Demo sales don’t figure in the monthly sales totals for auto OEMs. The reason that GM sold so few Volts last month was that they have so few to deliver, as the Hamtramck production line was down for over a month for retooling for the model year change. The 2011 Volt was kind of a beta model.
You may know this, but many do not - monthly auto sales (such as will be announced tomorrow) are sales from the manufacturer to dealers and fleet customers. They are not sales off the dealer lots.
Nissan has more Leafs to deliver, and they cost significantly less than the Volt. Don’t get me wrong - I fully expect the Volt to fail miserably. It’s just not right to say that it’s failing now (tho’ the signs are definitely bad) when sales are so terribly constrained by supply. Let them get the supply out there, then we can see the real numbers. I don’t expect them to be good.
Nobody said anything about demo sales, only that the 116 cars in inventory don’t include the demo models (at least one per dealership selling them) and therefore the “116” figure doesn’t tell the whole story.
Also, let’s assume that there’s 100 dealers in the seven state area where the Volt is being sold, each with a demo car.
That brings real inventory to 216 and gives a pretty-awful-for-normal-cars more than 45 day supply.