Posted on 03/10/2011 5:59:18 PM PST by jazusamo
I’ll bet the Chi Coms are ticked off. I think they bought a whole bunch of GM stock during that IPO. Between the cheesy GM stock holdings and the US TBills China is going to be bankrupt soon. LOL!!
(See for example http://www.gm-volt.com/.
I agree the Volt is an ill-conceived, oversold car and it is incredibly obnoxiously that taxpayers are forced to foot the bill for it and to pay each buyer of a Volt. But enough with the wrong-headed attacks on it. (And the next person to claim it can only go 40 miles gets a wet fish smack to the noodle...)
Isn’t the Volt supposed to help conserve energy, like the globull warming nut jobs want? The last time I checked my electric comes from a coal burning power plant. So the Volt burns gas and coal, without all the smoke. So how does this help their globull warming cause? It’s time we start drilling in this country. Drill baby drill!! We’re setting on 300 years of oil. What are we waiting for?
LOL! I sure hope the ChiCommies bought a bunch, they can help finance the loss.
“I think FedGov is going to make it THE car to buy for government service. Post office, ICE, FBI...thousands and thousands sold.”
That should make Avis and Hertz very, very rich...
They’ll be renting cars by the 10’s of thousands for missions these cars can’t do, like they did the NatGas cars of the early 80’s
Amen! Worth repeating.
The first thing I thought of was the charging station installation cost. If you move, you have to dish out the cost of another one in your new place. Sometimes, you move from a house to an apartment. Not many apartments will set up a charging station just for you.
These charging stations will cost $1475 plus the cost of the $490 240-volt cord. Two thousand dollars can buy you 500 gallons of $4/gallon gasoline (25 mpg x 500 gallons = 12,500 miles). And that charging station may cost you more if it you don’t have your main panel located in the garage or if you want it located out in the driveway which will require a special outdoor set up.
Next, is the cost of the replacement battery. You cannot pin a Chevy dealer down with the cost of battery replacement. That’s because they don’t want you to know that a replacement will cost around $10,000. They try to put you at ease with an 8-year or 100,000 mile warranty on the battery. Will that warranty carry over to another owner if the car is sold? And, once that warranty is up, you either have a worthless Volt or a car costing $10K which will add to all the other things you will be paying for with a 100,000 mile car.
GE ordered 25,000 of them for their employees. That will spike the sales numbers.
You said it very well. People have no idea of the ongoing costs because they won’t say, they won’t say because it’s out of sight.
Good description.
The very idea of a hybrid car to me is unworkable from the beginning if you want an affordable efficient car.
When you set out to design a hybrid car you are starting with the idea that you must have two power supplies (electric and gasoline motors) and two energy storage units (battery and gas tank).
Having twice as many of anything is going to add performance and efficiency robbing weight.
And by the way it is also going increase price to the consumer by two times because of the doubling of the most expensive part of a car the engine.
Some manufactures have eliminated the transmission and electric engine drive only designs. But this means that they need a large generator attached to the engine. So in reality they have not gained much if anything in weight savings and have added an expensive single purpose generator that has utility nowhere else.
Then there is the limited life span of the battery. The expected life of the lithium oxide battery is less than 8 years and the battery begins to loose efficiency immediately.
The idea that you could produce a hybrid car that would be more efficient than a conventional car and be affordable was doomed on both counts from the beginning.
General Motors plans 2nd shift for Detroit-Hamtramck plant to crank out Chevrolet Volt
http://www.freep.com/article/20110309/BUSINESS0101/103090333/1318/business/General-Motors-plans-2nd-shift-crank-out-Chevrolet-Volt?odyssey=mod|lateststories
GM Boosts Lobbying; Hires Bailout Specialists
http://www.nlpc.org/stories/2011/03/08/gm-boosts-lobbying-hires-bailout-specialists
I think there is a quality Monty Python skit in that statement somewhere.
They’ll sell well in Cambridge and Berkeley.
You can find them on page 2 of http://media.gm.com/content/dam/Media/gmcom/investor/2011/488366146327MarDel.pdf.
Thanks much for the info and link, s.
A little over doubling sales of last month isn’t going to cut it for them. They’re hurting.
GE has announced they will buy some thousands, as many as 10 or 12 IIRC. I’ll believe it when it is reflected in the sales figures.
Of course, GE is pretty much just another arm of the government now, given the Obama-Immelt axis.
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