Posted on 08/06/2010 7:12:50 AM PDT by Kaslin
Let us compare the Volkswagen and the "Voltswagen."
The original Volkswagen was intended as the "people's car" (that's what Volkswagen means). The idea of a cheap, safe, reliable car for the working man was popular before Adolf Hitler embraced it, but as a self-proclaimed man of the people, he made the idea his own. Whereas industrialists and aristocrats didn't think the common man needed a car ("the people's car is a bus" was their refrain), Hitler sided with one of his heroes, Henry Ford, arguing that everyone deserved his own ride. He ordered the German Labor Front, the union arm of the Nazi Party, to start building a people's car. When it looked like the car might be too expensive, the Labor Front created a savings program that promised a car for even the poorest workers.
At the 1934 Berlin Motor Show, Hitler proclaimed: "It is a bitter thought that millions of good and industrious people are excluded from the use of a means of transport that, especially on Sundays and holidays, could become for them a source of unknown joy."
And then there's the electric-gas hybrid Chevy Volt, aka the "Voltswagen." At $41,000, about as much as the average American makes in a year, this is no people's car. GM, owned by the government and the labor unions, is pitching it to affluent hipsters who don't need a lot of space for a family. Deloitte Consulting says that the demand for such cars is from "young, very high income individuals" from households that make more than $200,000 a year, which is why the Volt will be rolled out in upscale, trendy urban markets. (Meanwhile the Chevy Cruze, the gas-only version of the Volt, has more room inside and is a mere $17,000.)
Because the Volt's sticker price might be too high for even that crowd, the government is offering a federal subsidy of up to $7,500 (Californians have a state subsidy, too), which means that working-class people will be helping to pay for playthings for upper-income people.
"Like the EV1 that GM tried to peddle in the California market," Kenneth Green, an environmental scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, says, "the Volt is a vanity car for the well-off that will be subsidized by less well-off taxpayers at all stages, from R&D to sales and to the construction of charging stations."
Indeed, the Volt's price is $41,000, but the cost is much higher. "Government Motors" is already selling the car at a loss. According to the blogger Doctor Zero, if you apply the subsidies that have gone directly into the car to just the first 10,000 vehicles, the cost is more like $81,000 per car.
Of course, electric-car boosters say this sort of thing is necessary to get the industry up and running (To which Green responds: "Supporters claim that electric cars need subsidies because they're still in their infancy. Electric cars have been around for over 100 years. That's some infancy.")
But would it be a good thing if we all switched to electric cars? The point is to reduce CO2 emissions, right? But in some regions, we get our electricity from CO2-spewing coal. The more electricity pulled from the grid, the more coal is burned, essentially replacing dirty oil with dirtier coal (which is why some coal backers see much promise in electric cars). Studies confirm that China -- which is allegedly "beating us" in the race to a green economy -- would produce vastly more greenhouse emissions if it switched to electric vehicles.
The expected response to that is that we need stuff like CO2-free windmills to generate electricity. Don't get me started on the Volkspropeller.
Regardless, no matter how you crunch the numbers or the science, there's no disputing that this is a political car, designed to meet the demands not of an economic market but of an ideological one, directed by the collusion of big business and big government. In this sense, the Volkswagen and the Voltswagen have a lot in common.
If the government wasn't taking taxpayer money and spending it on toys for upscale urban liberals (Obama's strongest base of support outside of black voters and labor unions), there'd be no reason to care about the Volt. If rich people want to be "early adopters" and buy expensive gadgets that help them preen the plumage of their political sanctimony, that's great. It's not so great when the government gets involved in wealth redistribution, and it's outrageous when it involves redistributing wealth upwards.
Watching the inevitable failure of this vehicle would be somewhat amusing if so much of my money hadn’t been stolen to create it.
This whole voltswagon thing is simply shocking!
Since I already paid for one, I am just going to go down to the Chevy dealership and demand my car. I don’t want a volt though, give me a cobalt or Malibu please.
Go Ford—Ford already has done what “patriots” would like to do—most, however, are really AINO!
Semper Fidelis
Dick G
**********
In case anyone missed it — that was my Gunny G: XXX-Honorable Mention of AINO!
It’s an economic failure, and it makes no sense to purchase one over a regular fuel efficient small car, but the Volt will sell like crazy to the trendy hipsters who want to make a statement. GM won’t be able to keep any on the lots for quite a while at first.
Looking forward to that first pic of one under a 16 wheeler.
Pray for America
I have to say this. I drive and have driven GM most of my life. But with that said they still got their heads up their butts with marketing.
I met the VP of North American Opperations a few years back in Suttons Bay MI. Speilman was his name. He was driving an SSR (A 50K Pick up on steriods) We talked and I ask him if he thought he hit the market. “OH HELL yes. It is a limited production model and we will sell it well.” Well the rest is history. STUPID!
Well Horse pucky. You build to mass production and build to the market. I mentioned the PT Cruiser and he basically blew me off.
The Volt was in development long before Zero and before bankruptcy.
He can't take credit for it nor should he be blamed for it (depending on your particular point of view).
Personally, I think GM would have survived w/o a bailout.
Would I buy a Volt? If I needed a second car, I would consider it.
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Many cars in the last few decades can last, Volvo has one approaching 3 million miles.
Who's the big mileage king here?
I thought I was cool because I had two oldsters with a quarter million each.
It gives me great hope that I can keep mine going as long as I'm going.
The EV-2 (Volt) is just another Pinto/Vega with a wind-up gimmick that delusional looohoooser users will soon find is a thunderous pain in the A$$!
“... for the well-off that will be subsidized by less well-off taxpayers at all stages ...”
The essence of elitism. Damn them.
I am not against alternate energy systems, if they make economic sense. I have been studying and buying solar panels and batteries for emergencies and off-grid cabins. I concluded that the panels have improved technically to the point that at current electrical power rates, they CAN pay for themselves, but the batteries cannot. The batteries are too expensive and short-lived to ever pay themselves off.
http://gm-volt.com/2010/08/06/majority-of-chevy-dealers-marking-up-volts-gm-bans-out-of-state-sales/
Most dealers marking up, GM bans out of state sales.
“The dealers are independent, for better and, in very rare cases, for worse,” he said. “There are some who have moved in the opposite direction of our request. In response, what we’ve done is to urge customers who have contacted us about pricing discrepancies to shop around, because there are dealerships in their area that are honoring M.S.R.P.”
Riiiiiiight. Gee Rob, if GM was serious about this, as opposed to say, just giving it lip service, wouldn't all ya'lld have to do is, say, stop selling any Volts (are any cars at all for that matter) to dealerships charging more than MSRP?
Trendy hipsters make a statement with cheap bumper stickers while spending your money on their favorite gubbermint projects-- not by spending their own money.
If Gubmint Motors thought the Volt would 'sell like crazy' they'd be planning to make more than a mere ten thousand for the whole first year.
GM announced an increase in production capacity by 50% in the second full year of production, based on interest generated after the price announcement.
There will easily be enough greenies to order 10’s of thousands of Volts.
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