Time to ruin Rush Limbaugh's day again. The Chevy Volt is outselling half of all US cars.
www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2012/0922/Failure-Hardly-Chevy-Volt-outsells-half-of-all-US-cars.
The Volt ranks 133 out of 262 cars sold. In their respective first years, the Volt also outsold the Prius, the phenomenally successful onfidently predicted would be a commercial flop.
History may be repeating itself.
You are misleading the public about this colossal waste of money! GM is selling the Volt at a tremendous loss. GM is now selling the car for a $10,000 discount and offering $199 lease options. That is what has spiked sales figures lately. I would like to get a deal like that on a $75,000 BMW or Mercedes. It costs about $60,000 to $75,000 to produce a Volt. GM is losing at least $30,000 per car. Combine that with the $7500 soon to be $10,000 subsidy from the TAXPAYERS and you have a real lemon!
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DeleteNot so. First, the Volt does rank 133 out of 162. Second, the claim that the Volt is losing at least $30,000 per car was declared to be "preposterous" by Forbes. See http://www.forbes.com/sites/boblutz/2012/09/10/the-real-story-on-gms-volt-costs/. The article walks through why your number is preposterous. Essentially it takes the entire development cost of the Volt and spreads it over the number of cars sold to date. Nobody in the car business calculates the cost of the car in that manner. Instead the development costs are spread over the number of cars built over the lifetime of the car. Moreover the Volt's breakthrough technology is being used in other GM models and its development costs will be paid for by more than the Volt. Forbes concludes the car is essentially profitable.
ReplyDeleteYou are ignoring the fact that until the $10,000 price reduction and $199 to $159 (I read that on Forbes) a month lease options, very few Volts sold. Even with the Governments $7500 tax subsidy. Bob Lutz's explanation of the fixed per unit costs are predicated on much higher volume sales and don't count rebates or generous leasing options which drastically effect the losses that GM is incurring. If GM only produced Volts or similar electric cars with the present business plan for the Volt it would go bankrupt very quickly! Also Bob Lutz has a vested interest in defending the Volt. Forbes did not declare the charges to be preposterous. Bob Lutz did! I read at least 3 other articles, some dated more recent that call into question the viability of GM's Volt economics.
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