"The Volt" May BE SCRAPPED!- NEVER BUILT!!

[gone-ot]

...I would assume (?) something "...just SLIGHTLY bigger..." than the competition (especially interior-wize) would do the trick.

[elhigh]

Originally Posted by Christ

I'd take an Opel GT over a Corvette. Corvette - the equivalent of an overplayed single by "The hottest new "artist" this week".

That said, I'd take a Corvette as well.

My mum has a GT in her garage. Dad and I rebuilt the engine back in the 80's, new bearings, new rings, the whole schtick.

Even took the carburetor completely apart. We burned through an entire roll of film keeping track of all of that. And in the process, sorted out some stuff that had gone badly wrong.

[Jammer]

Originally Posted by martinafan

When Saturn was being developed, it was to be GM's answer to all its problem, not only it would compete with the Japs but it would "teach" GM how to make cars more efficiently and with higher quality and this would be used in all other divisions. Well I don't need to recount how they royally screwed this up just like they have screwed up everything else they've done. Now the VOlt is the new Messiah, pleeeze, why on earth would any rational being put down $40k for an unproven,questionable experimental machine when you have other fuel-sipping hybrids available with proven technology at approx half the cost? I suppose they'll be a few treehuggers with $ to spare who might go for it, (look at the Smart) But it wont do anything to take GM out of this mess.http://forum.ecomodder.com/images/icons/icon13.gif

Good point(s): From my perspective, I was a young kid when Saturn was started and my father along with many other UAW workers were asked to come on down south to work. But most of the workers quickly figured out they had a much better deal staying right where they were. I think part of the problem was they should of got a better deal with the union that might would allowed fresh workers from the street to of been hired in- because the way they did it they tried building a revolutionary plant but they staffed it with the same UAW workers they had back in Michigan... I suspect this might of stiffed some of their creativity in building a newly designed car. It was supposed to of been a car built like the plants in Japan built cars, but I sense it never really fully achieved it's goals.

[theunchosen]

The volt is realistically in the same category as hybrids.

How long does it take for the FE improvements of a hybrid outweigh the price boost. Annual fuel cost of my car driving it hard and the only mod being no AC is less than 2.5K. So if it was a 100% improvement.. and used half as much fuel.. it would still take 10 years to pay for it.. if I got a civic and made the same adjustments and it would take 2-3 years to pay for the difference in fuel.

How much more so for a 40K car.....

If I have to buy a new car it would be a Kia for 10-12 grand... even if it had terrible FE it would be cheaper to drive, maintain and pay for for a decade.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by theunchosen

How long does it take for the FE improvements of a hybrid outweigh the price boost...

(Sigh) That old nonsense again? The people who are the customer base for hybrids, and who will be the customer base for the Volt, don't care that much about fuel cost. As I keep saying, if it was just money, I could run a Hummer and never worry about the cost of gas (beyond my ingrained thriftiness, anyway). But if the extra money I spent on my Insight has kept a few tons of CO2 out of the air, and a few dollars out of the hands of the jihadists, then IMHO it was money well spent.

[Jammer]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

(Sigh) That old nonsense again? The people who are the customer base for hybrids, and who will be the customer base for the Volt, don't care that much about fuel cost. As I keep saying, if it was just money, I could run a Hummer and never worry about the cost of gas (beyond my ingrained thriftiness, anyway). But if the extra money I spent on my Insight has kept a few tons of CO2 out of the air, and a few dollars out of the hands of the jihadists, then IMHO it was money well spent.

I applaud people like you, I really do. But I have a deep fear that people such as yourself are in the minority. It is often said that people vote their pocketbooks, in other words, no matter what red button issues might be on the table the vast majority of (well.. Americans) will vote for whatever helps them, or perhaps a class of people they most understand. If people VOTE based on their billfold, then I feel they most certainly BUY based on their wallets.

You , imho, happen to be a cool exception to the rule. I find it very enlightening to learn of people willing to buy things that are "green" and help the environment more than they may ever see back in savings on energy. However I have a strong sense that people with such views are buried by the greed that are at their seed of so many buying decision makers. I do not believe there are enough "tree-huggers" (no offense, I mean that in a good way!!) to make diddly squat difference in The Volt Sales. Just like our politics, I feel the kicker will be performance and $$ matters, The Volt will need to be at least be as cheap to drive as they have lead us to believe, and it would work so much better if they would not over-hype our expectations of this car. Just think how cool it would be if when they FINALLY get this car (IF) into production it does double as well as they have been hyping it as? Would that not be an ice-breaker, or as they say in these parts: "Would that not be a Barn Burner?"?

For people like my dear father, 40K is not a drop in a bucket. So he has a very hard time trying to understand how difficult it is for today's bulk of Americans to afford 40K for a car. He comes from an era in which America had a dense middle class and middle-income families in which it was easier to afford such a price for a car because their base wages were averaging so much higher than the median American wage is now (I am speculating a little bit here). I feel it is just plain more difficult to find enough customers who can afford 40k these days, UNLESS they can really be convinced the car can pay back for itself within the car's expected lifetime in fuel savings.

Personally, the good people in these foothills of East Kentucky that have $40,000 to spend in cash or credit for a car, are much more likely to invest it on a Double-Wide Trailer!!

[rgathright]

Originally Posted by Jammer

For people like my dear father, 40K is not a drop in a bucket. So he has a very hard time trying to understand how difficult it is for today's bulk of Americans to afford 40K for a car. He comes from an era in which America had a dense middle class and middle-income families in which it was easier to afford such a price for a car because their base wages were averaging so much higher than the median American wage is now (I am speculating a little bit here). I feel it is just plain more difficult to find enough customers who can afford 40k these days, UNLESS they can really be convinced the car can pay back for itself within the car's expected lifetime in fuel savings.

Personally, the average good people of these foothills of East Kentucky that had $40,000 to spend in cash or credit for a car, is much more likely to put in on a Double-Wide Trailer!!

I agree with your point. The Chevy Volt is going to be out of the reach of most Americans. I however has been saving my dollars since 2008 for this car! To hold me over till 2010, I bought a fuel efficient 2009 Honda Accord for trade-in value so that I could get out of my gas guzzling Jeep. Many people who can afford this car want it because it will be a rolling statement of American technology.

[theunchosen]

Keeping cash out of the hands of jihadists is not something realistically that we can even curb. The number of people trying to pour upwards into the Golden billion is so large that if we stop buying the oil it will just drop oil prices elsewhere by ten cents. But we aren't even talking about stopping buying it... we're just talking about curbing it.

I understand the principle, but I'm just pointing out its less than a penny on the dollar if every single American bought a hybrid.

Also in the cash flow chain back to those jihadists sits the petrol industry, one of the largest developers of "green" tech out there. BP put more money into renewables last year than the US government. Jihadist cash flow won't change because we buy hybrids, but the people trying to provide cheap solar energy, wind energy and other diverse sources will suffer massive cut backs...

Nice principle, terrible implementation.

The Volt is not really too much cheaper than the Tesla family, for US taxpayers. auto bailouts and loans per taxpayer put the cost of every single car up.

The Volt is just a marketing scam. They got people reinvested in the bowtie with the volt and then sold them chargers, challengers, avengers and other cars that look pretty.

[gone-ot]

Originally Posted by theunchosen

The Volt is just a marketing scam. They got people reinvested in the bowtie with the volt and then sold them chargers, challengers, avengers and other cars that look pretty.

...have you noticed the upserge in TV-ads for the Chrysler 300? Same issue...now that the "Cash-4-Clunkers' deals are gone, "come-on down" and get our gas-guzzlers again!

[Christ]

Originally Posted by rgathright

I agree with your point. The Chevy Volt is going to be out of the reach of most Americans. I however has been saving my dollars since 2008 for this car! To hold me over till 2010, I bought a fuel efficient 2009 Honda Accord for trade-in value so that I could get out of my gas guzzling Jeep. Many people who can afford this car want it because it will be a rolling statement of American technology. That has parts sourced from China, Japan, and Malaysia, and is Assembled in Canada, and Mexico.

Thereifixedit!