Chevy Volt volumes will ramp up, probably starting at about 10,000 units
While we all wait with baited breath to find out if the reality of the Chevy Volt meets up with the promise, many other non-performance related questions remain as well. Cost is obviously a big one. The goal is for the Volt to be a high-volume mainstream car and for that to happen it has to be affordable. Affordability affects both General Motors and end consumers. The price has to be low enough that lots of people can buy it. At the same time, GM has to be able to get economies of scale to bring the piece costs down enough that they can afford to sell the car. Unfortunately, it looks like the initial volumes will be lower than some people had hoped for. In a report in the Globe and Mail, Bob Lutz has said the initial year volume will be about 10,000 units. Because of the new technology in this car, GM is clearly reticent about pushing out too many cars too quickly until they see how they work in the real world. Once GM gets cars in the field and sees that they are working reliably, the company will ramp up production. If everything works as planned and the cost of the batteries falls - as hoped - the volumes will climb quickly with a range of models being built from the E-Flex architecture.
[Source: Globe and Mail]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Tim 7:55AM (2/25/2008)
Color me skeptical but when you have a global warming denier, a car with a ever extending sale date (2010? 2011?) combined with nonexistent battery tech one has to wonder whether the Volt is just part of a GM marketing campaign. I mean by now the advertising campaign must be greater than there investment in the car. Reminds me of BP's "beyond petroleum" campaign; all show no go.
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greg woulf 9:39AM (2/25/2008)
They haven't moved the date, but even if they do by one year it's still the first car that makes sense in the electric arena.
Calling the date "ever extending" is a bald faced lie. They've said it might be 2010 from the first announcement of production and still haven't shifted from that. If it does slip to 2011 they're still not extending the date.
GM's not building the car to save the world, that's why it will be a success. They're running a business, not a global charity. When we show a demand for good products, they'll take our money.
They've said 10,000 before, and mentioned that it was partly because it was new and partly because the launch will be in 2010, and not at the begining of 2010.
I wish people would stop trying to make them look bad when it serves the green cause so much to give them a chance.
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Tim 9:13AM (2/25/2008)
This is just the 1st year's limited production so they can work out any kinks BEFORE they make hundreds of thousands of copies. I can't fault them for wading in instead of jumping in. We'll see how much room this makes for competition to win E-REV marketshare away from GM.
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Dave 9:56AM (2/25/2008)
I think they will loose a HUGE amount of money on this low of a quantity at a sell price of 35K, especially since this is a new body style and they have to pay for new tooling for just about all the piece parts and sub-assemblies. They should probably convert an existing body style over to save money and gauge market acceptance rather than recreate from scratch. Their stategy does not make any sense economically, that's probably why they are not in any hurry to get this into volume.
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eddy 10:02AM (2/25/2008)
Well there are 4 or 5 other players in the PHEV-market, too. The release date sounds realistic. The big automotive suppliers (Bosch, Continental, Magna-Steyer) announced new capabilities for electric car production and there were various prototypes.
Short Overview:
GM - Chevrolet Volt , Opel/Saturn Flextreme 2010/2011
Ford - Volvo C30 Recharge 2012
VW - Audi A1 Hybrid 2010/2011
Renault - Kangoo 2 PHEV 2008/2009
Mercedes - Sprinter PHEV 2008/2009
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ruby 10:42AM (2/25/2008)
er... bated breath.
Baited breath would be a slug in your mouth.
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ruby 10:44AM (2/25/2008)
alternatively:
Geoffrey Taylor
Cruel Clever Cat:
Sally, having swallowed cheese,
Directs down holes the scented breeze,
Enticing thus with baited breath
Nice mice to an untimely death.
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Tim 10:46AM (2/25/2008)
"If it does slip to 2011 they're still not extending the date."???????????????? How is that not extending to release date?
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080103/UPDATE/801030451/1148/rss25
"I wish people would stop trying to make them look bad when it serves the green cause so much to give them a chance" Greenies don't have to try to bash GM. Lutz is a one man wrecking crew in this regard.
I never asked GM to be a charity (they are in fact hemorrhaging billions) and I would love to see the Volt on the road. I just think that they are over promising at the moment but they parade the Volt around like "see we're green no gas" when there is no working prototype with the specs promised.
I give some credit to GM for using alternative fuels like ethanol. But corn ethanol is only works within a framework of heavy subsidies.
What do you think Sam?
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Sam Abuelsamid 10:53AM (2/25/2008)
As I've said before, GM has never actually announced an official on sale date, nor would any carmaker do so this far in advance of job 1. The 2010 time frame has been listed as a target, as in "We'd like to have the Volt on sale by around 2010." Anything beyond that is simply extrapolation by fans who have no actual experience developing a new car.
With such a radically different architecture being developed, any engineer who's spent more than six months working on new cars would never commit publicly to a date so far out because they know they will encounter issues that they didn't anticipate. The target remains by the end of 2010 but until they have done extensive vehicle durability testing, you will not hear anything more solid from GM.
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Tim 11:03AM (2/25/2008)
Sam well written. I totally agree with your sentiment regarding the the release date. I was not being fair to the GM engineers. I hope they can pull this off. Until they get a working prototype however I just wish they wouldn't advertise it.
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Sam Abuelsamid 11:05AM (2/25/2008)
I agree that the company is probably using the Volt a bit to much in their promotions and it does the possibility of back-firing. On the other hand based on what I'm hearing about bench testing and simulation results, they are very confident that this will all work in the end.
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ronnie schreiber 11:25AM (2/25/2008)
The question now is not whether the battery tech will be there in time for the Volt. If Lutz has been hyping anything it's his "we're rolling the dice on the batteries being available in time" line. In the car biz two years out is tomorrow, which means that GM wouldn't even think of making the Volt if they weren't pretty sure about battery availability. A123 and Nanosolar both make Li-Ion batteries that work today, but they are expensive. Caterpillar's Firefly division also has some very promising lead/acid battery tech. This summer their group 31 battery with a carbon foam negative electrode goes on sale this summer - it will be marketed to the over the road trucking industry. As the cost of fuel and regulations start preventing drivers from idling all night while they sleep, big rigs need batteries that can run HVAC etc overnight. Firefly is also developing a positive electrode. They claim that cells using carbon foam electrodes for both the + and - can perform competitively with Li-Ion and other hi-tech batteries at close to the cost of conventional lead acid units.
The main issues are cost, including the cost of controls and software to make sure the battery pack works and works safely. However, when GM is ordering them by the tens of thousands, they'll be cheaper than when Phoenix Motorcars buys a couple dozen.
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KarenRei 12:50PM (2/25/2008)
It's about time they cut their production estimates. 40k+ in the first year was grossly unrealistic even when the price was only $30k.
A123 and Nanosolar both make Li-Ion batteries that work today, but they are expensive
Um. Nanosolar makes ubercheap CIGS solar panels, not batteries. You thinking of AltairNano? Yes, A123 and AltairNano are among a number of "safe" li-ion manufacturers out there.
Caterpillar's Firefly division also has some very promising lead/acid battery tech.
AFAIK, Firefly makes lead-acid batteries with high *power* density. The energy density is only marginally better than conventional lead-acid, and energy density is the real problem.
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greg woulf 1:04PM (2/25/2008)
People mistake GM's losing money with GM losing money because they cancelled the EV-1. That's not the case.
GM is losing money and market position because of it's being located in the U.S. and having an old system.
Just look at GM's profits in any other country that's not the U.S. or Japan. They're making good profits overseas.
Toyota's 1st batch of Prius was smaller than 10,000 cars. 10,000 is a good place to start.
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Dave 1:20PM (2/25/2008)
What if....they converted a Corvett to a PEV. Sell low quantities at high prices and pit it against Tesla. Then, if successful, use the same drive train parts for the Volt and tool up the body. If they did it this way they could make a profit out of the shoot. Now, I am talking PEV not PHEV on this idea.
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eddy 2:10PM (2/25/2008)
@ Dave
Usually your "plan" is the more economical one, but such a top-down-introduction of Technology doesn't work if you want to earn yourselv a reputation as mass producer of cheap electric cars before Toyota/Renault does the same thing.
@ greg woulf
GM has an old system everywhere. They don't perform very well in Germany and Sweden too. Most time they have big problems with quality assurance and have big Image problems with their brands because of big errors they made in the 90s. The only really good working division of GM is GM-Daewoo. The main problems they should solve is a better approach to lean management and knowledge integration.
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Tim 2:23PM (2/25/2008)
Who Killed The Electric Street Car?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFhsrbtQObI&NR=1
In 1947 the federal government charged GM along with Firestone, Phillips Petroleum and Standard Oil Company with Criminal Conspiracy to replace the efficient electric streetcars with GM diesel buses on Firestone Tires fueled by Phillips in the East and Standard in the West. They were found GUILTY!
In L.A. alone, it will cost well over $150 Billion and 20 years JUST to rebuild PART of the electric rail system that GM helped to destroy.
I’m not quite sure that I trust this company.
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Arnie 8:52AM (2/26/2008)
"Global warming denier" - I like that. Has a nice ring to it like "Holocaust denier." Why don't we use "thoughtcriminal" or "thoughtcrime" for everything that doesn't conform to the green/PC gospel?
"Gee I'm not sure about that global watming stuff"
THOUGHTCRIME!
Someone mentions fried chicken while commenting on a Caddy Escalade:
THOUGHTCRIME!
"Financing companies should not be forced to lend to people who can't pay back"
THOUGHTCRIME!
"Green fuel causes destruction of the rainforests"
THOUGHTCRIME!
And so on. Maybe ABGreen can add a button we can push when we feel offended so we don't have to reply. After all, being insensitive to correctly thinking people is thoughtcrime.
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