Shocker! Chevy Volt Production Halted

[Whitehouse]

General Motors has told 1,300 employees at the automaker's Detroit Hamtramck plant they will be temporarily laid off for five weeks as the company halts production of the Chevrolet Volt and its European counterpart, the Opel Ampera. "Even with sales up in February over January, we are still seeking to align our production with demand," said GM spokesman Chris Lee to the Detroit Free Press. Another way of phrasing that? Because sales still suck.
Lee said employees were told Thursday that production would put on hold from March 19 to April 23.
Chevrolet sold 1,023 Volts in the U.S. in February and has sold 1,626 so far this year.

Via Jalopnik.

[SteveJ]

Too expensive. Even with $4 gas prices, you'll still never get back the cost savings of say buying a Chevy Cruze for half the price.

[j to the jeremy]

And the Cruze Eco is a really good car. By the way.

Bummer about the volt though, why hasn't GM tried to create a more affordable electric?

[Novine]

It's not all bad news for the Volt.

"General Motors Co. said sales of its plug-in Chevrolet Volt rebounded in February — with the automaker selling 1,023 units — up from 603 in January, and outselling Nissan Motor Co.'s all-electric Leaf."

GM says Volt sales up in February

[Scottathew]

Too expensive. Even with $4 gas prices, you'll still never get back the cost savings of say buying a Chevy Cruze for half the price.

I agree with you. I love the environment, but I don't make anywhere near enough money to invest in a Volt.

My family has two cars. A mini-van, and a small Saturn Ion [[2.4L).

We use the small car as much as possible. The only time we use the van is when we have to shop or need the extra room for some reason.

Using a small, fuel efficient car as much as you can really adds up the savings, even if you have an alternate larger car for other needs.

[Det_ard]

And the Cruze Eco is a really good car. By the way.

Bummer about the volt though, why hasn't GM tried to create a more affordable electric?

I guess that never occurred to them. Good idea.

[Wheels]

Obama will save the Volt.

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2012/03/0...esidency-ends/

[401don]

Initial sales of the Volt were not intended to compete with the 20k economy cars on the market. I believe GM thought there were enough environmentalists out there who already drove Volvos, etc. that would pay 40k for this product to justify 40-50,000 annual units out of the roughly 5 million cars [[not trucks) sold in the U.S. each yr. I thought so too but obviously a lot of these well-to-do folks don't walk the walk.

[Packman41]

The well-to-do folks are waiting for the 51 mpg Audi A4 diesel to be let into the US.

http://jalopnik.com/5226036/new-audi...ywhere-but-usa

Same price as the Volt, but somewhat larger in size.

[Wheels]

The well-to-do folks are waiting for the 51 mpg Audi A4 diesel to be let into the US.

http://jalopnik.com/5226036/new-audi...ywhere-but-usa

Same price as the Volt, but somewhat larger in size.

Waiting since 2009?

[JBMcB]

Price is a problem. It's going to take a while for GM to recoup the cost of engineering a completely new drivetrain from scratch. Usually these new drivetrains go into luxury cars first to absorb the cost into the higher margins, but I don't think that would have flown.

[downtown_racine]

Toyota really has this market sewn up IMO Especially among well to do environmental types. The word Prius is synonymous with hybrid. And most those people have memories about crappy Chevies they owned and view they Toyotas as a very premium brand, some seem to have a real disdain for any Domestic autos.
And with the innovation and reputation Toyota has built its no wonder why Toyota has won some folks over.

Internal Combustion is going to be the way to go for awhile as it has been for the last 120 years. Batteries suck, they are heavy, have a limited life and are very expensive.
For a fuel pincher a small gasoline engine is hard to beat and could only possibly be surpassed by a small diesel which has any additional costs savings over a gas job offset by higher initial price, higher operating and fuel costs.

Too bad the Volt looks like a neat little car, tho the Cruze and Malibu look very nice also.

[Cincinnati_Kid]

I knew when they announced the Volt at $40,000, they weren't going to sell as many as they thought. They better find a way to lower the price, or it will be as extinct as the dodo bird.

[Fiddler]

[Whitehouse]

And the Cruze Eco is a really good car. By the way.

Bummer about the volt though, why hasn't GM tried to create a more affordable electric?

Aren't those rebranded Korean Daewoo's?

There is also some great electric news coming from the Netherlands. There seems to be a breakthrough in the solar panel production method with which panels can be made with an efficiency of 70%! The most current solar panels have an efficiency of about 16% at the most. In about five years these panels could enter the market.

Here's an article published in leading magazine Nature.

Now that would be an enery source for the Volt!

[Hermod]

Price is a problem. It's going to take a while for GM to recoup the cost of engineering a completely new drivetrain from scratch. Usually these new drivetrains go into luxury cars first to absorb the cost into the higher margins, but I don't think that would have flown.

Gonna take even longer at 10-12 thousand units per year.

[softailrider]

I knew when they announced the Volt at $40,000, they weren't going to sell as many as they thought. They better find a way to lower the price, or it will be as extinct as the dodo bird.

I think you're absolutely right, price it like a Pirus and watch them sell.

[erikd]

And the Cruze Eco is a really good car. By the way.

Bummer about the volt though, why hasn't GM tried to create a more affordable electric?

The Volt is cutting edge technology. It was very expensive to develop and is very expensive to build. The battery technology needed to make a car like the Volt feasible has just been coming online over the last few years.

The Volt is not meant to be a big seller or price competitive right now. The Volt is meant to appeal to early adopters, and help GM refine the technology and build up the economies of scale needed to make this new technology price competitive with older technology.

Think back to 2000, when flat screen TVs were just starting to show up in stores. A 40 inch flat screen TV was selling for around $10,000. The vast majority of people thought it was crazy to spend that much on a television, and they continued to buy the old-style tube TVs. Over the next ten years, the price of flat screen TVs continued to decline as the manufacturing process was refined, and by 2010, tube TVs were basically obsolete.

When it comes to bang for the buck, the Volt simply can't compete with the Cruze or the Malibu right now, but GM doesn't expect it to. GM is thinking about what the Volt will be like in ten years, when electric car technology will be advanced enough for them to sell it for $30 thousand, and gasoline prices will be far above $5 per gallon.

[Novine]

Good point erikd. Look at the early hybrid technology like regenerative brakes and lower power electric motors and on-off engine controls. Most of those features were only available in the high-end hybrid models. Now we're seeing that technology rolled out into a wide range of cars to help boost fuel mileage without going full hybrid. Even a relatively affordable model like the Malibu are now utilizing that technology. I expect we'll see the same transition with the electric technology.

[Whitehouse]

Finally some good news at last. The European equivalent of the Chevy Volt, the Opel Ampera, was chosen "car of the year 2012" at the Geneva Auto Salon today.

[401don]

With gas around 10 bucks a gallon in parts of Europe the Volt makes economic sense there. It's even considered larger than the average vehicle.

[douglasm]

I wonder if Chevy was expecting too much sales wise from the Volt. It IS something new and unique, but still suffers from the recharging problem [[even with it's extended range) that all electric based cars suffer from. Until someone comew up with an electric based vheicle can be fully charged in the time it takes to have a cup of coffee, they will be a commuter car novelty.

I'm beginning to think that the real purpose of cars like the Volt and the Leaf is to draw people into the showroom, giving the dealer an oppertunity to sell something else more practical.

[j to the jeremy]

With gas around 10 bucks a gallon in parts of Europe the Volt makes economic sense there. It's even considered larger than the average vehicle.

Yeah, it's huge by Euro standards- i remember Smart Cars looking big when compared to small Fiats and Peugeots

[bartock]

I guess that never occurred to them. Good idea.

That's an absolute Rembrandt.

[casscorridor]

Plug-in hybrids are the future of autos. The old technology will fade away eventually, it is only a matter of time. The Volt is just ahead of its time.