GXT

Alright, let's do this. First off, the ICE DOESN'T run at a constant RPM, it runs at one of three different RPMs. Not only that, the Prius has a CVT so it too COULD run at a constant RPM. There is nothing special there. Also the Volt's generator is NOT capable of producing "electric that should be as much ore more than in battery mode". That is one of the reasons why the Volt hauls around all that extra unused battery... as a reserve to make up for the inability of the ICE/generator to provide enough electricity under hard driving. It isn't a non-factor. The harder you drive the sooner you will be on the ICE. The harder you drive on the ICE the more gas it will use. Rearding the Prius, what you have said doesn't in any way contradict what I said. You can very easily get very high MPG with a hybrid. If you want to change your driving style you will be able to do even better. The Volt will face a similar situation. The Volt is a stopgap for a full EV. A full EV was what Lutz wanted in the first place before he was forced to compromise on the Volt because of cost and lack of battery tech. I said it before and I will say it again... add bigger batteries and electric engine to the Prius and you essentially have the Volt. There is nothing proprietary or special about the Volt. An Insight will return 40MPG+ even when flogged as hard as possible by C&D. It does it for half the price of the Volt and with 1/27 of the battery. It is widely available years in advance of the first Volt. As soon as you take your Volt perhaps 30 miles on the highway with the AC on it will get no better (if not worse) fuel economy than the Insight. Before the Volt is for sale the Fit hybrid will be on sale at sub Insight pricing. In a few years there will be well over 2 million Prius on the road and, according to GM, just over 10,000 Volts. And yet Mitsubishi has already leap-frogged the Volt with a full EV. Don't you see? GM's Prius-Envy caused them to make the WRONG decision yet again. If it was a good idea, someone other than BYD would already have done it. For the record (From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2009060702616): "In early 2006, Lutz decided that GM could no longer afford to be without a dramatic response to the Prius and other competitors' models. He walked into the office of Jon Lauckner, vice president of global program management and director of the corporation's advance design, and said he wanted a "game-changing car" capable of reestablishing GM as the worldwide technological leader. Determined to leapfrog the Prius and all other hybrids, Lutz proposed a purely electric car, powered by lithium-ion batteries, which would have a range of 150 miles or so before needing to be recharged. He was an ardent believer in battery technology, following a three-year stint as the chief executive of a battery company during the 1990s. It was not the first time someone at GM had said he wanted an electric car. The last such effort at the Technical Center had not ended well: During the '90s, the automaker spent more than $1 billion developing a small two-seat electric vehicle known as the EV1, using heavy nickel-lead batteries before concluding that it was cost-prohibitive for consumers and scrapping it to the disgust of fervent EV1 fans and environmentalists. Lauckner, who had carefully studied the EV1 and thought that the car would have been wholly impractical with nickel-lead batteries, saw similar problems with Lutz's vision of a car intended to go far on lithium-ion batteries. "Too expensive," said Lauckner, who made clear that with all the batteries needed for a vehicle to travel about 150 miles, Lutz would merely be making another battery-heavy, cost-prohibitive car. Known in GM corridors as "The Wizard," Lauckner immediately had two suggestions: a smaller battery pack that would at once make the car affordable while guaranteeing the typical American worker a ride long enough for a round-trip commute each day; and a modest gasoline engine that would kick in only if and when a driver ran down the battery power. The engine would have an entirely different use from the standard internal-combustion engine, generating electricity to power the electric motor and, in the process, extending the vehicle's range. "

The Volt batteries are made in South Korea. The engine is from Austria. I wonder how many Volt parts are actually from the US?

Sure there is a lifestyle change... you have to spend loaded CTS money to get the Cruze-Volt. You will be a slave to the electic company and the plug. You have to not use the heat or the AC to get your electric range. You have to move away from cold climates so the ICE doesn't always start with the car to condition the battery and provide heat. You have to have a garage or access to a plug. For the record, even when C&D bagged the crap out of the Insight they still managed 40+MPG. Perhaps you can hypermile these cars to get very high MPG, but that doesn't mean you can't get very good fuel economy just driving them normally. I suspect the only re-flashes you are going to get will be to fix bugs. None of this is true. What do you call a Prius with a bigger battery, bigger electric motor, smaller gas engine, 33% higher cost, and no availablility? A Volt. Toyota has been mostly quiet on the Volt... when they are asked they say what most know... that it is generally a bad idea. The only PR campaign going on is GM advertising the Volt 4 years ahead of availability. Don't take my word for it... read Lutz's recent interviews. The Volt is a dumbed-down version of his attempt at a Prius-PR stealer. It has nothing to do with being the right product at the right time. Well they don't have long. If battery technology explodes (and it probably will) then there will be a very small window for the Volt before the pure-electric car takes over.

Good point. There is an important point in this news story, and in some of the other ones that have come out recently from Lutz. It should now be totally clear that the Volt was never about building the "right" vehicle for the consumer, oil dependence, or even the environment; it was always about doing something PR-wise that appeared to one-up the Prius. It should be no shock then that although the Volt ends up NOT being the "right" car, it is in commercials 4 years ahead of availability.

If GM really explains it (i.e. doesn't just PR it), I believe people will end up with the Prius or the Insight (or perhaps even a diesel). Overall they are the right solution for the times whereas the Volt's founding principle was not to be the right solution but rather to out-PR the Prius. Please be fair. Those who drove the mule DID NOT get to run in generator mode. GM does not want to show this yet. That may very well be very different than driving a regular car (perhaps evem worse than the Prius). The Insight, on the other hand, besides the engine stopping and starting at stops, is identical to driving a CVT car. And you don't have to plug it in or drive with the AC/heat off. Also, expectation is that a Prius or an Insight on the highway will get better-than-Volt MPG without any hypermiling. They get 50 MPG without any special effort, and that was the city number quoted by GM years ago for the Volt before they increased the Volt's engine's size by ~33% and de-turbo'd it.

Well that isn't true (anyone who lives in a relatively cold climate will have the ICE start when the car starts... hey a compromise!), but even if it was, I didn't realize that GAS was the only consideration when buying a car. I assume you drive one of those solar powered vehicles that is less than a foot off the ground and that you use a shoehorn to get into? When you get beyond the PR there are very large tradeoffs: - As I wrote, I could have a loaded luxury performance sedan in the CTS with cash to spare for the price of the compact, entry-level Volt (it is essentially the Cruze after all). - The CTS is widely available now with incentives from GM for me to buy one whereas the Volt will be available only in a few years and at that time only in select markets and only in limited numbers. - I could have blistering performance from the CTS or 4cyl performance from the Volt. - I could have lots of hauling room in a CTS or a little Cruze-bodied Volt. - I could use the AC or Heat when driving in the CTS for little/no penalty or I could go without in the Volt because my electric range would be cut by 25%. - I could take a weekly trip to the gas station with the CTS or I could plug in and unplug my Volt a couple times a day and go to the gas station once a month.... assuming I even have access to a garage or a place to plug in. - I could have "proven" technology with the CTS or I could buy a first-gen car that will be obsolete so fast it will bring a new definition to depreciation... even for GM. (Did you know that they say that a nav system in your car actually hurts your resale? It is because when you go to sell it is beyond outdated... think 8-track. The Volt will be that, but for the whole car.) - Where I live it is cold enough that the Volt will likely run the ICE immediately on start-up and for the majority of my commute for over half the year. - I could have a car that requires known ICE-related maintenance or I could have a car that requires that maintenance as well as a 1st-gen electric system to maintain including a multi-thousand dollar battery replacement in 10 years. - My commute is so short (as, IIRC, is the commute of approx. the majority of americans) that I would almost never use half of the available battery. And since only half of the physical battery is used as available battery, I am effectively only using 4KWh of the 16KWh pack. But I get to haul the rest around all the time. You still aren't considering all factors. This is rough math, but I hope it conveys the point. By GM's own optimistic numbers the Volt may have 10,000 units on the road by the end of 2011. Assume they all use only electic power (not likely) and drive 15,000 miles/year (not likely). Each Volt will save 600 gallons compared to a 25 MPG car (best-case for the Volt). A 50MPG Prius will save 300 gallons. So Toyota only needs to have two prius on the road for every Volt to effectively save the same amount of fuel. By the end of 2011 GM's 10,000 Volt will have saved perhaps 3 Million gallons. By that same point the Prius that have been on the road since 2000 (at which point GM was maligning them) will have saved ~1.5 BILLION gallons. Not only that there will be ~1.2 Million of them to the Volt's 10,000. And 10,000 is a far cry from the 600,000 they would nee to have a hope of having a similar impact as the Prius in 2012. There are tradeoffs with the Volt. And the biggest that you need to worry about in your oil argument is that: 1) It isn't economical so GM won't want to sell them and people won't tend to buy them. 2) It has taken a long time to get to market so it has wasted fuel that could have been saved in the meantime 3) It will take a long time to roll out. Compared to a profitable mass-market vehicle it will not have the same impact. More to the point, it has stopped GM from actually providing a good small hybrid that would have saved that much more fuel (see: Toyota and the Prius). For GM, it was never about the right solution... from the beginning it was compromise by a company blinded with Prius-envy. But Don't take it from me, take it from Lutz: "He told GM VP Jon Lauckner, known as ‘the Wizard’ he wanted a “game changing” electric car that would leapfrog the Prius and deliver 150 miles of pure electric range. Lauckner said it would be “too expensive” and furiously scribbled calculations that would be his solution of the Volt’s range extender design." http://gm-volt.com/2009/06/07/bob-lutz-and...the-chevy-volt/

This sounds great in theory, but the tradeoffs are very large. I would rather have a loaded CTS with a little cash to spare. So I assume you drive a Prius now or some other 40-50MPG hybrid so as to at least limit your gas use? The Prius, Insight, Fit, etc. are going to be widely available and for 10-20+K less. By and large people who set out to "save gas" or "save the US from oil dependence" will come home with one of these cars, not the Volt. Even if the economics or the "the Prius/Insight/etc. is good enough" doesn't deter these people from buying the Volt, the limited volume and limited market availability will. Due to this limited volume and the delays to market, the Volt will simply not have as much impact on oil independence as the Prius, Insight, etc.

1. It is more than an exhaust port and different tires away, isn't it? Here is what Anne Asensio, executive director, GM Design, said about the concept when if first came out, "“It couldn’t be a ‘science project,’ because that’s not what this car is all about. It had to be realistic, executable and carry the essence of the Chevrolet brand.” Imagine if the Camaro ended up looking like a Cobalt. That is what happened. 2. It was initially 30K, then up to 48K (Lutz), then well under 30K (Wagoner) now it is about 40K and then government incentives. Here's a nice summary http://jalopnik.com/392689/2011-chevy-volt...ced-under-30000 3. GM initially claimed 50MPG on the ICE. That has not changed, even though the engine itself has. 4. GM Was very clear that it HAD to be a Chevy because it was a vehicle for the masses. Perhaps part of the problem is that GM started showing commercials of it in 2007... even though we now know that it will be 2015 before they plan to produce any real meaningful numbers... if they even hit their own targets. From what Lutz said on Letterman the Nov. 2010 seems to be a paper launch. 5. Just don't use the AC. Or the heat. Or go on the highway. Plus there was that nice nugget of PR when GM realized and announced that stereos use so much power. Also, take a look back... GM was claiming 640 miles of range (gas an electric). Now that they have changed the gas tank size (although, in spite of the creation of the production intent vehicle, this is apparently still up in the air) it is looking like it will be more like 300. Not a big deal, but yet another example of how little they actually knew when they announced the Volt.

Except that it was Wagoner who claimed nicely under 30K... and Lutz who claimed 40 and then 48K. It had a target of 30K, and GM's best estimate now seems to be 40K.

They aren't for this current gen prius. But their plugins use them. More to the point, GM just bought the li-ion batteries. Anyone could do that.

The big ones would be: Appearance Cost Fuel Efficiency Availability Range

Sounds pretty accurate to me... you can have some of my crow. Except you have to consider that others beat them to it... BYD have had essentially a Volt on sale for quite some time now, and Chrysler and Toyota retrofits have shown how quickly you CAN do this if you actually WANT to do it (not that they want to either). I would say that the Volt exercise has distracted GM from providing what they (and the "use less fuel" crowd) really needed... a good small mass-market hybrid. GM went from maligning hybrids for having big batteries to producing a Volt with a battery ~40 times larger than the Insight! I don't blame the GM engineers. It was clearly management's bad decisions.

He's preparing a meal for me! Apparently a big one too! Again, for the record, because some people are misrepresenting what I said: At the time GM showed the concept a lot of people here believed that they had a fully functioning vehicle and that GM had magically leap-frogged Toyota in technology (as opposed to being several generations behind in hybrids). I took flak because I said that I suspected that the prototype didn’t really work and that all GM had was theory and that it was probable that many other automakers had done as much (if not more) theory work. I said GM had no special expertise/technology and if they could do it then anyone could do it. I believed the other manufacturers were just less desperate and therefore didn’t need to engage in such a PR exercise. We now know that that concept had nothing more than a couple of car batteries and a detergent container under the hood. Further, we now know that Ford, Chrysler, and Toyota have demonstrated what could be described as near production intent EV’s or E-REVs BEFORE GM was able to demo the Volt mules (and for the most part they all did it with very little fan-fair). Based on that, and all the things that have changed on the Volt, I have little doubt was I said was accurate. Regarding my claim that GM wouldn’t/couldn’t build the Volt, I’d like to point out that they haven’t yet. But even if the production-intent Volt makes it to market, it appears to fall short of what GM claimed the Volt would be in almost every conceivable way. To paraphrase my previous question, “If I find some guy named Jesus living in his garage in Albuquerque does that mean that Jesus of the Bible existed? Or is it a requirement that he be the son of God, walk on water, etc?”. So no, even if it does make it to market, they aren’t going to deliver on what was originally promised. To be clear, I never thought that GM would go even this far. On the other hand, I never thought that they would be burning through 1Billion+/month, be worth -90 Billion, or be going bankrupt by this Monday. Clearly I gave them more credit about running a profitable company than they deserved. I guess under the circumstances it seems pretty obvious that they would be spending huge money on a niche, money-losing vehicle of questionable value.

As of December 31, 2008 GM was worth NEGATIVE 86 Billion. Q1 2009 earnings come out tomorrow. They should be worth much less than that. No one wants to buy GM because even if the government paid YOU 50 Billion to take GM it still would be a bad deal.

Yes, not very good overall. Civic #4 as well. This pretty much flies in the face of earlier claims that Malibu was taking Accord share.

The death started long before the government started bailing GM out.

Are they waiting for the auto task force's approval or are they waiting to see if they can get more of the green retooling money? Given that they have already dipped into the bucket for the Volt, I don't think more money should be given for this. I don't think it makes sense to invest more government money in a niche-niche-niche market car like the Converj that is little more than a re-skinned Volt that will often offer only marginally better (to worse) fuel consumption than other mass-market, much less expensive cars that don't rely on incentives. It might be a good idea for GM (although I can't see this selling well at the twice-volt price that Lutz gave), but it is bad bang-for-the-buck in terms of retooling money.

It isn't that no one else was ALE to loan such an amount. The "problem" was that no one else was foolish enough to loan such an amount to GM because it was fairly clear that they would never be able to pay it back. When there is no reasonable expectation of payback it is a bailout, not a loan. If you don't believe me, just imagine losing huge amounts of money for about half a decade, running up a massive debt you have no hope of repaying, and then trying to get a loan from your bank. It isn't going to happen. What you are looking for is charity, not a loan. If this still isn't clear enough, it should only be a month or two (assuming the US government doesn't fold on their timetables) and you will see that the taxpayers will never get the bailout money back. And no, I'm not stupid enough to believe that the US government went from expecting to be paid back their billions of bailout money to an expectation of bankruptcy in a couple of months. They knew the money was gone when they gave it. Everyone who looked at the situation honestly knew it.

I wouldn't say "Always". Perhaps if all else were equal, but it usually isn't. This is still my favourite. Check out the faceplant in the second picture from the left: http://www.iihs.org/ratings/rating.aspx?id=67 Too bad they didn't crash a Malibu with an Aveo. I guess that wouldn't have been sufficiently "fair and balanced". Plus it was strange to see Fox advocating that no one buy large vehicles.

This could be the end of the UAW. But if so I'm sure there will be a new union formed very quickly. Fun times ahead.

"Treasury officials are examining one potential outcome in which the viable GM enters and exits bankruptcy protection in as little as two weeks, using $5 billion to $7 billion in federal financing, a person briefed on the matter told the Times." What happened to the "100 Billion" cost to the government for C11? Not that I believed that... or the "two weeks" claim from this article, for that matter At least there will be no more posts calling the bailouts "loans".

The 40 Mile range is apparently based somewhat on the federal city test. However GM has admitted that the 40 miles is with the AC turned off (the AC is turned on for portions of the federal tests). Aside from that and this 20C, I haven't heard what other things they tweaked to favour the Volt. I do find it funny that the company that seemingly only talks about highway fuel economy for every other vehicle suddenly seems so interested in city fuel economy. It sounds like we could expect the real-world combined electric range to be in the high 20's.

It isn't really true that if the US stopped backing the AIG obligations this "would save GM". Even without this backing the bond holders might be wise to keep what they have. My understanding is that in bankruptcy the bonds will likely get paid out at some % whereas the shares (which is what the bondholders will exchange their bonds for) will not. Not only that, but if this was the only holdup then wouldn't the US government just buy back all the bonds right now? It sounds like they are apparently on the hook regardless.

It is certainly creating a buzz. I'm not quite sure that it makes up for the damage that GM has done to hybrids over the years with their FUD campaign or the fact that they still don't have a good hybrid on sale. Plus I'm still pretty sure it isn't the RIGHT solution overall, so I'm not convinced that it is a good thing that some of the more weak-kneed automakers are feeling compelled to play "me too".

There's a dark side to me that wonders about getting an Insight for my next car rather than something like a TL, G37, or 335. I would save a lot of cash and be doing something good for the environment. Especially now that my commute is realtively short and straight (boring). So I would consider it. But the Volt doesn't offer the same value proposition because the cost is too high and the range too long for my short commute. I think the Volt just expects too many compromises from the buyer. It will be too easy to by a near luxury sedan instead, or if they drive a lot they will be able to buy another car saving tens of thousands of dollars and get better fuel economy, or if they don't drive much (say 5,000 miles/year) they could buy another car and save tens of thousands of dollars and use only 100 gallons more fuel/year anyways (assuming the Volt is never driven more than 40 miles between charges). There is a very limited sweet spot, and I don't know how many environmental nuts there will be that fall into that sweet spot and are willing/have 35,000-40,000 to spend on a Volt, especially given the more cost-effective and still very fuel efficient alternatives.