Chevy Volt?

[atlaw4u]

The December issue of Automobile magazine has a lengthy article on the Volt and it states the Volt's price will likely start around $43k but it looks like there will be a $7500 tax credit and thus, after tax credit price of $34,995.

[No. 166]

Sorry to be pessimistic, guys. I would give money on a bet that this car will never see the light of day. GM needs a lot of money now and they cannot afford to loose money on a product. Honda had it's ciVic and the Accord to pay the original Insight. What has GM got ? Is Saturn profitable enough ?

[Dougie]

In my view the biggest problem with the Volt is that it's an all-new design that is too narrowly targeted.

Toyota and Honda have had their systems out there for almost a decade now, giving them ample time to work on reliability and driveability issues and also to make incremental improvements and adjustments. The Volt will be an all-new car with the usual question of whether the first couple of year models will be laden with trouble--both the usual GM mechanical problems PLUS the electronic and software issues that even Insight owners have some experience with.

Also, the Volt is targeted at this concept of "electric car for 40 miles and then a wimpy gas engine beyond that." You can get the exact same thing with a Prius. All Toyota needs to do is put in space for another couple of batteries--without actually including them--in the body stampings and then as batteries get cheaper and better, the customer can upgrade an existing hybrid Prius into an electric Prius. You buy today's car with its 3 mile electric range, and if you win the lottery you can buy two more batteries and get 9 miles. Or you can buy a lithium battery and get maybe 15 miles, and another two to get 45 miles.

The point is that the Prius in particular is a well-developed platform with a gas engine, some motors and generators, some control components and some software. If battery technology changes then they can easily adapt, whereas the Volt is more tightly tied to one specific model of how things should work. I think the Prius will walk all over the Volt...

[IamIan]

I agree... the Volt will have a up hill battle and hard time of it... nice effort... has potential.

In comparison I also agree the Prius-III is already up that initial hill... they are now on the straight away... they already have the green image... they already have dealt with quality and longer term battery issues... now they are cautiously moving a tiny step into the PHEV field... I expect allot of Prius-III to be sold just as the growth of previous versions of the Prius have done.