The slow selling Chevy Volt may be built on a made to order basis after June according to various news reports circling the web today. According to GM officials at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, it will take them until June to see if the technologically advanced car is a “flop” or not. Last month, GM sold nearly 1,600 of them, which is the best sales month in the vehicle’s short history. Projections from GM had sales numbers of 10,000 in year one, but that target was missed when they reported 2011 sales of nearly 8,000 cars.
This is a tough one. On the one hand, GM is making a smart decision by not continuing to produce stuff no one is buying. It sounds incredible to say that out loud, but all three Detroit manufacturers have had a long history of trying to jam non-selling cars down the throats of Americans with disasterous financial consequences. Having the stones to stop the line and build the cars to order is good business.
On the other hand, one needs to look at this situation as either a failure of the “electric” car to catch the public’s imagination or as a failure of GM to build an “electric” car that the public wants to buy. The Nissan leaf is an all-electric offering and while it is out selling the Volt, it certainly isn’t setting the world on fire, either.
The Volt has had some recent bad press due to the battery fire issue and it has certainly garnered more attention for not selling than it has for the amazing technology encapsulated within the chassis. That’s certainly not what planners and engineers had in mind when investing millions to develop the car.
At this point, the Volt will probably go down in automotive history as a flop, which is completely unfair in our eyes. The technology created with the Volt is beginning to make its way into the rest of the GM line up and will continue to do so for years to come. The legacy of the car will probably not be the car itself, but the way it was used to develop technologies that can be used (in bits and pieces) through an entire corporate portfolio of cars.
What say you?
Link: GM execs will know if the Volt has “legs” in June
GM’s Volt is a gov’t central planners’ dream car.
When is Motor Trend going to issue a retraction?
Well if it didnt cost as much as a base CTS it would probably do better.Who the helll is going to pay 40 large to save 40 or 50 bucks a week.
Great technology without matching style….looks like any other car.
GM’s Volt is a gov’t central planners’ dream car.
When is Motor Trend going to issue a retraction?
Well if it didnt cost as much as a base CTS it would probably do better.Who the helll is going to pay 40 large to save 40 or 50 bucks a week.
Great technology without matching style….looks like any other car.
Whether the car is good, or sells, is not the point to me. California and the east coast has had rolling brown and blackouts for decades now. Suppose the car is wildly successful. Ad to the power shortage problems existing several hundred thousand more electric cars. Where is the sense in that? It makes an already bad situation potentially hazardous. We need coal plants, and they are being shut down. We need nuke plants, and even if we could convince people to build them, they would be years off. No, gas, oil, and hydro need to be fully exploited for the foreseeable future. The Volt? It’ll go the way of the Chevette, and the sooner the better.