The temporary halt in the production of the Chevy Volt isn't a sign that the Volt is dead or that electric cars are disappearing, but rather that General Motors executives must now separate the Volt's hype from its real value in the marketplace.
The five-week shutdown, announced on Friday, occurred after the giant automaker saw that it wouldn't meet its earlier forecasts of 45,000 annual sales for the Volt, and that its inventory levels were rising too fast. "We made the move to keep the proper inventory levels and to match production to demand," GM spokesman Randy Fox told Design News. "But we have no intention -- none whatsoever -- to pull the plug."
General Motors says it isn’t pulling the plug on the Chevy Volt, despite a five-week halt in production. (Source: GM)
Auto industry experts said they believe GM is committed to the Volt, but added that the company's executives succumbed to the huge hype surrounding the vehicle and began forecasting sales numbers that simply weren't realistic. "There was never the potential for the Volt to be this high-volume, this soon," David Cole, chairman emeritus of the Center for Automotive Research, told us. "The economics of this just didn't make sense."
The Volt has been a media sensation virtually since it rolled out as a concept car at the Detroit auto show in January 2007. Within days of the rollout, more than 250,000 consumers weighed in on a GM.com Web survey, declaring that they would be interested in buying a Volt. The reality, however, has been far different than that. In 2011, the Volt's first full year on the market, GM sold 7,671 Volts -- about 3,300 less than the company's conservative forecasts. In January 2012, sales figures dipped to just 603, which GM blamed on the publicity stemming from a fire during testing by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).
Some experts believe that GM executives recently began comprehending the reality, after first getting too caught up in the great expectations. "Dan Akerson (GM CEO) made a pronouncement about reaching 45,000 sales this year," Cole said. "He should never have done that. But he did." By the time GM executives realized that the Volt's sales were not going to hit earlier targets, inventory levels had already risen too high. As a result, the automaker has had to temporarily lay off about 1,200 hourly workers and 130 salaried employees at its production plant in Hamtramck, Mich. The workers are scheduled to return to the plant on April 23.
the electric car publicity stunts, playing the green card, or, obamas idea that america shud be runnin letric cars, with chuie following his leed, by funlin tax dollars to his buddy the iron man elon,mush--- while fueling up on coal derived electricity, with limited ranges of driving distance, the lithium laptop battery stacks, that heat up and then creep along, has fooled a lot of investors, following obamanomic seence ides, has been really good times for the bankruptcy experts pretending to make letric cars, starting back after the turn of the century, the biggy, elon musk, tesla motors,solar city, spacex, claimaint of paypal pilanthropist, if yer a beliver in myth, keeps him in big bucks, installing short lived solar panels on military bases, pretending to take on NASA's responsibility for space exploration, has filled the entrepanners newsmedia full of the normal come on for the unwary imvestor, destined to lose their money parallel to the taxpayer losing our dollars to a federal reserve-obanomics controlled (rolled) recipiant of a government ruled by the world class mafia, whereby we export our manufacturing companies to communist slave nations, who use free trade as an economic weapon---why bomb american companies when you can get paid exporting into the slave country, while setting up slave goods super store outlets in america, that shutter small family businesses, eliminating american science and technology jobs in the design engineering, manufacturing, marketing and retail sector, leaving more than 1/2 of our youth out of work, while paying the retail service industry chump change. Walmart americas largest employeer, have reduced their avg wage from 12 thousand a year to 10,400 in the last 3 years. while the waltpn family take more cash from our cash flow than 30 % of our workforce, What little tax dollars left, subjected to 40 % interest on our so-called deficit by the private owned federal reserve. the only middle class jobs are within the city, county, state, and federal agencies, other cash paying entitlements are the lgal-medical-insurancefraud mafia, prison economy, utilities and entertainment sector. While I listen to obama on the news of how our manufacturing companies have returned and he has personally restored millions of new jobs, in the last few months, making good on his promise to rebuild our job sector, preparing us for the looming election fraud
disregarding 80 % + jobs make near minimum wage or less, with 1 in 4 out of work
Rebate. That means the government robs us through some kind of gas or greenhouse tax to give money to others to buy politically correct cars. I'd prefer to keep my money and have all of the unsold Volts crushed to make pop cans.
This is an all time watershed moment in the history of the automobile.
I have compared it with Gordon Buehrig's 20 Grand, which is not properly restored, but this time, while it will cost much more than that, but be very beautiful, in keeping with the beauty of it's overall conception. Rare event!
Bob Lutz is very proud of that automobile, and as he said, it should be on the road now.
The Volt, while nice, is no comparison.
Bob got pushed out in the scramble and that was most unfortunate. It will take time to see how GM fares without him. Will they fall back placing decisions in the hands of tasteless, uncreative people? Who knows?
Gates commented that the one thing that he envied about Steve Jobs was his taste. That is the issue. Very few engineer rank very high in that realm.
Lutz has it in spades when it comes to the automobile. And we should be very proud of that. There have been some neat Swiss born guys... Louis Chevrolet, LeCorbusier, Peraves, and Lutz. They have made this a better world. And Peraves gets 200mpg.
In response to: Detroit has had a succession of wonderful Engineers. One of them was Bill Allison who, amongst many many patents for suspensions, invented the Packard torsion ride. In his retirement he perfected the wind engine hitting the Betz limit. And he would go into hysterics about the 3 bladed fans that were trying to fly and are catching on fire and blowing apart all over the world. The Betz limit is 59% efficiency. Those dufus 3 bladed versions are lucky to get 20% efficiency. So as an engineer interested in economics does a 300% increase in efficiency ring any of your bells? Or are you just another lemming?
I had always wondered why they don't use a turbine looking impeller. The design I saw being used in Australia, based on Bill Allisons work, looks something like the cross between a bird cage and a turbine. Why oh why in the world during the time of the information superhighway are we using ginormous three bladed propeller setups that make the country side look like mid 18th century Holland.
Thanks for the post about Bill Allison and his work. I will do some more research on that. Looks really intresting.
Appreciate the explanation, Chuck. Definitely something to be aware of given the criticality of battery development and innovation over the next decade (and likely beyond). Too bad there wasn't some sort of corresponding principle akin to Moore's Law that could be applied to the science of battery development. I suppose only tried and true development is what's going to advance battery life going forward.
The Converj is finally back, Architect, after disappearing for a few years. Not sure what that was about, but Cadillac now says it will roll the vehicle out as the Cadillac ELR.
Beth: The reason why batteries don't follow Moore's Law is that Moore's Law pertains to reduction of feature sizes on silicon. Silicon has been the material of choice in semiconductors since the early 1950s, and hasn't changed in all that time. As a result, manufacturers have been able to build better equipment to pack more transistors on a silicon chip, and the evolution of equipment is really what Moore's Law describes. In contrast, EV batteries have used at least a dozen different chemistries in the 24 years that I've been writing about them. We've seen lead-acid, nickel-iron, sodium-sulfur, advanced lead-acid, nickel-metal hydride, lithium-ion, lithium polymer and on and on. The improvement in battery materials is a matter of physical scince, not manufacturing. See the story on Gates:
Tesla Motors plans to roll out a “compelling, affordable electric car” that will sell for about half the price of its high-profile Model S by the end of 2016, company chairman Elon Musk said last week.
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