GM Volts Shocking: GM Literally Sold Out of Them

[martinjlm]

And so? Are we suppose to care about some car selling out..

dear gawd, what people will crow about..

What happened is last years model sold out.

Finally.

No, not really. What happened was both 2011 and 2012 model year vehicles sold out. Which is EXACTLY what the TEMPORARY plant idling was supposed to do. Originally the Volt was projected to sell 30-35,000 per year for the first few full years of production. There were some optimistic estimates that the figure could be as high as 60,000 so the plant was set up to run at a 60,000 rate. The actual sales are trending more towards the originally forecast 30-35,000, so the plant was TEMPORARILY idled to allow sales to draw down the inventory. The plan was to draw the inventory down via a 5-week shutdown. The plant was restarted after 4 weeks to continue 2012 model year production. A week early due to demand picking up a bit faster than expected.

Now before we start to hear "well it only sold less than 10,000 in 2011". True, but 10,000 was an ambitious goal considering it was only available in about a dozen states, and several hundred were built and set aside as dealer demos. The demos were eventually sold, but initially dealers were restricted from selling them.

And before we hear "Prius doesn't have any problems selling....." if you look at the first year of Prius sales, they sold less in the first year than Volt did in its first year, even though Prius was available in all 50 states and Volt only in about a dozen. Volt sales are currently on track at the same rate as Prius sales were in Prius' second year.

 

[Old Rocks]

There is certainly room for electrical cars,but it will not reduce energy use,HP requirements don't change from one energy source to another,who many miles to the pound of coal will its get?? who many cubic feet of Natural gas per mile. Unless its charge solely from wind or PV your still going to burn a fossil fuel to make it go.

An EV, when measured by the amount of carbon produced per mile, is actually more efficient than an ICE even is fueld by coal produced electricity. But, for a home owner, the next purchase after an EV would be solar to power their home and vehicle. The use of the EV makes the payoff of the solar much quicker, especially as the demand, worldwide, causes the price of gasoline to continue to rise.

 

[Old Rocks]

Great- let's end the $10,000 tax break. Why subsidize a successful product?

Excellant idea. Let's also end all subsidization of oil companies.