I don’t think it will sell. This will doom GM. I suppose they’ll try to sell the Cruze for $30k to justify the $40k sticker on the Volt. A good concept but the cost just will not fly. People struggling between putting gas in their tanks and groceries do not have $40k to throw down. The market will be used cars and cheap new ones.

Volt is NOT intended as a money saving vehicle, its intended as a green vehicle to reduce consumption. Its the first mass production (Tesla ain’t mass production) affordable 4-seater electric car ever produced. Its not going to be cheap at first. A second gen volt will cost less I’d assume. I don’t see Cruze stickering for any more than $17k and you know what with 40+ mpg people WILL pay it. Look at what people will pay for a Prius.

http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/14/1-volt-or-2-priuses/

frylock350, for whom is 40K 4 seater is affordable? Prius starts at 20K and peaks at 25. Next Insight, which was announced few weeks ago and will be on dealers lots in 7 months (vs. 2-3 years of hyper publicity) supposedly will start at less then 20K and will deliver over 50 mpg.
I am not doubting that someone will by Volt, people bought Aztec for gods sake, but will Volt save company by not bringing any profits at 40K base sticker? Definitely not; and if it will not help recovery why build it? For Lutz’s photo op? Notice, you cant find Wagoner near those photos (I think he is smarter of the two).

There are an awful lot of reasons to buy the volt.
1. The $40,000 price tag will keep demand here low, which is a good thing, cause at first they won’t be able to produce that many.
2. In Europe cars are a lot more expensive in general, so they will sell strong overseas.
3. This is all part of the learning curve, as costs come down, the technology can be implemented in other platforms.
4. GM will get a lot of favorable press.
5. I have driven a Prius and it sucks. The volt will probably drive really good, and have decent performance.
6. GM is not going under in the near future, in the long term the volt project is critical to success.

Meant build the volt

Soon GM will drop the entire electric car concept and drop a V8 in this thing.

Oh, and who the hell wrote that article? Sounds like it was written by an immigrant

Dispite it’s price Volt will sell. They will sell every single one of them that they can make.

Think of it this way… even if Volt costs $10k more than it should up front… you can use $10k in gasoline over a few years with a regular car… especially at $4+/gal. People who buy this car will be looking for independance from gas. If they drive it smartly odds are they will use very little gasoline at all.

In the end it will be just like the Prius… a symbol for tree-huggers at first, but after a few years it will catch on with the rest of the market and you’ll see them everywhere.

“and GM will not likely make a profit on the $40.000 Volt”…this is complete crap! GM and their accounting methods will try to convince us once again that there is not any profit in an electric car. People will buy every one they make if it looks great and plugs in. The green crowd is growing and they have money to spend. After GM sees they can sell every one they build, they will spread the serial plug-in hybrid engineering across their whole product line. This will save this company from BK. I do think for this to happen, most of what we see as GM’s leadership (Wag and Putz) will be not in the picture. $4 gas is not going away, and this platform is the game changer for GM!

Clarification, millions will have the financial ability to pay $17k for a 40+MPG Cruze. Only a fraction of the population actually have the means to pay $40k for a Volt. With this, which has the best environmental impact? Doubling the MPG for millions of drivers or going electric on a model where maybe only 20,000 are produced a year?

Remember the Prius was supposedly a money-loss vehicle for Toyota in the early years. Then they came out with the 2004 model, and it was bigger, faster, better mileage and the same price, and people paid MSRP for it for years (and are paying it once again, due to a slow-down in production and a major demand/supply slip). There are people interested in reducing gas usage for various reasons, like reducing our trade imbalance, leaving our country at mercy of OPEC, or indirectly funding terrorists. But they also don’t like buy Japanese (HCH, Prius, Insight etc.) They might buy the Volt just to make a message to the Big-3. That’s part of the reason I bought the Prius, to make a message to auto manufacturers in general that people want an efficient vehicle. (I don’t care what people on the road think, I don’t really care for the styling, but the engineering is great).

Also, don’t base your calculations on $4/gal. A vehicle sold in 2010 will likely be on the road in 2020, and gas will surely be over $6/gal by then. I’m guessing $8/gal will be a definite possibility, I think T. Boone Pickens predicted $12/gal.

Too bad GM still makes the Aveo. That POS Daewoo is an embarrassment to all small cars. But cookie4me, you raise a good point. Buying a small car that fits your needs (anybody sit in a Versa? a good small car is much roomier and better than they were a decade ago) at a lower price is in the end probably smarter than spending a bunch of money for a fancy PHEV, unless you drive >20K miles/year.

Read this:

http://www.edmunds.com/toyota/prius/2008/testdrive.html

and tell me that 1) Toyota, Mitsubishi and Honda will have NO ANSWER for the Volt when it comes out in 2011 and 2) any sane person would pick an unproven, $40k+ (Lutz has said $48k at one point!) vehicle over a proven, reliable vehicle at half the price.

You have a valid point nerfer… small cars today are h-u-g-e compared to what they were 20 years ago. Vehicles like the Versa, Fit, & Yaris have plenty enough room for the daily commute or a trip to Wal-mart. If they could make one that had more than 110hp it would be really nice. You just can’t get around town, out into traffic, merge on the interstate, etc. with a vehicle that has a 0-60 time of over 10 seconds. I can’t count the number of times every day I would have been left sitting for an eternity waiting on a big enough gap in traffic if I had a slower car. Thankfully my Cobalt SS will do the 60-sprint in about 6 seconds… so I can put the car in places where slower ones just won’t work.

The Hollywood elite and the politicians will snatch this thing up like no tomorrow, but I’m predicting the rest of the general public won’t touch it for the price. Keep in mind that in the same year, both Nissan and Mercedes will have electric offerings of their own, which will make the same environmental statement. However, the price points may say something completely different.

I haven’t seen pricing on those two as of yet, but currently, the price for the electric PT Cruiser offered by Hybrid Technologies is $55,000 after their purchase of a fully loaded Cruiser and then the removal and replacement of the current engine with an electric motor and the battery system. The Smart they offer is $43,000, and that is the older model which is imported for an extra $10,000 above the new one. They are pricey, but that is because the company must remove the old components and replace the drivetrain with a new one. Manufacturers will be able to mass produce EVs at a much lower cost and to them and to us.

But just for fun, I did some math to compare the Volt to the Cruze, because there were previous Cruze comparisons. This comparison is based on the Cruze using gas for a daily commute, and the Volt running on electricity only. Other than gas, no maintenance costs are being included, as we don’t know what they will be. So, assuming the average amount of daily commuter miles is 17 per day (which is what I’ve been reading), multiply that by 5 and then by 52, and you get 4,420 miles without ever using gas. At 40mpg and $4.00 per gallon, that is $442 per year. But over ten years, that’s $4,420. So by buying a $40,000 Volt (high 40s, mind you) can save you around $4,420 in ten years. So then $40,000 – $4,420 = $35,580. With GM’s proposed $7,000 tax break, you’d still be at $28,580. That does bring it down, but the Cruze makes much more financial sense, which is what most of the buyers actually care about.

Yes, I based it on $4.00 per gallon, but in my town, the gas is averaging around $4.15. Even basing it on $6.00 per gallon, the Cruze still makes more sense as a daily driver, as the price of operation only goes up about $2,000. So instead of $35,580, you’d have $33,370. At $8.00 per gallon, you’d have $31,160, at $10 = $28,950 and at $12 = $26,740. Even including the $7,000 tax break, you’d be at $19,740. No matter what, the Cruze still wins in the financial sense category. Therefore, I really feel GM should rethink their price point as many will choose other offerings.

Keep in mind, though, that there are two major factors that will affect this comparison greatly. The first is the amount of daily miles driven. My amount is far less than 17, so Volt makes absolutely no sense at all financially. However, if you drive around 40 miles daily, the Volt will greatly reduce the difference in the comparison. Just for the heck of it, 40 miles per weekday for a year is 10,400, and a $4.00 per gallon over ten years, you’d save $10,400 in operations over the Cruze. That starts to make more sense. The other factor that will greatly affect the comparison is the final price of the Volt. We’ve been reading $40,000, but in reality it was stated “high $40,000 range”. That’s quite a jump, and a decent model could enter in the mid $50,000 range, like $55,000. At that point, gas prices would have to climb to $15/gallon to make financial sense. Gas prices really will not affect this comparison much.

One thing is for sure, though: GM must make this car very impressive. If they get the interior right, and avoid the “all black” theme that they tend to tout, the could have a real winner. No matter what, GM must make this car look so good and be so desirable to consumers that the PHEV part of it will just be a benefit to a really nice car. I’m hoping they do just that. Only time will tell.

But again, 2010 is looking to be a very good year.

I really should be adding to the Cruze price instead of taking away from the Volt price, but that’s how I wanted to do my comparison.