GM suspending production of Chevy Volt

[heymikey80]

Chevrolet's Volt Sales Running Low, GM Idles the Line

With sales lagging and inventories building, GM has decided to idle production of the Chevy Volt for five weeks. During that time, about 1,300 workers will temporarily be laid off.

 

[kermit]

That's a shame. It seems like a nice car, maybe a bit ahead of it's time and a bit overpriced, but still nice.

 

[Douger]

That's a shame. It seems like a nice car, maybe a bit ahead of it's time and a bit overpriced, but still nice.

I agree. I hope it sells well so that newer, better, and very importantly, cheaper models will come out year after year.

 

[Rion]

That's a shame. It seems like a nice car, maybe a bit ahead of it's time and a bit overpriced, but still nice.

And warm too.

 

[NightHawkeye]

And warm too.

... time lag ...

ROTFL

[call me slow]

 

[JoyJuice]

Ford CEO Mullaly expects "major portion" of Fords will be electric within a decade

Once they figure it out and get production to offset unit costs, it will be all gravy.

Nice to see US car manufactures not being so much asleep at the wheel like they were with compacts and hybrids.

 

[Prayer Circle]

There's something about the name though. "Volt!" (Voltage)
Like years ago when Ford came out with the, "Probe".

Hey, what kind of car do you drive?
A Probe!


None the less, electric cars aren't environmentally friendly as advertised. Electricity, for the most part, is derived from strip mining coal. And the battery themselves are an ecological hazard due, in one part, to the lead pollution afforded.

What is sad in this story is the number of people that will be laid off. Scary business, in these times.

 

[Sketcher]

Aside from the cool-sounding technology (which doesn't do well in extreme heat such as a desert environment), the Volt feature-for-feature is just like the Cruze, which gets up to 42 MPG on the highway. It just didn't make sense to buy such little car for that much more money.

 

[Cromulent]

At the moment, you're better off buying some little lightweight diesel. You get similar well-to-wheel efficiency, but it costs a lot less.

In the future, with rising oil prices, and falling costs of the new technology, things will almost certainly change.

 

[Sketcher]

At the moment, you're better off buying some little lightweight diesel. You get similar well-to-wheel efficiency, but it costs a lot less.

It makes sense to actually sell them here now, IMO. Gas is pushing $4 in February, diesel may well again match or even beat its price this summer.

 

[EdwinWillers]

And warm too.

... time lag ...

ROTFL

[call me slow]

ROTFL - Ditto!

 

[heymikey80]

Ford CEO Mullaly expects "major portion" of Fords will be electric within a decade

Once they figure it out and get production to offset unit costs, it will be all gravy.

Nice to see US car manufactures not being so much asleep at the wheel like they were with compacts and hybrids.

Market opportunity is what's needed.

Ultimately a true electric car should be less of a maintenance issue than a combustion vehicle. The shakiness of battery technology is the current risk factor. As engineering develops to secure and stabilize the technology physically in stresses an automobile undergoes, it should improve.

Jumping ahead of the market though -- that creates losses. That's what the whole issue is with the Chevy Volt. GM now has two government-initiated market-jumpers, both of which are cause trouble for a company's bottom line, for workers (now on unemployment), and so forth.

 

[grasping the after wind]

At the moment, you're better off buying some little lightweight diesel. You get similar well-to-wheel efficiency, but it costs a lot less.

In the future, with rising oil prices, and falling costs of the new technology, things will almost certainly change.

Yes coal is still plentiful and the new technology will require burning lots of it to provide the electricity for the new technology's use. How environmentally friendly. Since most of the energy alternatives that are being pursued with government funding have little chance to make a meaningful contribution to our economy what do you think is the real reason that this funding is going to such unrealistic or in many respects like ethanol and electric cars environmentally counterproductive projects? If the only goal is to replace oil with anything else no matter how undesirable the results the government is acting in a consistent manner but if the goal was either to make energy less expensive or help the environment it seems like the government is clueless.

 

[heymikey80]

If you're going to drive a car, it's currently taking fossil fuel to do it.

The cost of new distribution lines for a narrowly-produced "ethanol from the corn lobby" is not going to sustain itself given corn ethanol's pricing. So far.

But even then, anything can produce electricity, it's a ubiquitous form of energy. Just because coal is the most cost-effective, doesn't mean it will always be.

Of course without coal you're putting miners out of work. We don't produce steel in volumes of the last century. We don't use coal for personal fuel as in prior centuries. So you're creating depression.

I still look at the situation and shake my head. Utilities will pass on costs and reduce risk because they're still effectively government regulated monopolies. Competition for power deliver has been suppressed for the last 30 years. It's no wonder we haven't come up with a competitive solution.

 

[EdwinWillers]

At the moment, you're better off buying some little lightweight diesel. You get similar well-to-wheel efficiency, but it costs a lot less.

In the future, with rising oil prices, and falling costs of the new technology, things will almost certainly change.

In Germany, diesels are a big thing; indeed you see models over there we don't have here. I wish the price of diesel would return to being less than gas - but sadly, we don't have the refining capacity we once had.

As to the "new technology" though - don't hold your breath. Wind isn't going to work, neither is solar. We may see some advances in other fuels - most likely towards natural gas, but alcohols aren't going to work in the long run.

The Volt - or any other brand of electric car, just isn't viable in the long run. First, it doesn't do what it advertises - requiring fossil fuel to recharge it - and in fact MORE fossil fuel when you consider that every transfer/exchange of power loses a tad in the process. And even if they get the cars to cost the same as their all-gas counterparts, you still have the above.

The Volt was a dinosaur in concept, a dinosaur on the drawing board, a dinosaur on the factory floor, and a [flame-throwing] dinosaur in operation. And let's face it - electric cars are NOT a new or emerging technology, having first arrived on the car scene back in the 1800s.

It [the Volt] is going the way of the Leaf, Solyndra, Beacon Power, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt...

Most people aren't aware of what's happening in the construction industry, where groups like the Green Building Council and their LEED initiative are costing building owners and taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars in added costs as the federal government is "stimulating" the construction industry by requiring buildings get LEED certifications in order to get funding from the federal government. LEED, which is supposed to stand for "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design," really stands for "Least Economically Efficient Design" and has nearly doubled or in some cases tripled the cost of lighting and HVAC systems, and is more than an energy policy, it's social engineering as well, LEED "scorecards" including points for how close buildings are to bus routes, bike paths, etc. But as one proponent put it in a meeting I attended a couple of months ago, questioning the need (and added cost) for a particular aspect of the design - "But, we're saving the planet!" I kid you not...

The reality is, green is the new red, no matter how you look at it.

 

[heymikey80]

Transportation of gasoline also incurs losses.

Alcohol is a plenty-appropriate and possible system for dealing with the need for a liquid fuel like gasoline. It requires releasing Agriculture's price controls on foodstuffs though, to distribute the necessary agricultural products for production of fuel.

Brazil is self-sustaining on ethanol products for automobiles. But it isn't from corn. Their use of gasoline is a function of its cost-effectiveness.

 

[variant]

Yes coal is still plentiful and the new technology will require burning lots of it to provide the electricity for the new technology's use. How environmentally friendly.

The massive and efficiant turbines at a coal burning power plant are much more enviromentally friendly than everying having their own little internal combustion engine even with transmission inefficiancy taken into account.

 

[heymikey80]

The massive and efficiant turbines at a coal burning power plant are much more enviromentally friendly than everying having their own little internal combustion engine even with transmission inefficiancy taken into account.

I'm attracted by the net maintenance efficiencies, too. Full-electric vehicles would ultimately have a motor in them that requires less maintenance. The Volt instead is a gas-electiric hybrid. Its emissions are likely to be higher due to the gasoline engine being used less frequently (paradoxically, but apparently the case: emissions controls have to warm up to work).

But the market timing is everything. The force-out of the Volt is going to go down as yet another government interference showing how little government knowledge there is about markets.

Chevy Volt Costing Taxpayers Up to $250K Per Vehicle [Michigan Capitol Confidential]

 

[variant]

I'm attracted by the net maintenance efficiencies, too. Full-electric vehicles would ultimately have a motor in them that requires less maintenance.

But the market timing is everything. The force-out of the Volt is going to go down as yet another government interference showing how little government knowledge there is about markets.

Chevy Volt Costing Taxpayers Up to $250K Per Vehicle [Michigan Capitol Confidential]

Simply too expensive for the consumer. 40k is pricey.

Although I don't really have a problem when the government sponsors new technology that will eventually become standard. We do it for drug companies all the time.

 

[heymikey80]

Simply too expensive for the consumer. 40k is pricey.

Yes.

Although I don't really have a problem when the government sponsors new technology that will eventually become standard. We do it for drug companies all the time.

I tend to have a problem when the government subsidizes manufacturing lines beyond the research and development areas. Once again, it's hard to gauge, but it's clear the government encourages items into the market when they're not really viable.

So, R&D on power cell development makes sense to me. But multi-millions for a startup production line, eh, no.