prius roller skate, when my 10 year old Jetta TDI Diesel still gets 52 mpg after 170 k miles?
That’s when the Volt switches to gas and can get the lady where she needs to go. For most people it is better to get a car that runs on gas in the first place.
People do not live forever and neither do VW Jetta’s/
One day your Jetta will sadly pass on to that big Junkyard down the street.
Unfortunately thanks to America’s pollution laws Diesels with high fuel mileage are few and far between. Another stupid move by those who control us.
Yes: but we are comparing the two cars.
The facts you state against the Prius are identical to the Volt.
The Volt doesn’t compare to the $23,000 Prius. The Chevy Spark EV does.
i like what he says, but how he says it needs some work... he says he’s a writer, but he needs to proofread his work some more... wrong words and lack of pluralization distract from his message.
teeman
The volt has the advantage of being plugged in, the Prius does not. The Prius battery is small, really negligible compared to the Volt, and not really useful.
They last nearly forever.
A new TDI would probably be the last car I need to buy.
That makes the Volt no more economical on gas than any other car getting 35 mpg, of which there are many at a much lower price.
Interesting take on the Volt’s 1-gallon gas tank.
The original link at Redstate.com is no longer available
Posted on Sunday, February 19, 2012 3:09:07 PM by Brookhaven
The Chevy Volt's batteries hold the same amount of energy as one gallon of gasoline—one single gallon.
Would you buy a car that held only one gallon of gasoline? Neither would I. Yet, we've invested billions of dollars developing and promoting a car with a “gas tank” (the batteries) that only holds one gallon's worth of energy.
I've heard that new super batteries are just around the corner. All we have to do is invest enough money and they'll appear. Just like computers (in the 1950's they were the size of rooms, today they can be held in the palm of your hand), battery development is whizzing along at a blurring pace. Unfortunately, that isn't true. The development pace of batteries is nothing like that of computers.
A better analogy for battery development is radio. In the 1950's most people listened to music on AM radio. In the 1970's, FM radio became the standard for listening to music. Digital radio was introduced in the 2000's. Each of these was a step up in quality, but they weren't such a huge step that they made the old standards obsolete.
Alkaline batteries were commonly used in the 1950's, and they still are today. Plug a C, D, or AA battery into any device; odds are it's the same alkaline battery technology they were using back in the 1950's. Nickel batteries appeared in the 1970's. Lithium batteries appeared in the 1990's, and have three times the capacity of 1950's alkaline batteries. Truth is, the change in battery technology is slow, slow, slow.
The Chevy Volt battery pack weighs 435 pounds. That's what's required to store the energy found in one gallon of gasoline. If you wanted to create a Volt that had a “five gallon” energy tank, it would require at least 2,175 pounds of batteries—literally over a ton. Even if batteries suddenly became dirt cheap, the weight alone makes creating a car that holds more than a couple of gallons of energy unfeasible.
When Consumer Reports tested the Volt, they managed to get 28 miles on a full battery charge; which sounds about right for one gasoline gallon's worth of energy.
The Nissan Leaf did a little better. Consumer Reports got 68 miles out of a full charge (about two gallons worth of energy). Nissan didn't use more advanced technology than the Volt. The Leaf has a larger battery than the Volt (660 lbs. Vs 435 lbs.) and the non-battery part of the car weighs less (2,694 lbs. Vs 3,346 lbs.). Nissan just put more batteries in the car, and made the rest of the car lighter.
So, why isn't just adding more batteries and making the car lighter a solution? Look at the Tesla Roadster. It gets 211 miles on a full battery charge (that's what Tesla claimed in a lawsuit against the show Top Gear—who said they only got 55 miles per charge—so we'll go with that over the 250 plus miles Tesla claims in their advertising). 211 miles is still a great range, but how did they achieve it? They increased the battery pack to 992 pounds (557 pounds more than the Volt) and decreased the non-battery weight to 1,731 pounds (2,053 pounds less than the Volt). The Tesla Roadster is a small, small car. I'm sure it's fun as a sports car, but if ask it to do any of the mundane tasks in life (carry a family, or bring home a load groceries) it's not anywhere near to being up to the task.
The fact is, when it comes to practical vehicles, the Chevy Volt is the state of the art, best in class as far as electric vehicles go. The best electric vehicle available only holds the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline—one gallon.
This might still be workable, if you could refill the “electric gas tank” in just a few minutes. Unfortunately, it takes at least 8 hours to fully recharge the batteries in the Volt. A drive from Atlanta to Birmingham (about 150 miles) takes about three hours (I drive slow and like to make a couple of stops along the way). If I tried to make that trip in the Chevy Volt, it would take about 50 hours, because I would have to make five 8-hour stops to recharge the battery.
Would we be calling a car with a conventional internal combustion engine with a gas tank that only held one gallon of gasoline “the car America had to build?” Would we have spent billions of dollars developing that car? Would we be offering $7,500 tax credits to encourage consumers to purchase that car?
Yet, that is what we've done with the Chevy Volt. We've put all our money and efforts behind a car with a “gas tank” that holds the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline. The Chevy Volt, or any other electric car, will not be the answer to our energy problems until we can equip a car with a battery pack that can hold the same energy equivalent as the gas tanks in current cars. Given the history of battery development (tripling capacity every 40 years), that will be somewhere between 120 and 160 years from now.
Buying an electric car today is the same as buying a regular car that only holds one gallon of gasoline. Building one is, well...I'll let you answer that one yourself.
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