Chevy Volt: The $41,000 Lemon
By Lonely Conservative
Would you pay $41,000 for this?
I think it’s ugly. But that’s not the worst of it. Via DBKP, Edward Niedermeyer rated the car and calls it a lemon. Just another stupid, statist experiment gone wrong.
For starters, G.M.’s vision turned into a car that costs $41,000 before relevant tax breaks … but after billions of dollars of government loans and grants for the Volt’s development and production. And instead of the sleek coupe of 2007, it 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. Unfortunately for this theory, G.M. was already committed to the Volt when it entered bankruptcy. And 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.
Nor did the government or G.M. decide to sell the Volt at a loss, which, paradoxically, might have been the best hope for making it profitable. Consider the Prius. Back in 1997, Toyota began selling the high-tech, first-of-its-kind car in Japan for about $17,000, even though each model cost $32,000 to build.
By taking a loss on the first several years of Prius production, Toyota was able to hold its price steady, and then sell the gas-sippers in huge numbers when oil prices soared. Today a Prius costs roughly the same in inflation-adjusted dollars as those 1997 models did, and it has become the best-selling Toyota in the United States after the evergreen Camry and Corolla.
Instead of following Toyota’s model, G.M. decided to make the Volt more affordable by offering a $350-a-month lease over 36 months. But that offer allows only 12,000 miles per year, or about 33 miles per day. Assuming you charged your Volt every evening, giving you 40 miles of battery power, and wanted to keep below the mileage limit, you would rarely use its expensive range-extending gas engine. No wonder the Volt’s main competition, the Nissan Leaf, forgoes the additional combustion engine — and ends up costing $8,000 less as a result.
What a fiasco! But of course President Obama was out there touting the Volt as the car of the future. Not my future, I can’t imagine tooling around upstate New York in that thing in the dead of winter. I also can’t imagine paying $41,000 for the equivalent of an economy, compact car. Not that I’m not already paying for other people’s Volts, and the cost of these cars is actually more than $41,000 apiece.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. Unfortunately for this theory, G.M. was already committed to the Volt when it entered bankruptcy. And 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.
Nor did the government or G.M. decide to sell the Volt at a loss, which, paradoxically, might have been the best hope for making it profitable. Consider the Prius. Back in 1997, Toyota began selling the high-tech, first-of-its-kind car in Japan for about $17,000, even though each model cost $32,000 to build.
By taking a loss on the first several years of Prius production, Toyota was able to hold its price steady, and then sell the gas-sippers in huge numbers when oil prices soared. Today a Prius costs roughly the same in inflation-adjusted dollars as those 1997 models did, and it has become the best-selling Toyota in the United States after the evergreen Camry and Corolla.
Instead of following Toyota’s model, G.M. decided to make the Volt more affordable by offering a $350-a-month lease over 36 months. But that offer allows only 12,000 miles per year, or about 33 miles per day. Assuming you charged your Volt every evening, giving you 40 miles of battery power, and wanted to keep below the mileage limit, you would rarely use its expensive range-extending gas engine. No wonder the Volt’s main competition, the Nissan Leaf, forgoes the additional combustion engine — and ends up costing $8,000 less as a result.
Doctor Zero crunched the numbers. It’s downright depressing.
$41,000, of course. The subsidies just mean you don’t pay all of it. The utterly bankrupt federal government takes money from other taxpayers, and uses it to discount your purchase. Since California is teetering on the edge of total collapse, and may well require federal bailouts in the near future, taxpayers across the country could end up paying additional sums to support Volt purchases that happen to occur within the state of California. These transfer payments are mixed into the thickening concrete surrounding the American economy, making it just a few inches deeper.
But wait, there’s more. Almost four hundred million dollars in federal subsidies were pumped directly into the design and production of the Volt. The initial production run consists of just ten thousand units, with 45,000 more planned for 2012 if sales are good. This would add just over $7200 more in taxpayer subsidies to each Volt produced over the next two years. Since 2012 production will be scaled back if early sales are disappointing, it might be more logical to add the subsidies to the first 10,000 units only, which would leave early adopters outside of California paying $33,500 for a car which actually costs $81,000 per unit, with taxpayers picking up the remainder. It’s actually even worse than that, because GM expects to lose money on every Volt sale. Those losses will be spread among other GM products, or perhaps wiped out with further taxpayer subsidies.
Read the whole thing, and remember this the next time you hear Obama and his mouthpieces yapping about those who wanted to stop this from happening.
But wait, there’s more. Almost four hundred million dollars in federal subsidies were pumped directly into the design and production of the Volt. The initial production run consists of just ten thousand units, with 45,000 more planned for 2012 if sales are good. This would add just over $7200 more in taxpayer subsidies to each Volt produced over the next two years. Since 2012 production will be scaled back if early sales are disappointing, it might be more logical to add the subsidies to the first 10,000 units only, which would leave early adopters outside of California paying $33,500 for a car which actually costs $81,000 per unit, with taxpayers picking up the remainder. It’s actually even worse than that, because GM expects to lose money on every Volt sale. Those losses will be spread among other GM products, or perhaps wiped out with further taxpayer subsidies.
..lack of places to charge it on longer trips...and lastly...how will this go over with people in the construction industry that this administration is always touting...where does the tool box go? How can they carpool to the sites? How can small business owners haul trailers or inventory? For the 41k...we can get a much better car....or even midsize SUV with the 'Hybrid' and "flexfuel" labels....this is a joke..GM will be write back in the red within 2 years.
