Chevy Volt not as amped up as it was touted

[jimpeel]

It seems that the "all electric" Volt is not actually "all electric". The gasoline charging engine also drives the wheels.

Investor's Business Daily slams the Volt in this article where they show that the "230" mile per gallon car actually gets something in the 30 mile per gallon range.

SOURCE

Volt Fraud At Government Motors

Posted 10/19/2010 06:55 PM ET

Green Technology: Government Motors' all-electric car isn't all-electric and doesn't get near the touted hundreds of miles per gallon. Like "shovel-ready" jobs, maybe there's no such thing as "plug-ready" cars either.

The Chevy Volt, hailed by the Obama administration as the electric savior of the auto industry and the planet, makes its debut in showrooms next month, but it's already being rolled out for test drives by journalists. It appears we're all being taken for a ride.

When President Obama visited a GM plant in Hamtramck near Detroit a few months ago to drive a Chevy Volt 10 feet off an assembly line, we called the car an "electric Edsel." Now that it's about to hit the road, nothing revealed has changed our mind.

Advertised as an all-electric car that could drive 50 miles on its lithium battery, GM addressed concerns about where you plug the thing in en route to grandma's house by adding a small gasoline engine to help maintain the charge on the battery as it starts to run down. It was still an electric car, we were told, and not a hybrid on steroids.

That's not quite true. The gasoline engine has been found to be more than a range-extender for the battery. Volt engineers are now admitting that when the vehicle's lithium-ion battery pack runs down and at speeds near or above 70 mph, the Volt's gasoline engine will directly drive the front wheels along with the electric motors. That's not charging the battery — that's driving the car.

So it's not an all-electric car, but rather a pricey $41,000 hybrid that requires a taxpayer-funded $7,500 subsidy to get car shoppers to look at it. But gee, even despite the false advertising about the powertrain, isn't a car that gets 230 miles per gallon of gas worth it?

We heard GM's then-CEO Fritz Henderson claim the Volt would get 230 miles per gallon in city conditions. Popular Mechanics found the Volt to get about 37.5 mpg in city driving, and Motor Trend reports: "Without any plugging in, (a weeklong trip to Grandma's house) should return fuel economy in the high 30s to low 40s."

Car and Driver reported that "getting on the nearest highway and commuting with the 80-mph flow of traffic — basically the worst-case scenario — yielded 26 miles; a fairly spirited backroad loop netted 31; and a carefully modulated cruise below 60 mph pushed the figure into the upper 30s."

This is what happens when government picks winners and losers in the marketplace and tries to run a business. We are not told that we will be dependent on foreign sources like Bolivia for the lithium to be used in these batteries. Nor are we told about the possible dangers to rescuers and occupants in an accident scenario.

There's the issue of asking grandma to use her electricity for the three or four hours necessary to recharge your car so you can get home to charge it again. Where's the electricity going to come from considering that solar and wind don't work when the sun don't shine and the wind doesn't blow? We aren't building any nukes.

And since electricity rates are necessarily going to skyrocket as a result of this administration's energy policies and fondness for cap-and-trade, what's the true cost of operating a not-so-all-electric car like the Volt?

In 2008, candidate Obama pledged to put 1 million plug-in vehicles on the road by 2015. Not likely. It was a tough sell when we thought it was all-electric and could get 230 mpg. It will be a tougher sell now that we find it's a glorified Prius with the price tag of a BMW that seats only four because of a battery that runs down the center of the car.

President Obama likes to talk about not giving the GOP back the keys to the car. It's his industrial policy and central planning that have driven us into the ditch.

 

[Dave]

As far as I can tell, all the reports about this car were from short term rides in pre-production models.
Interested to see what the automotive press says about it once they get some production models in their long term fleets.

 

[2minkey]

who knew that a shitty little chevrolet product would become another diabolical instrument of obamanite oppression?

seems almost as likely as general motors producing a disappointing piece of crap.

of course that assumes that one could even believe that GM could produce anything other than a piece of crap to begin with.

is GM any lamer with the government having some fraction of ownership? (oh, right, jim, they were heroes of capitalism before... you know, the first notable M-class corporation and all.)

it's okay, the chinks are cutting off rare earth materials that are needed for electric cars anyway. so you can rest assured that your gas sucker hole in your big ass truck will be filled aplenty.

 

[catocom]

If they get any of the electrics (hybrid-semi) below 6 grand, I might take
a look at um.

I don't see that happening though. EVERYTHING is overpriced these days.
Maybe if we made it All in this country, and had a real competition contest on it...

Too much greed atm though, and not enough local competition, to get the price right.

Heck you can't even get a really decent new 4wd atv for less than 6k atm.

 

[2minkey]

greed my ass. you have any idea how much it costs to design and build a new vehicle from scratch?

 

[catocom]

greed my ass. you have any idea how much it costs to design and build a new vehicle from scratch?

yep, like I said...too much
I didn't mean just greed on the mfg's part, but the materials suppler, machineshops....all the way up the line.

I know it's somewhat expensive for prototyping, but it should get right in the production.
Otherwise it's a bad product to start with to try to market.

 

[catocom]

lol, minkey, I was just thinking about your wording in that post.
You express yourself much like my dad did.
I guess that's why I may have a thinker skin than some.

 

[2minkey]

hah.

you're not going to get all huggy with me now are you?

but seriously dude it costs a bazillion dollars to design a car, get all the tooling made, et cetera. so that needs to all be factored into the price of the car so they don't lose a shitload of money. my (educated) guess would be that it cost at least $1b and perhaps as much as $2b to develop the volt. and the profit margin on small cars is razor thin IF there is a margin on the plus side at all. in fact the only reason US car companies have small cars in their fleets is to offset the bigger vehicles' lower gas mileage in meeting the CAFE laws.

 

[catocom]

hah.

you're not going to get all huggy with me now are you?

not hardly.

...
There should be good people that can assess the costs, and time frame,
and be able to find the right places to do business to get the best prices.
Seems we just have a bunch of so-called over-'educated' idiots these days.
People have their papers, but no real business smarts.

I think that what Ratzenberger is working on changing.
http://www.legalreforminthenews.com/ratz.html

 

[2minkey]

yeah, okay cato. if you really think it's that easy to plan and figure costs on a multi-year project involving mulitple development partners and thousands of various personnel... um, it's really not. and if we had just 'good plain sense folks' like you trying to run stuff like that it would be 1000 times worse. in fact, nothing would ever get built.

sorry man, but a car program ain't no loading dock. i've worked with dozens of highly talented, no-nonsense mofos (mostly engineers, many of whom who also had MBAs) who struggle with trying to understand and control costs all the time.

 

[Gotholic]

http://www.whokilledtheelectriccar.com/

Check it out.

 

[catocom]

yeah, okay cato. if you really think it's that easy to plan and figure costs on a multi-year project involving mulitple development partners and thousands of various personnel... um, it's really not.

nowhere did I say anything about being easy.
That is why those guys supposedly make the big bucks.
As it is, they are making the bucks, but not producing relative to their salaries imo.

 

[catocom]

I think part of it though is not the cost of the product so much as the Unions
jacking up the benefits too much too.

 

[Gonz]

greed my ass. you have any idea how much it costs to design and build a new vehicle from scratch?

Not sure what you white collars charge, but it sure as shit ain't worth the $75./hr the union guys are charging.

Cat is right. I refuse to pay thirty grand for a pick-up that's worth six grand.

I'd bet the cost would be significantly lower if we could drop all the progressive sponsored regulations.

 

[2minkey]

and what regulations would that be? please, enlighten me...

 

[Winky]

Chevy Volt is the freakin' failure we all knew it would be

all of them

 

[Gonz]

You already mentioned one (CAFE) but Winky is right...

 

[Winky]

Obamaco's a failure Duh?

holy fuck, we aren't supposed to wipe our asses
without first asking permission from Washington DC?

 

[2minkey]

You already mentioned one (CAFE) but Winky is right...

wow. hardly had to get off the couch for that one, eh?

 

[jimpeel]

but seriously dude it costs a bazillion dollars to design a car, get all the tooling made, et cetera.

Wow! That is some serious money there. Isn't a bazillion dollars written something like

$1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000?