Posted on 08/01/2010 12:16:56 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
How much is a new Chevy Volt electric car worth?
The sticker price is $41,000. However, with federal subsidies, you could pay as little as $33,500. Additional subsidies provided by the state of California could knock it down even lower, for residents of the Golden State. So what’s the price?
$41,000, of course. The subsidies just mean you don’t pay all of it. The utterly bankrupt federal government takes money from other taxpayers, and uses it to discount your purchase. Since California is teetering on the edge of total collapse, and may well require federal bailouts in the near future, taxpayers across the country could end up paying additional sums to support Volt purchases that happen to occur within the state of California. These transfer payments are mixed into the thickening concrete surrounding the American economy, making it just a few inches deeper.
But wait, there’s more. Almost four hundred million dollars in federal subsidies were pumped directly into the design and production of the Volt. The initial production run consists of just ten thousand units, with 45,000 more planned for 2012 if sales are good. This would add just over $7200 more in taxpayer subsidies to each Volt produced over the next two years. Since 2012 production will be scaled back if early sales are disappointing, it might be more logical to add the subsidies to the first 10,000 units only, which would leave early adopters outside of California paying $33,500 for a car which actually costs $81,000 per unit, with taxpayers picking up the remainder. It’s actually even worse than that, because GM expects to lose money on every Volt sale. Those losses will be spread among other GM products, or perhaps wiped out with further taxpayer subsidies.
The Volt would not exist at all, if the government had not performed an elaborate voodoo ritual which involved burning $50 billion in taxpayer cash and sprinkling the ashes over the United Auto Workers union. This raised General Motors from its free-market grave, and placed it at the service of those who killed it. How much of this fifty billion should be divided among the Volt production run to calculate its true, final value?
There was no great consumer demand for the Volt. Toyota has been doing quite well selling the Prius, and Nissan has its own electric car, the Leaf, on the way. The purpose of seizing money from taxpayers to finance the Volt was preserving the jobs of union members politically connected to the Democrat Party, a point President Obama underlined in a recent speech in Detroit:
“If some folks had their way, none of this would be happening,” Obama said, as Chrysler workers booed his reference to Republicans who voted against the bailout. “Just want to point that out. Right? This plant and your jobs might not exist. There were leaders of the ‘just say no’ crowd in Washington. They were saying, ‘Oh, standing by the auto industry would guarantee failure.’ One of them called it ‘the worst investment you could possibly make.’”
The folks who would have prevented this glorious moment in State engineering would be you, the taxpayers, who would never have agreed to pay almost fifty grand apiece to underwrite the production and sale of a little fleet of tiny cars with laughable battery cruise ranges… and overall fuel efficiency that would take decades to equal the cost of purchasing and fueling a more attractive, existing vehicle that didn’t require massive government subsidies.
Obama is lying through his teeth when he refers to the GM bailout as an “investment” Politicians love to throw that word around, because they think it makes them sound like savvy businessmen. Investments are voluntaryacts, conducted with the expectation of return. You were compelled to pay for the development of the Volt, and unless you’re one of the tiny percentage of the public who purchase one, you will receive nothing in return for these payments. You paid to preserve the jobs of rich and powerful labor unions, and provide a handsome discount to the few buyers who find the emotional satisfaction of saluting Green dogma to be worth $33,500. Virtually no onewould be willing to pay the true price of $81,000 for that satisfaction.
Subsidies and mandates based on ideology hopelessly distort the value of products, confusing the marketplace in the same manner as consumer fraud and theft. It’s as if car dealers were in the practice of routinely stealing automobiles from other states, and reselling them at steep discounts. The ability of the consumer to assess value and make rational purchases, expressing their demands and allowing the distributed intelligence of the markets to allocate resources efficiently in response, is destroyed.
Worst of all, consumers never see the opportunity costs of enforcing political mandates on the economy. They never see what could have been done with all the money taken from them to provide subsidies to the politically connected. They’ll never know what other auto manufacturers would have done to win over the market share released by the richly-deserved death of General Motors, or how many jobs would have been created by the production of goods the free people of the United States actually want.
The number of Chevy Volts desired by those free people is zero. By government decree, there will be up to 55,000 of them gathering dust in the far corners of three-car garages by 2012. The government didn’t subsidize this boondoggle. The “government” doesn’t subsidize anything. You do.Imagine what the taxpayers of America might have done with the billions taken away from them to produce those cars, divide that lost value by 55,000, and you will begin to comprehend the true cost of a Chevy Volt.
Cross-posted at www.doczero.org.
Doctor Zero: Year One now available from Amazon.com!
I won’t buy a UAW car, no matter what.
How much is a Chevy DOLT worth?
It can’t haul a trailer or firewood.
I can’t repair it in my back yard if something goes wrong with it.
I ‘d say its just about worth a gob of spit, if that.
My dog wouldn’t likely even pish on its tires.Worthless!
Is it noticeably better than a Prius? And if you want that sort of thing, why not just buy a Prius?
The idea of this car is just revolting!
I wouldn’t take one of these hoopties if it were given to me as a “gift”.
Lawn ornaments. Neither would get out of my driveway or our dirt road in winter. We have something called “snow” around here. We get something strange called “ice” too. (There’s a reason we both have four wheel drive.)
And that begs the battery capacity in a NH winter.
If I only want a summer car, I hear that they’re bringing back the RX-7, so I’ll wait. I loved both of them, way back when, and might sacrifice parts of my anatomy to get another!
But we still keep the SUV and pickup: we need to be places regardless of the weather.
The Volt concept may have saved GM had the mortgage market not tanked, and GM somone had more time to get the UAW to truly take even more bitter medicine. but that is if wishes were fishes.
Given GM's ties to the Obamatons and its bad public perception and their desire to "go public" the Volt at this point has become a liability. Heck it makes the Corvair look even better and I believe that was a poor man's Porsche and a better car than we realize.
It's sad in a way. I get what they are doing. They can't give you a 100 range electric car without an exotic aluminum chassis with a very low drag body, which are cost prohibitive and un-sale-able. They can give you a semi-electric if you will with a producable steel chassis and a back-up all electric drive train with about half the parts count of a normal hybrid. They can only pull this off with the energy densities of Lithium Ion Batteries.
They have found a neat sweet-spot, but I had hoped the engine would run @ constant rpms (like they claimed) with the all drive power coming through the battery. Can't be done given the extra juice needed and how big the battery would have needed to be to lets say climb a hill fully loaded.
Ya it is a neat sweet spot engineering trick, not what I had hoped for, but at $42 grand? No....
Good article. Well done.
Wait till “green” wind power stations GE “Watt” hit the market...
I have a good idea, put a tag on a golf cart and hit the streets....
I can picture a Billy Mays commercial. “Don’t be a dolt, buy a Volt! If you act now, you can have this $81,000. car for only $33,500. We’ll even throw in this free 8 foot extension cord (shipping and handling charges apply).”
Overview Weight Battery Fuel Cell
Model:
Chevrolet Volt Concept
Body style / driveline:
4-5-passenger sedan, unitized frame, electric propulsion, front wheel drive
Construction:
body-frame-integral structure with composite exterior panels and roof
EPA vehicle class
compact car (four doors with rear liftgate)
Drive system
Description:
electrically driven system with onboard range extender, plug-in recharge capability
Type:
lithium-ion
Energy:
16 kWh (minimum)
Peak power:
130 to 140 kW
Voltage:
320 to 350
100% Recharge 110-volt outlet:
6 to 6.5 hours
Max. electrical power:
130 to 140 kW
Max. mechanical power:
120 kW
Continuous electrical power:
45 kW
Continuous mechanical power:
40 kW
Power:
53 kW peak power
Drive:
direct
Type:
3-cylinder, turbocharged engine
Size:
1L
Fuel:
gas or E85
Nominal speed:
1500 to 1800 rpm
Max speed:
3200 rpm
Fuel tank (gal / L):
12 / 54.5
Type:
plug-in
Voltage / amp:
110 / 15
Horsepower (hp / kW):
160 / 120
Torque (lb-ft / Nm):
236 / 320
Electric mode range:
40 miles – full electric vehicle (EV) range
Estimated fuel economy @ constant state of charge:
50 mpg during charge sustaining operation
@ 40 miles or less:
not applicable – no fuel used
@ 60 miles:
150 mpg
@ 80 miles:
100 mpg
0 to 60 mph:
8 to 8.5 seconds
Top speed (mph)
120 (limited duration)
Chassis/Suspension
Front:
independent, strut-type
Rear:
semi-independent torsion beam
Steering type:
electric, speed-sensitive, variable assist rack-and-pinion
Turning circle, curb-to-curb (ft / m):
37 to 38 / 11.2 to 11.5
Brakes
Type:
electro-hydraulic power assisted; front disc, rear drum
Wheels/Tires
Wheel size (in):
21 x 6.5
Tires:
195/55R21, low-rolling resistance
Exterior Dimensions
Overall length (in / mm):
170 / 4318
Height (in / mm):
52.6 / 1336
Width (in / mm):
70.5 / 1791
Interior Dimensions
Seating capacity (front / rear):
2 / 2
Headroom (in / mm):
front: 37.3 / 947
rear: 35.9 / 912
Legroom (in / mm):
31.5 / 802
Shoulder room (in / mm):
50.6 / 1285
Hip room (in / mm):
53.1 / 1349
One wait of 30-minutes for a minimum electric and they will drive it to the nearest dealer for a real car that can travel 400 miles on a tank of gas. Wonder what the trade in price will be? The money gained from recycling the batteries?
Buy existing hybrids, if you must, but stay away from the obamination Volt. My daughter has a Nissan Altima Hybrid, very happy with it. Licensed tech from Toyota. She gets greater than a 700 mile range to a tank of gas, with 198 hp. And it cost her $24g (2 years ago).
The vold is about obacrats trying to kill personal cars.
You vill leve in zee city.
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