I firmly believe, based on Mr. Lutz statements, that Volt will be in the same price neighborhood of 50K, with 30% less performance, worse mileage and range and few years later. Or, yeh, GM probably will build it in Mexico, Korea or China.

Hmmm…. Yet another government giveaway to business + a expensive crappy electric car that very few will be able to buy or even want + no real solution as to provide the energy to “recharge” these jokemobiles = Stupidity in the highest degree!

They haven’t even sold a single retail unit, and they are already talking different models? Yeah, right.

Whenever there is a story about electric vehicle offerings from any American company the usual reader-response is that it is overpriced and late. When Apple released the original iPod I was in high school and I remember all my friends talking about how no one would buy something so expensive; but, after the first few students got them and we saw them, we all wanted them. When the iPhone came out, everyone said it was way overpriced and we all laughed at the early adopters when the price was dramatically lowered just a few months later. Now, with the second generation, the price has become much more affordable yet again. We can all laugh at the early adopters, but it is because of their willingness to fork over large sums of money for a little prestige and a sense of being cutting edge that the rest of us end up enjoying that same technology just a few years later at rock-bottoms prices. Are GM or Tesla equivalent to Apple? No, but historical lessons never sync up exactly. I’m willing to bet that some folks will shell out the “ridiculous” sums of money for the Volt and Tesla S. And I’m pretty sure that when the price comes down, as history indicates it will, the rest of us will forget we ever questioned America’s ability to produce affordable electric cars, or that the offering was seemingly so late.

On another note, why is it that everyone is so down on GM for bringing the Volt to market in the same time period as their Asian competitors? Is it not saying something that GM plans on releasing their offering at the same time (or at least within a year or so) as their competitors? Is that not progress? Will it be more expensive? Probably, but we all know the reasons for that are high labor costs, healthcare costs, etc. that are simply not as much of an issue for some foreign companies. Moreover, I am troubled that so many free-market fans on LLN are apt to ridicule GM for going to the U.S. government to subsidize the Volt’s price. That is not anything to worry about as I learned in my Constitutional law class. At the founding of our nation, Hamilton wrote many an article about the types of protectionist policies that were to be instituted to insulate America’s nascent industries. And besides, we all know that some of the reasons why there are even Japanese car companies to compete with American car companies are that Japan places huge tariffs on American vehicles, quotas on the number of American cars allowed into Japan and some heavy government funding of Japanese auto-manufacturers research (we call all disagree about the last one and whether Toyata’s former executive was lying about the subsidies, but I am inclined to believe him). Protective measures of weak homeland companies are not considered anti-free market. In the perfect world, tariffs would not exist, but they are certainly a strong pillar of today’s free-market economies. The Volt should be allowed to benefit from the same, seemingly nefarious, protections as other companies. Perhaps now that Toyota is the big company on the block, it is time for the U.S. to start treating it as one.

Most people here are domestic haters…. me I’m a electric car hater! I will never buy a hybrid! Plug in or otherwise. I think it’s all a waste of time and the feds should be working with GM, Ford and Chrysler on hydrogen or that algae gas. But hybrids are in with hippies and other useless ****s so that’s all anybody wants to talk about.

The Volt will be around $40K not $50K, though I could see GM quick to make their money back rolling out a CADILLAC and/or BUICK version in short order.

I see TESLA on a very slippery slope toward trying to do something good for the world and ultimately not getting very far doing it. I have real doubts that TESLA will produce a car in the low to mid $30Ks by 2020. Granted the technology is still new… (I’ll laugh derisively to myself a moment), but I also think that this paradigm shift is being handled very poorly.

When you have guys, who are NOT founders of huge mega websites, heirs to the post-it note fortune, or being funded by their families who own sizable pharmaceutical companies, who are building their own hybrids and making them work for a fraction of the cost, the wrong people are being given too much time.

The case for Hybrids have not yet been made very convincing for most people, as polls will tell. Building these machines that threaten over $40K to own, is not helping. If you want people to get behind this technology, then stop building these god-awful expensive machines, simplify and save cost, and look at what these garage mechanics are building with shoestring budgets and take them seriously.

I second DialM4Speed…

The Luddites have spoken.

“It doesn’t work now so why try?”
“If it worked why doesn’t everybody build it now?”
“I just want to suck my exhaust pipe, I’m so afraid of change!”
“V8 or Castrate!”

The same weak ass, USELESS, defeatist rhetoric as ever. Just go back under your rocks and leave the rest of the forward looking, forward moving world be.

You’ll join us or not. Neither really matters.

Unfortunately for you, yours is not, nor will it ever by, the last word. Gas will never be cheap enough again to make big engines common in the future. Your children and grandchildren will grow up thinking that a 3.0L V6 is a huge engine and anything with a gear transmission is stupidly primitive.

As they say,” Smoke while you got ‘em.” I’ve already made my peace with ‘em. You’d better get started yourself.