So you can go with this
Or you can go with the one that plugs into the dryer outlet.
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Posted on 07/30/2010 12:56:20 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Jay, here comes a tax audit.
Simple. I looked at the equipment list and the badge: It’s a “Chevy.” Not a “Cadillac.” It doesn’t have a Chevy price. It has a price that I associate with a car that says “Cadillac.” Not Pontiac, not Buick, Not Chevy.
Yea, I know all the features of their system. I’m a retired EE, so you’re not going to impress me with all their blather on electric drives. I’m talking of simple product functionality and dress/trim levels.
You obviously haven’t been around the car market much. For $37 to $41K on a sedan, I’m looking for something for my money like a Benz C300, or BMW 3-series, Lexus HS, Volvo S60, etc. In short, I’m looking for an “entry level luxury sedan” at the $40K price point. To give you an idea how far out of whack the Volt’s price is (before we talk about tax breaks), the average selling price of a car in the US is about $28K.
Personally, if I were dropping $40K on a sedan, it would be the Audi A5 2.0T Quattro. Good mileage, AWD, six-speed manual, heated washer tank and heated mirrors and enough performance to justify the price (0 to 60 in the low 6’s). Meets all of my requirements for a sedan in that price range, which include luxury and functionality. We don’t usually spend that much money on a vehicle unless there’s a business reason for it - as there was with our F-350 diesel in 2000. That cost us about $37K, fleet pricing. We just bought a 2010 Subaru Outback, with the CVT. Gets about 30MPG when driven on flat ground, never lower than about 22MPG. Cost was just under $28K, with AWD and the weather package. If Subaru made an Outback with about a 2 liter turbo-diesel, we’d buy it in a hot second.
BTW - None of our cars have only 2WD. In the summer, AWD or 4WD is an optional feature here in Wyoming. In the winter, it is not an option. You either have it, or you spend lots of time sitting at home.
What makes me think it is going to stay at the announced price? The cost of the vehicle components and GM’s financials, that’s what. Couple that with GM’s lobbying for the $7,500 tax break - that tells me that their management isn’t foreseeing a drop in price any time soon.
I’m guessing you don’t have my kind of history with GM. In 2002, I lent GM a 6-digit chunk of money when they lost their investment grade bond rating. I pushed the pencil very carefully and reckoned that they’d be able to repay my 5-year bond before they were broke, and bought GM paper, yielding (at that time) about 8.5%. That was a pretty fat yield, so I was being paid to take the risk.
Turns out that I was right, but at the end I have to admit I was starting to sweat a little. I could see that GMAC and “DiTech” were going to go down in flames with the housing market; fortunately, it took until mid-2008 until it really crashed. Now I see they’re buying a finance company again, for about $3.5B in cash. Insert palm-faceplant here.
So you see, I did give GM a chance back in the day. They blew it, then they asked for my tax money to bail their asses out, then they screwed their secured bond holders, stock holders, etc. Now if they want my investment capital, much less get me to buy one of their cars, they’d better show me some better thinking than they’re showing, and they’d better show me that they can honor the warranties they’re offering without Uncle Sugar backing them. The Volt, and especially their leasing/financing plan for same, is part of what they’re showing me that doesn’t impress me from a business perspective, as snazzy as pieces of the technology might be.
Dittos!
> Like any vehicle, the Volt isn’t for everyone.
Actually, the Volt isn’t for anyone.
It’s competition, the Nissan Leaf, has over twice the range (100 miles per charge) and costs $9,000 less at $32,000.
“Most houses have 220VAC outlets. If you have a dryer you are likely to have 220VAC. You need to read up on the Volt @ GM-Volt.com instead of listening to the blow-hard Limbaugh. Limbaugh doesn’t know which end he’s talking out of.”
Hey pal you’re the one that sounds like the “blow hard”! Ok the 220 Dryer outlet could be quite a distance from where your Volt is parked. What will do disconnect the dryer every time you plug in your volt or run a 220 line from the circuit panel back to where your car is parked? What if you live in an apartment building and have no access to an outlet? Get your landlord to put one in for you? Just keep reading the Obama motors manual and you’ll get all your answers.
The dryer outlet issue isn’t what bothers me about the Volt. In truth, if I had my druthers, there would be an option to charge EV’s from a 208/230 3-phase system, or even a 480V 3-phase system. As I said, I’m a EE. If I need a high-current/high voltage outlet, I’ll wire it myself. I have no qualms about doing my own wiring on anything under 600 volts. Making up a charging cable would take me only a couple hours, even with their high-tech car-side connector. Putting a 220V outlet near the car wouldn’t take me more than a day or a weekend. It would cost me at most a couple hundred bucks for the connector(s), the cable and the breaker.
So the charging infrastructure isn’t any issue for me, it’s merely another wiring job. I
My beef with the Volt is the economics, starting with the price and then the tax break of $7,500 to buy one of these. When the Prius is selling for less than the average US car sale price, and Chevy comes out with a hybrid this far above the average sales price.... someone has blown their marketing completely. There’s really no way to justify the cost of the Volt, even with high fuel prices. The cost differential is just so wide from a Prius that you can’t make the Volt show you a payback over buying a Prius before you’re into owning the Volt for 10 to 12 years.
To get more people into a Volt for the first drive, GM comes up with a leasing plan that sounds like the automotive equivalent of recent mortgage schemes to get people into homes they cannot afford. All while increasing their warranties on the vehicle, the battery and the charging system to very long durations, backed with our tax dollars.
It just repeats GM’s former management in cluelessness.
The biggest technical beef I have with the Volt is that they used a gasoline engine. If they had used a small diesel, they could have significantly reduced their fuel consumption - to a point where it would really impress the market. Instead, they go with a high-compression gas engine, requiring premium fuel, and they don’t get mileage results that are that impressive to me. The flip side is that many of us are old enough to remember the last time GM tried to market diesels in response to fuel price increases... and how they screwed (royally) the US car buyer.
..and they do it on purpose, that’s what makes me mad, they know better, we all know better.
More crap v. quality to compare.
Truly you are an honest man.
His reasoning is blown out of the window by the $41K price tag of the Volt.
See how this goes? There’s a reason why I focus on the price. It shows me that they’re not thinking through their market.
Yes, as he points out near the end of the video, the Otto cycle can be improved - by used of a much higher compression ratio. Oliver Tractor showed how the efficiency can be improved by taking the compression ratio up to 12.5:1. This isn’t anything new. The problem is that one needs an increasingly high octane rating on the fuel. For Oliver Tractor’s tests in the 50’s, they got a batch of WWII-style avgas (which was up around 129 or 130 octane) to show what can be done with high octane fuel and high compression ratios. The oil companies didn’t want to produce high octane fuel, and absent us all burning E-85, I don’t see how we’re going to obtain high octane fuel today.
The stratified charge/direct injection sounds like a nice idea, but guess what? When you do that, you’re quickly going to find you have a gas-burning diesel engine as far as price goes. You might not have the same emissions package (because the lighter fuel burns more completely), but the fuel rack will be like a diesel’s, the block will need to be heavier and more expensive, the crank and bearings will become more like a diesel, etc. Lutz is on the right track there, but again, his reasoning why they’re not doing a diesel based on price while he’s talking of these expensive issues sorta falls flat.
BTW — while Lutz has some points about the emissions standards, the truth is that other companies CAN and DO meet these diesel emissions standards. GM has screwed up diesels in cars forever - ever since they screwed up the Oldsmobile with the 350ci. GM’s pickup engine had to be designed by Izusu to get them back into the pickup truck market. Personally, I think GM has dropped the ball on non-Detroit diesels forever. Their 6.2L V-8 wasn’t much of an engine; the Izusu engine is OK, but nothing terribly earth-shattering like some of Cat or Cummin’s work.
As for California and the four moron states in the northeast: Screw ‘em. If the Californians want to regulate themselves back to walking everywhere in their Birkenstocks, let ‘em. The solution to California’s regulator mess is to simply write the market off - regardless of what the product is. California wants to regulate ammo? Don’t sell their LEO’s ammo. They want to regulate firearms? Don’t sell their LEO’s guns, either.
After awhile, they’ll cop a clue and get their heads out of their butts.
They think they are God & we should worship them with our dollars.
They have no contact with or concept of the real world.
They are the perfect government company and will prolly stay that way until we cut off their allowance.
Until then they have no reason or incentive "to get a clue".
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