Posted on 08/03/2010 5:39:29 PM PDT by rickmichaels
GM — that stands for Government Motors now — has announced a car that will make Ford’s doomed Edsel look like a hit.
The electric Chevrolet Volt will roll off the assembly lines next year.
The price is a staggering $41,000 US — a BMW price for a Chevy.
Price isn’t the only clanger here. The car can only travel for about 65 km on an electric charge. After that, it fires up a gas-powered engine like everything else on the road. So much for reduce, reuse, recycle — this is a car with two engines. Hummers only have one.
And Hummers don’t have a massive battery that’s about as easy to dispose of when the car’s finally done as a tub of PCBs.
The Volt is more than twice as expensive as its non-electric counterparts. It can’t drive far enough to get from one city to another. And when your Volt has a low battery, it literally takes hours to recharge. So maybe it will ready to go when you need it. Maybe it won’t.
I checked; the name “Smart Car” is already taken, but “Dumb Car” is available.
GM knows this. Which is why it plans to produce only 10,000 of them next year.
If P.T. Barnum were alive today, he’d love the Volt. Barnum’s unofficial motto was “there’s a sucker born every minute.” But besides just plain fools, the Volt will have two natural bases of customers.
The first are the preening, morally superior types who won’t buy the Volt primarily to drive it. They’ll buy it to tell people they’ve bought it as proof of their enlightened righteousness.
So Hollywood should be good for a few hundred.
Arianna Huffington, the left-wing millionaire activist, prefers to fly in private jets, and when she must travel on the lowly ground, she likes to be chauffeured in full-size SUVs. But she also owns a Toyota Prius as proof of how environmentally sensitive she is. The new Chevy Volt? She’s so eco-sensitive, she’ll probably take two!
The other buyers of the Chevy Volt will be the people who forced it on GM in the first place: Politicians.
When U.S. President Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination, he modestly announced that was the moment when “our planet began to heal.” He championed the Volt in his presidential run, and pledged to put a million plug-in vehicles on the road by 2015.
Obama is now the largest investor in GM, so he calls the shots, not the marketing department. If it’s electric cars the boss wants, it’s electric cars he’ll get — though GM is sane enough only to make a handful. That’ll be enough for Obama to order a bunch for government fleets.
But this isn’t just an all-American folly. Because every single Canadian family owns a slice of GM now. Last year, Canadian taxpayers “invested” $9.5 billion into GM, and American taxpayers spent a staggering $52 billion on the bailout. And then there’s the $2.9 billion Canada gave to Chrysler, too.
It’s clear what the big autoworkers unions got out of it: A massive subsidy for their huge wages and pensions. And GM and Chrysler got an unfair advantage over Ford and more popular Japanese competitors.
Taxpayers? Between the feds and Ontario’s spending, we paid $2.1 million for each auto job “saved.”
And we got the Volt.
Heh. Good one.
Watch out for the smug alerts when the enlightened start driving/pushing these things around.
No thank you commie czar, I’ll keep my Escalade.
In a momment of weakness a few weeks ago, I decided to shop for a chevy suburban 2500 diesel.
I have since gotten about 100 emails from government motors on how I should buy one - for $60k
Funny thing is, they no longer make a 2500 diesel.
The only thing smart about smart cars is that they don’t take much space to park. They don’t get good gas mileage, and they can’t carry anything.
I love my 2007 Chevy Silverado 2500 Duramax Allison.
I remember seeing the first VW "Bug" and thinking that ugly wreck will never sell. And later the Honda Civic thinking "more Japanese junk." The odds were against them but had important qualities that made them good values.
My advice to a Volt buyer would be get a short term loan if you finance it, because you don't want to be owing any thing on when the batteries short out and have to be replaced..
My best advice to a prospective Volt buyer is, "Don't."
Anyone who buys a Volt (Dolt) also gets a free mental evaluation through nobamacare.
Do they make a 2007 Suburban in 2500?
Due to the image that some people have about what class of people own hybrids, I hesitate to admit it, but I bought a Honda Insight and am glad I did. I get 43 MPG no matter where I drive it. The car tells me how far I can drive with a fill-up and it’s 485 miles. I don’t have to stop to charge the batteries and the gas engine kicks in when needed. It burns 87 or 85 octane gas, not premium like the Volt. It cost me $21K, a long way from $41K for the (low)Volt.
Obama Motors is the worst thing to happen to GM in its history. I never liked their cars, but they were once the world’s leading company. Now they are cold toast. We can expect the RATS to soon demand that we buy Obama Motors cars to prop up this commie-like company.
Better living thou electricity.
Better living though electricity. (Haste make waste)
18 months ago I would have called you nuts.
Now I say, your probably correct.
So many inconceivable things going on.
Whenever I see a volt, I will wait till darkest dark, and will attach a circuit consisting of one appropriately sized resistor directly from the battery to the frame. I will hide the wire as best I can.
Dumb car is good. I like clown car.
Any bets on what the "pushing/driving ratio" is going to be?
the infowarrior
This does make them at least worth a chuckle;
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2302930/posts
After the first 40 miles that the car gets from a full electrical charge, a gasoline engine kicks in and the car's range is about an additional 300 miles. Then it needs gas.
The Volt looks like a stinker, but it can get from once city to another.
I'm glad the author didn't let truth get in the way of a good article.
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