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How is that calculated? I assumed they took each vehicles average MPG and weighted it by the sales volume. Even cars like the Cruze should help out. A big part of the problem is that they have wasted so much R&D on the Volt (which is too niche to matter) instead of doing something timely. They started running commercials for the Volt in 2007 and yet they won't have a competitive small car until 2010 or 2011. Now they have to argue that it is too expensive to be fuel efficient when they have apparently spent one billion+ dollars on the Volt.

How's that? It gets barely better than 4cyl sedan mileage (26/34 MPG) and has very low volume (0.2% of GM's total volume in December). In CAFE-speak I don't think it even registers. As for "low-budget", it is only $600 less than the Camry Hybrid.

I'm not sure it could make a profit. Lutz's comment about the price being "two volts" puts it in the $80K range. Not many can afford that, and those that can may not want to put $80K down on a car with the 0-60 performance of a 4cyl $20K sedan. In the end they would probably have to sell it for much less than $80K and that would mean more development costs and two EFLEX models being sold at a loss rather than one.

When GM presented to congress they gave a worst-case scenario (10.5 million cars sold in 2009). This worst-case scenario would require even more money that has been allocated. Just a few weeks later GM is now predicting that 2009 will be the worst-case scenario: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/articl...4cxeiQD95NP9MO0 No conspiracies needed... things are just that bad. Although if you do want a conspiracy, perhaps you should wonder if GM knew that their worst-case scenario was actually the likely scenario (I think sales at the end of 2008 were already down to 10 Million annualized when GM predicted 10.5 being the worst case for 2009).

I had an ebrake handle on a 1994(?) beretta go on me. Later one on a 2001 Alero went the exact same way. Actually, the Alero one broke twice. I wondered at the time if it was the same weak part used in both cars. It certainly looked similar. Fix it. 8 years should be long enough to get it right. Next time do it before the lawyers have a chance to get rich. Who knows... maybe I'd still be driving domestics!

Looks like things are even more in the Insight's favour now that some more stats have come out. Although the predicted EPA rating is "only" 40/43, people seem to be getting 60 MPG fairly easily. ABG: 63.4: http://www.autoblog.com/2009/01/11/abg-fir...sight-63-4-mpg/ Jeff from VTEC.NET was at an event and managed in the low 70s and everyone else at the drive got in the 60’s. http://www.vtec.net/forums/one-message?mes..._item_id=808664 C&D drove as tough as they could (which I imagine was still a fairly underwhelming event) and they still got low 40s. Not only that, the battery pack is on 0.58KWh. No mention of weight/volume, but they did manage to put it between the wheels and get a 40/60 split seat. So the average Insight will use 55% more fuel than the Volt (under pretty much best-case conditions for the Volt), but the Volt's battery requires ~2700% more capacity than the Insight's!

Why not do both? It probably was an advantage when they had 50% of the market. But I don't think it makes sense headed to 10-15%.

GM does have everyone comparing something that they haven't delivered and won't deliver for a couple of years to what is available today. They also have everyone ignoring the limitations and the downsides of what they may deliver. These are all neat PR tricks more than technological marvel. But when you actually consider REALITY and not just the positive, I'm not sure it actually IS better than what is available today. Compare it to the Insight, for example. It will be on sale in just a couple of months. According to the European tests it will get ~10% better city fuel economy than the current Prius. It will sell for sub $20,000 and I assume Honda will still make a profit. They plan to sell 250,000 per year. It won't be as flashy, but the amount of fuel saved by the Insight due to unit volume will dwarf that of the Volt. Honda plans to have sold 500,000 of them by the time GM has made 10,000 Volts at the end of 2010 (if they hit their own targets). By the end of 2015 GM plans to have sold 200,000 Volts. Honda plans to have sold 1,750,000 Insights. Now consider: If an average American drives 15,000 miles per year then a car that gets 25 MPG would use 600 gallons. The Insight should get around 48 MPG. That is 312.5 gallons used and a savings of 287.5 gallons over the 25MPG car. Let's assume a Volt drives about 12,000 of those miles gas-free. Let's even assume it gets 50 MPG when on gas. That is 60 gallons used and a savings of 540 gallons over the 25MPG car. See the problem yet? The Volt saves less than twice as much fuel as the Insight but uses perhaps 10 - 12 times the battery capacity to do it. By 2015 the Insight will have saved ~2,000,000,000 gallons of fuel as compared to the 25MPG vehicle. By that time the Volt will have saved ~325,000,000, or only 16% of what the Insight has saved. And I think I am presenting pretty much the best case situation for the Volt given that I don't think most owners will experience 50MPG or 12,0000 miles electric. That isn't a technological leap. If there is a technological leap (and it hasn't happened yet), it will be on the part of whoever makes the electric storage cost effect, compact, light, and quick to charge. It is all relatively trivial save the battery, and GM is just buying that from someone else. How hard it is to build a Volt? Just take the Prius, add a bigger electric engine, buy a bigger li-ion battery, and remove the gearing that allows the engine to turn the wheels. Of course you also have to cut production, double the price, and still sell at a loss. I'm not attempting to debate the ultimate merits of NiMH vs Li-Ion. What I am questioning is the timing and how it is being used. First off, who said it "wouldn't be feasible"? If you said "not feasible now" I and Toyota would agree. So would GM... they don't use Li-ion in their current hybrids either. If you said "bad idea" I and Honda would also agree based on the reasoning above. The reality is that Toyota has a mass-market product they have to sell shortly and at a profit whereas GM isn't constrained by any of those items. It is all about timing. By the time the Volt comes out things may have changed. As for driving the market, what they've actually done is cause chaos. Most everyone is tripping over themselves trying to follow GM right off the cliff. It is a brilliant tactic and we see it all the time when a company is not currently competitive. Distract when you can’t deliver. Cost-effective mass-market hybrids are what the automakers should be putting their money into. By focusing on the Volt instead of their own inexpensive mass-market hybrid GM will have effectively cost 1,675,000,000 gallons of fuel from their own fleet 2015 (as per the numbers above). If you assume that they have distracted even 2 other automakers in the same way, that is over 5,000,000,000 gallons of US-security-depriving fuel that GM and the Volt will have consumed.

Ack. Anyone who does these kinds of comparisons deserves to be shot. Alongside the consumer who buys into it. Let me translate it: "... a family sedan that is less enjoyable to drive than the Altima or the Accord, worse looking than the Camry and the Altima, worse real-world fuel economy than the Accord (4cyl and V6), Altima (4cyl), and Camry (v6), worse acceleration than the Altima, no MT available, and a hybrid model that gets only 1MPG better fuel economy than the non-hybrid Accord. etc"

The Grand Prix doesn't compete with the Malibu? GM is going bankrupt and they are reducing their fleet sales? None of the 650,000 lost GM "truck" sales went to a Malibu?

In the spirit of your post, why don't you actually think about what is being posted instead of just attacking me?

But then you have to question if the purpose of the battery for makes sense. This is what was a bit maddening about all these claims that GM had done some sort of technological leap over Toyota. There are limitations and compromises to the Volt and the Prius. The reality is that the Volt needs an extra large battery to achieve some bone-head~80%-of-commuter's-range target and then needs to use a more expensive and less available li-ion batteries to make it possible and then needs to haul around way more of these expensive and in limited supply batteries yet to accommodate some of the limitations of the li-ion battery as well as your design. That means expensive and low supply. But then they say it will be a relatively inexpensive mass-market Chevy. Is there any wonder I questioned the feasibility of this and how much GM had thought it through and/or was blowing PR smoke? I guess when you can just sell cars at huge loses and your government pays for it you can do that kind of thing. But don't pretend that it is some sort of technological advantage that is holding everyone else back. (On a related note, the E-FLEX Cadillac concept looks very nice and putting E-FLEX in a limited availability and high cost vehicle rings a lot more true to reality.)

If that is your goal, again, why would you want to charge the battery with the ICE? The point of this thread has been questioning why someone was outraged about the ICE not charging the batteries and why anyone should be happy now that they hear it is possible,

The ICE DOESN'T take the batteries to 80%. I wrote: "The ICE won't charge the battery to 80%. It will just try to maintain the minimum (30%). " Why are we having such problems communicating here? The Plug tries to keep the battery 80% charged. The ICE tries to keep the battery 30% charged. In general, the Volt tries to keep the battery between 30% and 80% charged. And the 80/100% distinction is important because, when combined with the 30% minimum, it means that the Volt really is really hauling around twice as much battery as it tries to use.

What do you think they get paid? You aren't going by that $70+ lie that includes the retiree costs, are you? Just curious as there is a lot of misinformation around. “It sounds like maybe some Republican union-busting language got in there, which would not surprise me.” Wasn't that how the deal was sold?

But how can you have relevant unique vehicles for that many brands? Why the extra work to make a soft version of the Malibu for Buick? The consumer likely would have bought the Malibu anyways. That's the real secret to GM trying to get the Malibu to compete with the Accord/Camry/Altima: put your resources into making one great car at a better price. Also, GM needs to stop offering so many configurations for their cars. If I want to configure a cobalt I have this to select from: LS (Opt ABS): 2 permutations LT 1LT (Opt: Mylink, ABS, Cruise, Upgraded Audio): 16 permutations LT 2LT (Opt: USB Stereo, Pioneer Stereo, Steering Wheel With Audio Controls, Sunroof): 16 permutations SS (Opt: Differential, Sunroof, Performance Display, Upg Stereo): 16 permutations That is 50 permutations. And that doesn't take into account tranny, coupe vs sedan, dealer installable options (I assume those stereos come installed from the factory), or paint colours. It also doens't include the G5 probably repeats all the same permutations in one way or another. The cost of maintaining so many options is wasteful on many levels. GM needs to stop doing that. You want the LT 1LT? That has ABS and Cruise standard. If you don't like it, buy the LS (which has no ABS option). You can't be everything to everyone. You can try, but only if you continue to let the tax payer pay for it.

Well that seems like some bad advice and perhaps explains GM's continued meltdown. In the end, the "small circle" approach is still going to cost more money than the "big circle" approach. You end up chasing larger market share at the expense of profits per vehicle. Unless you are brilliant, the "small circle" approach leads to complexity and inferior products in an attempt to hit all the small circles. It isn't just a matter of changing the cladding, tail lights, and brand. This is what GM has been doing for years now and it doesn't work. You have to ask yourself if, for example, selling a similarly-featured Malibu at a higher price than an Accord (or at less of a profit) is worth it to be able to have the potential opportunity to sell another slightly different but also over-priced (or lower profit) model to someone else who might have bought the Malibu anyways. Also consider that the "big circle" alternative was that they both could have bought the Malibu for less money (or GM could have made a bigger profit per sale). This sounds like an example (both for FOG and GM) of following whoever whispers in your ear what you want to hear.

These are loans with an unreasonably low interest rate given the risk. That interest rate differential is the first aspect of the bailout. They are also loans with an unreasonably low expectation of repayment. That is the second aspect of the bailout. If GM is unable to pay the money back then that is the third and most significant aspect of the bailout. But if we want to be really accurate, I think the appropriate term is "economic extortion". If you have any doubt this is a bailout, I would encourage you to go down to your bank, tell them you are worth negative several hundred thousand dollars, that you have commitments that cost you thousands of dollars a year, you have no job, and things are going to get worse over the next year or so, but you would like a loan of tens of thousands of dollars at only a couple of percent interest.

I'm Canadian, so by most American definitions I'm just a step or two shy of full-on communism. What I want is the usual Canadian way: my tax dollars shuffled to Canadians. I'd rather they gave the 4 billion directly to the Canadian auto workers as a bridge to their next job. I will pay more for a quality product. But I am not prepared to continue to pay too much for that good just because it is sold two steps north of the Canada/US border. On a related note, the last couple of items I bought for my house renovations I was able to buy in Canada because it was price-competitive with the US. The reality is that GM is likely to fail. If they don't, then we can still expect that many (the majority?) of those jobs will be cut anyways. Those that remain will have cut wages and few benefits as per the 2010 changes. Come out west. We can't get enough workers. Based on GM's 2010 wage cuts, by 2010 in many places you should be able to make about as much pumping gas as working at GM. Plus you'd probably get a signing bonus.

That's too bad. I was very impressed by the EPA numbers of this car and this is the first time I have seen some real-world numbers.

The Malibu is a huge improvement and one of the few bright spots for GM so I don't want to speak poorly of it. However what you posted wasn't "proof". Grand Prix: -79,000 Ion: -48,000 Impala: -45,000 Lucerne: -28,000 DTS: -21,000 Monte Carlo: -15,000 Lacrosse: -11,000 G6: -10,000 That is -257,000. It would take only 1 in 5 of those people to buy a Malibu to make up the 50K. Or perhaps some of the 650,000 less people that bought a GM truck last year bought a Malibu instead to save gas?

The evidence (like those companies who haven't stopped leasing posting similar drops) points to "no". IIRC the US % was actually much less than that. I believe it was single digits. I believe the Canadian numbers were in the 30+% range (it is the only way we can afford vehicles because we pay Cadillac dollars for Chevys). Thanks to the GMAC turnaround, I bet in the last week or two of Dec GM sold a lot of vehicles to people who were turned down in November. Take a look at the taxes taken off your next check. Think about what % of that is subsidizing some schmuck with a new truck who is going to default. Thanks government bailout!

The ICE won't charge the battery to 80%. It will just try to maintain the minimum (30%). The 80% state of charge is the maximum to which the PLUG will take the batteries. The question still stands: Why do you want the ICE to charge your battery to 80%? That makes the plug useless. It might also be worth mentioning that the ICE can only generate under half electricity that the the Volt can put to the ground. Therefore it isn't like the ICE is going to be generating a huge surplus of energy.

The real reason GM is in trouble is because they lose thousands of dollars per vehicle sold. That was true even when the money was flowing (they've been bleeding money for 4 years now). This is just speeding things up. GM is taking on more debt as they move towards being a smaller and smaller company. GM was worth -60 billion end of 3Q 2008. They must be at -70 Billion by now. Do you know how long it takes to earn 70 Billion when you are losing between 1 and 3 billion per Q? There isn't a good chance this will be averted. My tax dollars are about to be shuffled off to China. Most of those people will be unemployed anyways. "Remember: the real reason GM is in trouble right now is because the money markets are frozen" - And you have the nerve to call my posts "BS".

I guess that is why the Volt will be so widely available, so inexpensive, so cost effective as compared to the Prius? On the other hand, some argue that the Volt is an overly complex electric car in that it still needs the gas drivetrain, a plug, etc. There is no doubt that it is all about compromises and timing. As per the EV1, GM's timing still seems a bit off. The Prius and the Insight are the correct place to be right now. GM lost that battle and they are hoping to distract you with their fancy future-car instead. I guess that would explain why you think the relatively available and inexpensive (and more importantly, infinitely more "existing") Prius is the complicated compromise and the Volt isn't.