A few less amps in the Volt?
It'll be a winner, but when?I'm a big fan of the Chevy Volt. I think it's one of GM's most interesting projects in decades. Unfortunately, that isn't necessarily saying much. Yet, while the Volt has great potential, I still cannot help but ask when will the Volt be a real game changer, because it certainly isn't in late 2010 when the vehicle launches.
GM has been pretty frank about the fact that the Volt isn't going to be rolling off production lines by the thousands every month in 2011. In fact, in 2011, GM might only make a few 1,000 Volts. 100,000 Volts per year is easily five years away, perhaps even much longer.
Yesterday, Frank Weber, a Flex Drive executive wrote "The Opel Ampera and Chevrolet Volt are production programs designed to meet the needs of thousands of customers, not a modified production vehicle for fleet or demo drives. "
Is the key word from that statement "thousands" of customers?
Without doubt, the Volt is an essential piece of GM's future, but is it really enough today if Obama's green revolution takes hold amidst stable gas prices? With California's EPA waiver?
The Volt should never have been an excuse not to challenge the Toyota Prius directly as soon as possible, and that decision, I bet, is going to come back and bite GM's bottom line - if it hasn't already.
posted by Dahcredyns at
7:23 AM
4 Comments:
I predict that the Volt will be a huge hit with the upper class right from the start: the politicians and the Hollywood types are going to eat this thing up right from the start! And whatever the 'in crowd' likes, the rest of the masses will also want.
But it will probably take a couple of decades before a majority of the American population is driving plug-in-hybrids, IMO.
Marcel Williams
http://newpapyrusmagazine.blogspot.com/
Yeah, I pretty much agree with that prediction.
Indigo Incarnates
Does anyone *seriously* think the Volt is still going to be built? The Volt project was a way of getting some government handouts and was a greenwash effort. Now that GM got a big chunk of taxpayer money -- and the promise of getting a whole lot more -- the company has no reason to actually innovate. They're getting paid whether we buy their crappy cars or not.
The Volt is pretty much ready to go. It's all about the battery right now, which is why GM is going to get into the battery game.....
...that and there is a lot of money at stake.
GM doesn't have to produce a lot of Volts to receive substantial money from the government, but it will have to produce some Volts.
Thus, the Volt, without any doubt, will be a real production car. The question is, when will it achieve production numbers that matter?
That could be a long way off.
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