Posted on 07/30/2010 12:56:20 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Chevrolet Volt may be wearing out its welcome. General Motors has been hyping the gasoline-electric car ever since the company showed it off to the public 1,300 days ago. The company has let countless reporters into its battery labs and given interviews with its engineers, all in a very credible attempt to show that GM has smart people with good ideas. And it has worked. GM has picked up some technological credibility and fostered goodwill with the environmental crowd.
Now that GM is finally, after three and a half years, getting close to selling one, the commentariat is taking shots at the Volt. In an editorial in the New York Times today, Truth About Cars Editor Edward Niedermeyer panned the car as “GM’s Electric Lemon.” He criticized the car for, among other things, having bland styling and because it will likely lose GM money. Before that, “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno, a well-known car buff, also took a shot at the Volt’s styling, telling the Detroit news that, “if you didn’t know, you might think it’s a Cobalt or a Camry.”
What gives? It could be a case of Volt fatigue. Sure, documenting the tale of the car’s development gave GM a great story to tell. But in the past few months the company has amped up the noise on a car that has been hyped for years. I count 14 press releases on the Volt since June, including an announcement today that GM will boost 2012 production from 30,000 to 45,000. Some of those releases were absolutely necessary, like vital information on pricing, warranty and ordering options.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
Improvements on existing technology. No great advance as you touted the Volt as being. If it were some great advance, Democrats wouldn’t have to pour taxpayer money into the piece of crap.
comes withn an adapter...
10 hr charging on 110/120v and 4 hr on 220/240v (with installed charging station in your garage...)
higher power rates when Cap N Tax passes in coal-dependant states like Wisconsin...
Except power bills are calculated in kilowatt hours not volts... so knowing volts isn’t going to tell you anything.
Volt uses a 111 kW output electric motor
“Like any electric vehicle, Volt’s electric miles per charge will vary. Like all vehicles, electric vehicles are less efficient in extremely hot or cold temperatures. In addition to outside temperatures, use of features like air conditioning and heat, personal driving style, additional cargo in the vehicle and the age of the battery will affect the electric range.” (comes with knee airbags) -— Chevy
Nissan’s Leaf requires home charging dock using a dedicated 220/240 volt line to your home...
hahahahah!
Go for it greenies...
I am just making it up. The fact I read last weekend and tossed the paper out (could be the LAT, FW TD or RT — I read all 3) it is irrelevant...
I am sorry if it offends your Green policy that there may be potential facts to undermine your enviro-weeniesm. I will try not to tug on your pony tail in the future.
This one always brings a smile to my face
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAqPMJFaEdY
It’s the Pelosi GTxi SS/RT Sport Edition, courtesy IOWAHAWK
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2008/11/lemon.html
UPDATE: Many questions of the “what the hell is that car?” variety. It is the Citicar, an early 70s electric produced in the USA. A while back I spotted a couple at a local swap meet. Here’s the kicker: just got an email from the great internet comic artist Chris Muir of “Day by Day” fame (hat tip Mike Hendrix), informing me that his dad was its designer(!):
“It was waaaay back in 72’. The specs said it had to fit sideways on a truckbed,hence its length. Batteries were primitive back then, as well as drives,etc.It was an aluminum roll cage @ ABS skin and did indeed meet crash specs. Slow as hell,but was street legal,I drove it to high school.”
Ain’t that a kick in the head?
So if you live in an apartment or a high rise what do you do? If you live in one of the many “bad” neighborhoods what do you do? If you need an extension cord, what do you do? OK, so it hypothetically it could charge in 10 hours on 110 V, but what if you needed it in 5 hours...buy two...or three? If you parked it in an airport lot for a week while you were away, would it lose its charge? Why any individual would purchase one of these is beyond me. I did see one guy with a prius who had the vanity plate “LessCO2” yesterday ...maybe he would. This is truly the 21st Century Edsel.
We need a picture of a bunch of lemons, arranged in a “bowtie” pattern with the copper/zinc electrodes stuck in them, all wired together and hooked up to a VOLT meter.
That’s f***ing good to know.
>>So I called you on it and you were bluffing! Sorry about that. It’s no fun to be caught in a lie.<<
You are too stupid to read my plain text. Not a lie, just a summarization from multiple sources.
You pony-tailed libtards are dumber than dirt. How was your stint on the Bob Barker?
>>I just happen to like electric motors and have my whole professional life. That makes me a socialist? <<
Just an idiot, although yur posts tell us you are a socialist as well: supporting a “Folkswagen” outs you for the hippie socialist you are.
The idea you are a “professional” at anything is a laugh in its own right. A professional moron perhaps — you don’t even understand the distribution of pollution as a result of electrical cars.
I wonder if he has two degrees in English?
Let’s be honest about this “50% increase,” shall we? They’re talking of going to 45,000 units from 30,000 units.
In terms of auto model shipments, this production figure is half or less of what Toyota is planning on shipping for the Prius.
For reference, the perennial best-selling auto in the US is the Ford F-150. The F-150 sold nearly 180,000 units last year, which was a pretty grim year for auto sales.
I contend that there is a limited market for the super-high MPG vehicles at this time, so the Volt is selling into a market where the competition ships a product with a lower price, as good or better overall MPG, and not from a company that has PR issues with quality and government ownership.
The biggest problem for the Volt is the price. The average car sales price in the US is about $28K. With the $7,500 tax credit, it is still well above the average purchase price of a car in the US - and most importantly, it is well above the price of proven high-mileage autos like the Toyota Prius.
The consumer, outside those who are obsessed with the idea of a plug-in vehicle (ie, the “ZEV” crowd), is concerned with the bottom line. Regardless of high or low fuel prices, the Prius is a bargain compared to the Volt. A small turbo-diesel car is an even better bargain. So the Volt has a problem from the get-go: it has set a price point, even with the subsidies (generous subsidies, I might add, as well as the tax credit for purchase) on the high side of the average. The Prius is priced closer to the average, when loaded, and when stripped is below the average auto sale price point.
For $37K (ie, the Volt with tax credit), I expect one hell of a lot out of a car, either in capability or luxury. The Volt delivers neither. It is a better sized sedan for big guys like me than the Prius, but that’s about it. Take away the tax credit, and I’d be expecting even more out of the Volt.
I did say it was off topic, didn’t I?
The DC-3’s success wasn’t one of engineering. The success was economic. Until the DC-3 appeared on the scene, airlines couldn’t carry enough passengers or cargo to make a business success of the venture unless they were transporting very wealthy people able to afford absurdly expensive tickets, or they had a US Mail contract. As others point out, there wasn’t anything bleeding-edge new or revolutionary about the DC-3. It used proven (and previously used) airfoils, the engines were nothing especially notable in their day, etc. Douglas was the company that finally listened to the airlines and cargo operators and gave them a plane that would allow them to operate a real business - which took some doing when the DC-3 came out. It was the Depression, after all.
The reason why the DC-3 is still used today still has nothing to do with its engineering and everything still to do with the economics of the plane. It reduces the operating costs and acquisition costs down to a point where you can make a business pencil if you are operating DC-3’s in some markets - in particular, where its rough-field capabilities make it shine over the modern turbo-prop alternatives.
There were other cars before the Model T. What the Model T did was bring the price point down to where a lot of people could afford it. I’d say that in the hybrid/EV market, the Prius was the car to do for advanced propulsion technology what the Model T did for autos in general: brought the price down to a point where a large proportion of the auto-buying public could afford it. The Volt, by being a series hybrid instead of a parallel hybrid, now depends on batteries in a way that the Prius and other parallel hybrids don’t, and as such, the battery costs price the car out of the range of a lot of buyers.
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