GM's 230 mpg Chevy Volt aka Toyota Prius killer

[addyguy]

Originally Posted By: Saturn_Fan
Originally Posted By: bepperb
I'll take any four cylinder family sedan with it's 35 mpg and 22 thousand dollars in the glove box instead.

Electricity in volume would be kilowatt hours.

It's a technological masterpiece I'm sure, but out of touch with the reality of the situation. People who want to save money on gas don't have 40,000 + to buy a car. People who do have that sort of cash don't care about saving money on gas. See the BMW 335d for another example. Sure a few will buy them for the cache, but that won't move the volume needed to recoup the development costs.


Well said and a great post. I'll take my $14K brand new 08 Corolla with a "measly" 35-40 mpg, pocket the $26K, and be a happy man!


100%+ agree with this. I'm getting sooo sick of the 'save the earth at any cost' crowd who are out of touch with the economic reality that most people live with.....

 

[BrianWC]

Yes, but just because you don't like the slogan, don't discount the positive side effects. Look how expensive "Beat the Russians to the moon at any cost" was. But we reaped a lot of benefits down the line. No one's going to MAKE you buy a Volt. And if GM can perfect the tech, or at least get it out there and challenge other manufacturers to come up with their own alternatives, that won't be a bad thing.

 

[ekpolk]

Originally Posted By: ZZman
Leave it to GM to price itself out of the market. Another reason why Ford and the Hybrid Fusion are the way to go.

I had read earlier that charging would cost about $ 1.00 a day for a full charge. At current gas rates that is over half the cost of gas per gallon. If gas goes to $4-5 a gallon the savings are even greater. Even the current rate it is a bargain for electric.


Those figures are just not making sense. If you go digging around the internet, and look at your electric bill, and look at the stats for some of your electrical hardware, and the costs to operate, you will conclude that plug-in charging of the Volt will cost much, much more than that.

A figure that I've seen tossed about, and which makes rough sense, is that in many places (depending upon rates too, of course) it would cost about a dollar per watt per year to run an electrical "thing" constantly. That comes out to a tad less than a dollar-and-a-half per week per watt. When you try to match this number against what's being thrown about for the cost of recharging the Volt, that amount starts to unravel. Ponder for a moment the relatively massive amount of juice that needs to be stored to move a heavy car over long distances.

Or consider this comparison: the generally agreed upon cost for running a modern 'fridge for a year is about $50 per year, or roughly a dollar per week. That would work out to slightly less than a dime a day. Now, right up front, I'm not an EE, but considering the energy requirements of running a small 'fridge compressor compared to moving a heavy car over long distances, I again do not see this "one dollar Volt recharge" making any sense at all.

This sounds like "free lunchery" in its most classic form. No, I don't know exactly what it will cost to fully recharge an empty-battery Volt, but I can not see it costing only a buck a day.

 

[Bamaro]

Quote:

Do you really believe Volt will drive 230 miles continuously on one gallon of gas? Because that's what GM wants everybody to think by posting this stupid number.

Its not a 'stupid number'. It is based on an estimate of how the 'average' Volt owner will use the vehicle. If you drive 20 miles round trip each day you will get infinite mpg. If you push it to its practical limit each day you will get much, much less than 230 mpg. The 'average' user will be in between, aka 230.

 

[jsharp]

Originally Posted By: Saturn_Fan
Originally Posted By: Tosh
Who gets electricity for 5 cents/kWh? The national average is 12 cents/kWh...


I am paying 10 cents per kWh here in Northern Wisconsin with Excel energy.


Here, it's 13.8 cents/kWh for the first 1000 kWh and 8.6 cents/kWh for subsequent usage.

I'm not sure how this will help GM. Do they really need another car they sell at a loss?

Old joke -

2 guys decide to sell watermelons.
They set up a stand, buy a truck and head off to the watermelon farm.
They fill the truck with watermelons for $2 each and haul them back to their stand.
Where they sell them for $1 each.
They do this every day for a week and at the end of the week they notice they've lost a substantial amount of $$.
One guy looks at the other and says Hey! I know what we need!

A bigger truck...

Congratulations to the folks at GM. They've purchased a bigger truck...

 

[opus1]

I'm probably going to regret jumping in here, but I can't resist.

For years people have been bagging on GM for not being innovative enough, not daring to try new things, not looking at the future. In fact, they caught a lot of flack for killing off the EV-1, a vehicle that ran ONLY on electricity -- talk about impractical if you're nowhere near the high-tech recharging outlet that let the leassee recharge the car quicker than overnight.

So they come out with the Volt. Something even the gods at Toyota haven't done yet. What's the response? "Stupid GM".

And in a few years, when the Japanese come out with their copies of the Volt, people will be wetting themselves at what a wonderous advance they've come up with.

[/rant]

By the way, anyone make the connection that the Volt is, in effect a locomotive on rubber tires? I don't know if EMD is still a division of GM, but if so, and if GM tapped that knowledge.....well, this may be a bigger hit out of the box than anticipated.

 

[Saturn_Fan]

Originally Posted By: ZZman
Leave it to GM to price itself out of the market. Another reason why Ford and the Hybrid Fusion are the way to go.

I had read earlier that charging would cost about $ 1.00 a day for a full charge. At current gas rates that is over half the cost of gas per gallon. If gas goes to $4-5 a gallon the savings are even greater. Even the current rate it is a bargain for electric.


We are all forgetting cap and trade. If the bill passes, my .10 per kWh cost will rise sharply. Nobody can dispute that.

This is not a political statement mods. Just trying to relate that relatively cheap electricity will not always be here, thus raising the cost of operating the Volt.

 

[BrianWC]

Hey, cheer up. Seems there are a fair number of domestic owners chiming in negatively in this thread. I'm all for the Volt, myself. Honda will never make a car like that and I think Toyota's fists are clinched too tight on their cash reserves right now to tackle any something like the Volt for now.

 

[ekpolk]

Originally Posted By: addyguy
. . .
100%+ agree with this. I'm getting sooo sick of the 'save the earth at any cost' crowd who are out of touch with the economic reality that most people live with.....


But don't fall into the same trap in the other direction. Much of the condemnation of hybrids is based upon generalized fact scenarios that probably only apply to a small fraction of the population. When you're considering buying a car, you have to run your own numbers, realistically, before you can declare whether one transport solution or another works for you.

If you're a low-mileage driver, and own a paid-for vehicle that's relatively economical in it's own right, buying a hybrid to save money is insanely stupid.

By contrast, if you're a high miler, and own a vehicle that burns too much fuel, a hybrid may pay for itself in relatively short order.

Unless you're at one of the truly hard-core sites, the "any cost crowd" is pretty hard to find. I don't worry about them anyway -- I do what I like and what works for me (I'm a high-miler, with a lot of mixed urban and highway driving). I don't care what you drive -- you're payin' for it.

 

[jsharp]

I don't find the idea of a car like that to be bad. But as already mentioned, electricity costs are headed nowhere but up.

My problem is them selling another loss leader. When do they get to the place where they build cars they can make money selling?

It's no impressive engineering feat to sell new technology at a loss. And it's not exactly a recipe for long term success either.

 

[KrisZ]

I don't think people are criticizing GM for being innovative, at least not me. I think that Volt represents is very good concept and I applaud GM for doing it.

However, what I find troublesome, is the fact that GM promises all those wonderful things that Volt will do, crazy mileage thats's not substantiated by the EPA, that it's a "game changer" etc, they are possibly shooting themselves in the foot IMO. And when they are pressed for more specific details, such as mileage on long trips when ICE kicks in, performance when the battery is depleted, they dodge these questions.

Why don't they just shut up and build the thing? Then let the consumer decide if in fact Volt delivers what GM promised.

The first gen Prius is a good example, it came out of nowhere and took the industry by surprise, I'm not saying the GM should be so secretive about Volt, but what they're doing right now is too much.

 

[opus1]

Originally Posted By: jsharp
I don't find the idea of a car like that to be bad. But as already mentioned, electricity costs are headed nowhere but up.

My problem is them selling another loss leader. When do they get to the place where they build cars they can make money selling?

It's no impressive engineering feat to sell new technology at a loss. And it's not exactly a recipe for long term success either.
It seemed to work for Toyota, assuming they're finally selling the Prius at a profit. Last time I checked, I think they were still being rather secretive on whether that was the case or not.

And yes, I know, GM isn't exactly rolling in the dough otherwise. But marketing hype gets people looking, doesn't it.

 

[jsharp]

It worked for Toyota because they made a profit selling other things. That's what got them to the place where they could afford it.

 

[smokey1]

could charge it with your solar panels or wind turbine at home . Be nice if got free solar panel or turbine with purchase of the VOLT .

 

[ekpolk]

I should be clear too. I'm not criticizing the volt at all either. I think it's a neat idea, and I hope it takes off and does well. Unfortunately, like so many other truly new, cutting edge products (as opposed to standard advertising "new"...), as the release nears, the wild stories seem to take off. We heard a bunch of them with the present hybrids when they were new (million dollar batteries, oil change electrocutions, and so forth...). I'm just very suspicious of these "ultra cheap charge" stories. I will be very interested to hear from the first real Volt owners, who consistently plug it in, what it actually does to their electric bill. Time will tell.

 

[smokey1]

these have been around before the VOLT . http://www.phoenixmotorcars.com/ . Good looking vehicles .

 

[tonycarguy]

$.05 per kwh, are they living in 1982??

It's $0.11 here and rises to $0.26 if you're a big consumer.

GM needs to release the weight and performance figures , and from that you can estimate its true mpg rating. I figure the cost to operate it (gas + electricity) will be comparable to a 35-45mpg car that runs only on gas.

But at $40k, GM's major objective now is to convince the govn to pass more tax incentives to reduce the net price, because even with the current incentives it's too expensive.

Hybrids only sell well when they're within $2k of a non-hybrid. Does anyone remember the Accord hybrid? It was $5k over a regular Accord and sold poorly; Honda canned it. Selling for $15k+ over comparables, the Volt will be DOA

 

[XS650]

Originally Posted By: Bamaro

Quote:

Do you really believe Volt will drive 230 miles continuously on one gallon of gas? Because that's what GM wants everybody to think by posting this stupid number.

Its not a 'stupid number'. It is based on an estimate of how the 'average' Volt owner will use the vehicle. If you drive 20 miles round trip each day you will get infinite mpg. If you push it to its practical limit each day you will get much, much less than 230 mpg. The 'average' user will be in between, aka 230.


It's stupid number because you can change it to anything between a much smaller number to infinity just by tweaking the way it's calculated. It doesn't mean diddly

 

[Hermann]

Originally Posted By: XS650
Originally Posted By: Bamaro

Quote:

Do you really believe Volt will drive 230 miles continuously on one gallon of gas? Because that's what GM wants everybody to think by posting this stupid number.

Its not a 'stupid number'. It is based on an estimate of how the 'average' Volt owner will use the vehicle. If you drive 20 miles round trip each day you will get infinite mpg. If you push it to its practical limit each day you will get much, much less than 230 mpg. The 'average' user will be in between, aka 230.


It's stupid number because you can change it to anything between a much smaller number to infinity just by tweaking the way it's calculated. It doesn't mean diddly



Did you expect anything honest from Government Motors.

 

[DeeAgeaux]

Originally Posted By: tonycarguy


Hybrids only sell well when they're within $2k of a non-hybrid. Does anyone remember the Accord hybrid? It was $5k over a regular Accord and sold poorly; Honda canned it. Selling for $15k+ over comparables, the Volt will be DOA



[censored]

Then how do you explain Prius selling well with a $4-7K premium over a similarly equiped Corolla?

The Accord hybrid did not sell well because it looked exactly like the regular Accord. And it was a "performance hybrid" not a fuel saving hybrid.

Most hybrid owners want unique styling to let everyone know they are driving hybrids and are threfore better citizens of the world than the rest of us.

The Volt will be a smashing success.

[P content removed]

BTW There is a small but growing group of Righties that will by this car on national energy independence,reduce reliance on foreign oil, buy American grounds.

The Volt will be a winner.

Book it.