Punch line: The Chevy (oops, I meant to say Chevrolet) Volt will have a $41,000 sticker price while offering the performance and interior space of a $15,000 economy car.
Maybe nobody will notice …
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Excerpted from NYT: G.M.’s Electric Lemon, July 29, 2010
GM introduced America to the Chevrolet Volt at the 2007 Detroit Auto Show as a low-slung concept car that would someday be the future of motorized transportation. It would go 40 miles on battery power alone, after which it would create its own electricity with a gas engine.
Oops.
For starters, G.M.’s vision turned into a car that costs $41,000 before relevant tax breaks (projected to be about $7,500 per car). Tthe Volt’s main competition, the Nissan Leaf ends up costing $8,000 less as a result.
And instead of a sleek coupe , the Volt looks suspiciously similar to a Toyota Prius.
It also requires premium gasoline, seats only four people (the battery runs down the center of the car, preventing a rear bench) and has less head and leg room than the $17,000 Chevrolet Cruze, which is more or less the non-electric version of the Volt.
In short, the Volt appears to be exactly the kind of green-at-all-costs car that some opponents of the bailout feared the government might order G.M. to build.
Though President Obama’s task force reported in 2009 that the Volt “will likely be too expensive to be commercially successful in the short term,” it didn’t cancel the project.
So the future of General Motors (and the $50 billion taxpayer investment in it) now depends on a vehicle that costs $41,000 but offers the performance and interior space of a $15,000 economy car.
If G.M. were honest, it would market the car as a personal donation for, and vote of confidence in, the auto bailout. Unfortunately, that’s not the kind of cross-branding that will make the Volt a runaway success.
Full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/30/opinion/30neidermeyer.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
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