Car Guys vs. Bean Counters - Bob Lutz [77]
Both the mechanical and the electric portions of Volt proceeded with only minor speed bumps. Changes were made to the battery chemistry with the goal of optimizing the trade-offs between vehicle range, battery life, reliability, and cost. Production facilities were put in place at GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck plant, which was soon producing high-quality preproduction vehicles.
In the summer of 2010, GM announced the price of a basemodel Volt: $41,000, or a $350/month lease with a $2,500 down payment.
(The list price, admittedly high for a compact car, reflects the cost of first-generation technology which is bound to become more reasonable as battery manufacturing matures and as specialized electrical components, expensive and produced at low volumes today, become more generalized and benefit from automotive industry economies of scale. Federal credits of $7,500 for early adopters of battery-powered vehicles will, additionally, make Volt more accessible for the average buyer. The $350 lease, however, is exceptionally attractive and reflects the belief that the very small initial production quantities will create a very strong demand for off-lease used Volts which should sell at near the original list price.)
So, with pricing in line with expectations and a surprisingly affordable lease rate, one would expect a generally favorable reaction in the general media. After all, GM had long been criticized for its failure to design technologically advanced, environmentally friendly cars, and for letting foreign competitors take the lead. Logic dictated that all this good news would be applauded.
Sadly, logic was wrong. The Chevrolet Volt, as of this writing, has become a political football, reviled by both the lunatic left and the vocal right. Inveterate GM haters compare it to the all-electric, hundred-mile-range Nissan Leaf, ignoring the fact that Volt’s total range is in excess of that.
The New York Times featured a guest column by someone named Edward Niedermeyer, who writes for something called “The Truth About Cars”—which turns out to be a Web site that often offers anything but—in which he called the Volt a “lemon” and even attacked the $350/month lease, implying darkly that this is a semifraudulent come-on as it limits the lessee to twelve thousand miles per year. He conveniently forgets to mention that this limit is pretty much standard for automotive leases.
Meanwhile, from the right, both Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck weighed in, pronouncing the Volt a typical governmentdirected failure, a $41,000 car that would travel only forty miles, period. Of course, Volt’s overall range, with the gasoline-powered generator feeding power to the battery, is in excess of three hundred miles.
One may draw a few conclusions: many people in the media follow the thesis that one must never let facts get in the way of a good, sensationalist story. Second, animosity toward the Obama administration is so intense among the right-wing talk show hosts that any vulnerability, however tenuous, must be attacked and blamed on “socialist influence,” with no regard to truth or to the damage these reckless claims can make to GM, an American corporation, to the dedicated and hard-driving members of the Volt team, and to a now-misinformed public that may be steered away from a transportation solution that would fill their needs perfectly.
Will all this damage Volt? My guess is “not at all.” The truth about this revolutionary car cannot be suppressed. It embodies the ideal solution: silent, clean electric drive for daily trips of about forty miles, with a seamless transition to a gasoline generator–enabled full range equal to that of the average car.
With the universal drive to ever-higher fuel economy standards (or, as expressed in Europe, ever-lower CO2 emissions expressed in grams per mile), the Volt concept is the most compelling for the future,