Posted on 03/03/2012 8:15:02 AM PST by null and void
General Motors has temporarily suspended production of its Volt electric car, the company announced Friday.
GM, which is based in Detroit, announced to employees at one of its facilities that it was halting production of the beleaguered electric car for five weeks and temporarily laying off 1,300 employees.
A GM spokesman told The Hill on Friday that production of the Volt would resume April 23.
"We needed to maintain proper inventory and make sure that we continued to meet market demand," GM spokesman Chris Lee said in a telephone interview.
Lee noted that sales of the Volt were higher in February than they were in January, and added that California recently decided to allow the electric car to qualify for High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes in the state.
"We see positive trends, but we needed to make this market adjustment," he said.
The Chevy Volt has come under criticism from Republicans in Congress because of reports of its batteries catching on fire during testing. President Obama gave the electric vehicle a vote of confidence in a speech to the United Auto Workers union this week, promising he would buy a Volt "five years from now, when I'm not president anymore."
But Republicans have argued that the Volt was being pushed by the Obama administration for political reasons instead of consumer demand.
“Is the commitment to the American public or is the commitment to clean energy, that we are going to get there any way we can?” Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) asked in a hearing in the House in January about the Volt's reported battery fires.
“When the market is ready … it won’t have to be subsidized,” Kelly said.
Chevy has argued the debate about the Volt has become too political.
"We did not develop the Chevy Volt to be a political punching bag," General Motors CEO Daniel Akerson testified before Congress in the same January hearing. "We engineered the Volt to be a technological wonder."
Chevy has sought to give a boost to the public image of the Volt, releasing a commercial in January tying the Volt to the effort to reduce dependence on foreign oil.
"This isn’t just the car we wanted to build,” a narrator says in the commercial over footage of Volts being manufactured in Hamtramck, Mich. “This is the car America had to build.”
The Volt has developed a “short.”
Buahahahahahahaha!
Watch for a 100% tax credit, along with a federal grant program to buy one.
:: ...”We engineered the Volt to be a technological wonder.”...“This is the car America had to build.” ::
So, why isn’t (the non-bailed-out) Ford Motor Company building one for the current market?
It was a urban-only type vehicle in the end. No one out in some rural area was ever going to buy it. With the price tag....no one in their teens or twenties were going to desire it. Toss in the $2k cost to buy the garage charger and install it....and possibly hooking up to the industrial grid machine (not the cheaper home grid costs)....and you had something that wasn’t marketable. A dozen books will be written on the demise of this, and how America failed the Volt, or how the Volt failed America.
The sad thing is that if there was a market for it....it would have been a winner. There just isn’t a market for it today.
Why indeed?
Usually you try to figure that out before you start production.
GM’s current tv ad where the smug Volt owner is questioned by the fast food geniuses has to be killing them.
The stated 35 mile range (probably max on an electrical charge) is waking up the independents, who have ignored our warnings on the Volt.
One of our younger relatives rides his bike/bikes with a group of 40 something bike riders. Often they ride 70 to 100 miles each Saturday. He has put this 35 mile reality to the other riders. If they had bike troubles and their significant other had a Volt, they would need gas to help them on many days. Most have no arguements just a sheepish shrug.
Another younger relative caught the Fox Business group reviewing the Volt, and one of the liberal in the Fox group said that he was against members of the so called 1% making $150+ per year getting his/our tax $’s as an incentive to buy a Volt.
Our relative is hammering his peers and fellow workers with that reality. Most of these people are in fairly high tax brackets and are very sensitive to taxes at this time of the year. He told one semi Pro Volt guy that a lot of his tax $’s were going to a rich left wing yuppie to buy a Volt to be in the smug green crowd.
Why isn’t the Volt selling well in liberal places such as San Francisco? Aren’t there enough liberals out there to make their political statement and buy this car?
The Volt has developed a “short.”
Buahahahahahahaha!
Watch for a 100% tax credit, along with a federal grant program to buy one.
How could there be a market for it? There are quite a few cars on the road that beat the hell out of a Volt. The Smart Car costs about $16k I think. You could buy two for the cost of a Volt after rebate. It parks in a smaller spot and has more range.
I still remember going ballistic by email on a Denver reporter for calling that thing the “all-electric” Chevy Volt at the car show. I asked him why an all-electric car has a tailpipe. He answered that GM told him to call it that. I wrote, “Are you a reporter or a shill for GM and the govt?” Never got an answer back on that one.
I’ve found that the fire really helps me reach my destination faster.
Obama will buy a Volt. He won’t drive it after the photo op, it will sit in a garage except when his girls putt around his driveway in it.
“Usually you try to figure that out before you start production.”
This is a government project. Enough said.
It was rhetorical, actually.
FMC is still making “business decisions” and not government dictated actions; they are still market driven and their sales numbers show it.
From personal observation out here in the Permian Basin, 75% of fleet vehicles are FMC.
That's not a fair comparison, people like the Macintosh...
That is it, problem solved...LOL... people are now going to buy the Chevy Volt by the millions, pay 30% more than a regular car just to use the HOV lanes... It would be very funny if not so insulting for any human with an IQ over 80...
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