Wait till all those coal fired power plants are gone. Nowhere to recharge that Volt!
I, for one, would like to know if the first production Volt is still in service.. (um, with no rebuilds)
The Volt has been discharged..................
These Dolt vehicles will be valuable collectors in the future. Only a few of them made, only a few sold. They’ll be like Edsels, Corvairs or DeLoreans. Pick one up today for $40000, sell it in 25 years for $50000.
If they can lose a million dollars per unit on an electric car, just think how much money they could lose on an atomic car!
One what? One sale?
When does GM go out of business?
What was the stupid part? Stopping production — or starting it in the first place? Who was the stupid party? GM for attempting to build an EV, well before its time — or the government of California for creating a mandate for “zero emission vehicles”? Who was stupidest — GM for actually manufacturing an EV; or critics (such as the producers of the propaganda movie about killing the EV), who were harsh on GM, but didn't criticize manufactures who never even attempted to build an EV.
EV1 had an incredibly sophisticated chassis and body, for the time. It was a very expensive vehicle to manufacture (estimates are $1 million/vehicle actually produced, and no clear way to bring the cost down to an affordable level, through mass production). The problem was with the battery technology of the time. There simply was no way to manufacture a viable, and affordable EV with lead-acid, or NiMh batteries.
When you add up all the subsidies, governments at the state and local level have subsidized each Volt sold to the tune of $250,000. Without subsidies, each car would cost about $300,000 each to produce.
The government is incompetent when it comes to industrial policy. It should resist the temptation.
“What’s next?”
They go out of production?
If there's one thing Silicon Valley upstarts know, it's vaporware.
Tesla is not in the business of building cars. Tesla is in the business of bilking investors. They will produce just enough cars to keep the investor money flowing. But they have no rational business plan that results in them mass producing and marketing automobiles, beyond what is necessary to rip-off investors looking for the "next big thing".
Without massive government support, it would not have made it this far and it doesn’t deserve too
There are some phenomenal cars available at that price point, and choosing a Volt over a BMW 5 series, Mercedes C Class or GM's own Cadillac CTS takes some serious priority adjustment. That, and people that buy $45k cars don't really care about gas prices.
Uh... How does a one year old car become “venerable” when it has yet to accomplish anything more than ripping off the tax payers? For that matter how can anything that “new” be considered venerable? Or did he mean vulnerable? This guy needs a dictionary.
Volt turns......
Stomachs!
“Recently the Chevy Volt, General Motor’s (GM) venerable electric-hybrid car, turned one-year old”
I’ll bet it never turns two.
A public school journlist.