Monthly Plug-In Sales Scorecard

Chevrolet Volt: For April 1,548 cars were sold, which bested April of 2013 by 17.5% when just 1,306 Volts were sold.

For the year, Chevrolet has now sold 5,154 plug-ins, which is down 7.1% from 2013 when 5,550 were moved.

The month saw GM officially re-confirm its commitment to the next generation of Volt by holding a press conference to announce a new $449 million dollar investment into 2nd gen Volt production.

The 2nd gen Chevrolet Volt will be a 2016 model and go on sale in the 2nd half of 2015.

Additionally, with focus away from the Cadillac ELR, inventories finally ballooned up to a more reasonable level in April with the Volt’s Hamtramck assembly line bumping out cars much faster than they could be sold for a change.

Its the monthly dose of Volt propaganda and reality.

The propaganda: April sales are up!

The reality: The Volt is still behind 2013 in year to year sales.

How does GM respond to these terrible sales? Why, by throwing $449 million more dollars into the shredder! BTW, per this link:

http://insideevs.com/gm-announces-449-million-next-gen-chevrolet-volt-two-future-vehicles/

This means GM will have invested a BILLION DOLLARS into the Hamtramck plant for EV vehicles.

To date, GM has sold 58,000 Volts...highly subsidized by you and me. Currently that's a plant investment of $17k a car....hard to recoup if they're actually losing money on each car.

Who is propagandizing?

The same site is reporting both facts; Volt sales up in April vs April 2013 but down YTD vs 2013.

Last year 25,011 plug in vehicles were sold through April.

This year 28,867 plug in vehicles have been sold through April with Ford and Smart still left to report.

Fact is plug in hybrids like the Volt and ELR have been leapfrogged by fully electric automobiles.

“Who is propagandizing?”

That little part where they state:

“April was mostly good news for the Chevrolet Volt.”

Then a little further down, they persist in their monthly fantasy that more Volts would sell, if only they could make more:

“Additionally, with focus away from the Cadillac ELR, inventories finally ballooned up to a more reasonable level in April with the Volt’s Hamtramck assembly line bumping out cars much faster than they could be sold for a change.”

What an objective story would say:

GM has dumped half a billion dollars into the plant alone, for the Volt, and its year to year sales aren’t even holding even. The Volt is following a sales pattern almost identical to that of the Pontiac Aztec, which was properly cancelled. However, GM has chosen not to kill the Volt program like it did to the Aztec, and is planning to dump another half billion into their plant.

I don’t pay much attention to the full EV vehicles. My monthly fascination is with the Volt, which is a terrible idea.

Sales up in April is not “mostly good news” for Arpil?

““Additionally, with focus away from the Cadillac ELR, inventories finally ballooned up to a more reasonable level in April with the Volt’s Hamtramck assembly line bumping out cars much faster than they could be sold for a change.”

Saying they are making more than they can sell therefore increasing inventory is “propaganda?”

Any car sells more with more inventory. More choices of options and more incentive for dealers to sell causes sales to increase and prices to fall. Basic supply and demand. Does not necessarily mean increased profits per unit, usually the opposite.

“GM has dumped half a billion dollars into the plant alone, for the Volt, and its year to year sales aren’t even holding even. The Volt is following a sales pattern almost identical to that of the Pontiac Aztec, which was properly cancelled. However, GM has chosen not to kill the Volt program like it did to the Aztec, and is planning to dump another half billion into their plant.”

That is not objective.

That is irrational hatred for a car.

The Pontiac Aztec was an appearance package for the Chevy Blazer. It did not have any special automotive engineering or special tooling. Dumping it did not cause GM to reevaluate special tooling investment to zero.

Volt program is a $1.3B program. Dumping it requires GM to admit it gets nothing back and will never recover its investment. Spending $480M for a next generation of vehicle is par for the course in the automotive industry.

The Volt kinda sucked when introduced because it was a Cruze that needed to be driven about 140k miles to recover the premium paid over the Cruze.

Without some massive upgrade and price cut the Volt and ELR will be completely obsolete when the Tesla Model E debuts in 2017 or so. I guess you can do a victory dance at the cancellation of the Volt then.

Taking irrational pleasure and delight in the failure of an American company is not very patriotic.

Cheers!

Not very Patriotic?

Irrational?

I don’t hate the Volt. But I most fertainly do hate the people whi think its a grand idea for the taxpayers to pay for this boondoggle.

And you’ve already touched on what Everybody knows - the Volt’s days are numbered. Every single engineer and manager at GM knew this from the very start. The entire concept is flawed....and they knew it. But it didn’t stop them from taking a boatload of taxpayer money for their bailout, in exchange for bringing this concept car to market. That by the way, was unpatriotic. Also violating the constitution and inviting the heavy hand of givernment to change terms of contracts and steal from the shareholders was unpatriotic.

Anyway, you caught me - I want the Volt to fail. The sooner the better - the taxpayers save money that way. And in my opinion, retooling the plant....again...is just a set up. When Obama is out of office, and the EV subsidy is on the chopping block, I guarantee we will hear stories about how the Hamtrack plant is ‘too big to fail’, and we can’t allow GM’s investment to be squandered. So yep, I don’t like hearing about more money being poured into a boondoggle....that even you recognize is doomed.

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