The electric vehicle is not living up to the hype.
Even with a $7,500 tax credit, Obama’s favorite car, the Chevy Volt, is not selling all that well.
The Automotive Engineer in Chief — our polymathic president — says there will be a million plug-in cars in America by 2015. This will require much higher gasoline prices (perhaps $9 a gallon) and much bigger bribes: GM, which originally was expected to produce as many as 60,000 next year, now says 10,000 for all of North America.
GM says that, battery powered, the Volt has a 40-mile range.
Popular Mechanics says 33.
Thomas R. Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute, the trade association of the electric utility industry, is, understandably, a Volt enthusiast: This supposedly “green” vehicle will store electric energy — 10 to 12 hours of charging on household current – produced by coal- and gas-fired power plants.
Only 10,000 Volts in one year.
To put the 10,000 unit sales figure in perspective, consider that Chrysler sold 12,721 of the decidedly un-eco friendly Jeep Grand Cherokees in the month of October.
Not only the is the Chevy Volt selling poorly. Nissan is having a tough time selling the Leaf (their plug in EV) as well. Even the Toyota Prius is not selling in Japan since their government cut subsides for the Hybrid.
Sure, there is a small group of people that want an electric vehicle. However, most Americans want mid or full size cars and SUV’s. Not glorified golf carts.
It makes me wonder who is going to buy the ‘Advanced Batteries’ that Obama and Jennifer Granholm were hyping last summer?
Wait a minute, I am confused. Are you saying that invention doesn’t work this way – We design and build what we want, without even thinking about what our customers might desire? How come that design method doesn’t work? 40 miles on a 12 hour charge is fantastic, if you work out of your house.
To be fair, Obama was referring to RC cars when he said 1 million plug-in cars by 2015.
As far as those planet hating Cherokee buyers, they are too stupid to know a good product when they see one. The volt is awesome! I would buy one if I didn’t actually need a car in my day to day life.
If the 33 mile Popular Mechanics figure is accurate, I wouldn’t even make it to work on a pure electric charge. And, come to think of it, I usually not even home for the 12 hours required to charge the car.
I think I’ll go with the planet hating SUV.
I wonder what the sales figures would be for the GC with a $75oo kicker?
Chrysler wouldn’t be able to keep up with demand.
GM spent a gagillion dollars developing this thing, most of it before they became gubmint motors, and they can’t sell them? I’m not a MOPAR guy, but sign me up for the Cherokee!
The Grand Cherokee is one nice SUV. You see a lot of them running around town here.
hmm another obama motors failure??? wow, didn’t see that coming, and what the hell is GM thinking??? no way in hell is anybody going to buy that ridiculously slow and absurdly expensive, and ugly, tinker toy, when they can have a powerfull muscle car or SUV, that’s what AMERICANS’s want u GM idiots!!! electric cars just don’t work and cost more to maintain then gas powered cars, the electric car had it’s chance 100yrs ago and the gas pwrd cars won.
Didn’t Chevy had an electric car a long time ago that was better then this new JUNK model? GM took them and crushed them all for the sake of the planet? I’ll bet they wish they would have developed that OLD technology further…maybe they could have been the number one electric car makers on the planet today with out the GOV. blackmail program. BUY any other car but CHEVY…..stop supporting GOV. programs. THey should give the VOLT away for FREE. after all it is my money they used to make this junk. My Moped gets better mileage then this thing.