.
For those of you in love with the auto bailouts as much as we are, this one is kind of a no-brainer.
Love that they patterned the music after the Bob Seeger "Like a Rock" Chevy ads from years gone by.
All you have to do is fail miserably...
General Motors Co sold a record number of Chevrolet Volt sedans in August — but that probably isn't a good thing for the automaker's bottom line.
Nearly two years after the introduction of the path-breaking plug-in hybrid, GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds, according to estimates provided to Reuters by industry analysts and manufacturing experts.
Cheap Volt lease offers meant to drive more customers to Chevy showrooms this summer may have pushed that loss even higher. There are some Americans paying just $5,050 to drive around for two years in a vehicle that cost as much as $89,000 to produce.
And while the loss per vehicle will shrink as more are built and sold, GM is still years away from making money on the Volt, which will soon face new competitors from Ford, Honda and others.
GM's basic problem is that "the Volt is over-engineered and over-priced," said Dennis Virag, president of the Michigan-based Automotive Consulting Group.
They are over-priced even with the $7,500 tax payer-provided subsidy.
And no wonder people are leasing instead of buying. Who wants to fork over another 10 grand in 5-7 years when that battery needs to be replaced?
GM's quandary is how to increase sales volume so that it can spread its estimated $1.2-billion investment in the Volt over more vehicles while reducing manufacturing and component costs - which will be difficult to bring down until sales increase.
But the Volt's steep $39,995 base price and its complex technology — the car uses expensive lithium-polymer batteries, sophisticated electronics and an electric motor combined with a gasoline engine — have kept many prospective buyers away from Chevy showrooms.
Some are put off by the technical challenges of ownership, mainly related to charging the battery. Plug-in hybrids such as the Volt still take hours to fully charge the batteries - a process that can been speeded up a bit with the installation of a $2,000 commercial-grade charger in the garage.
"I don't see how General Motors will ever get its money back on that vehicle," countered Sandy Munro, president of Michigan-based Munro & Associates, which performs detailed tear-down analyses of vehicles and components for global manufacturers and the U.S. government.
It currently costs GM "at least" $75,000 to build the Volt, including development costs, Munro said. That's nearly twice the base price of the Volt before a $7,500 federal tax credit provided as part of President Barack Obama's green energy policy.
Other estimates range from $76,000 to $88,000, according to four industry consultants contacted by Reuters. The consultants' companies all have performed work for GM and are familiar with the Volt's development and production. They requested anonymity* because of the sensitive nature of their auto industry ties.
.
The commercial:
The reality:
General Motors has told 1,300 employees at its Detroit Hamtramck that they will be temporarily laid off for five weeks as the company halts production of the Chevrolet Volt and its European counterpart, the Opel Ampera.
“Even with sales up in February over January, we are still seeking to align our production with demand,” said GM spokesman Chris Lee.
Lee said employees were told Thursday that production would put on hold from March 19 to April 23.
The Chevrolet Volt, an extended-range electric car, is both a political lightning rod and a symbol of the company’s technological capability.
Chevrolet sold 1,023 Volts in the U.S. in February and has sold 1,626 so far this year.
In 2011, Chevrolet sold 7,671 Volts, but fell short of its initial goal of 10,000.
The sales figures for the Chevy Volt are down, raising red flags throughout the auto industry—especially during a time were Volt production has been ramped up.
A new study by CNW marketing, a private research firm that focuses its research on consumer motivations and decisions in automotive purchases, has been released showing that the potential buyers that GM is counting on are rapidly losing interest in the Volt. In March, 21% of Early Adapters said they were “very likely” to consider buying a Volt, while 38.1% said they were “likely” to do the same. Those numbers slipped to 14.6% saying “very likely” in July and 31.1% “likely.” Among EV Enthusiasts, reports the CNW study, the number of those likely or very likely to consider Volt fell from a combined 71% to 51% during the same four month timetable.
Chevy officials defend the Volt’s high price tag by pointing to the complexity of the dual gas electric hybrid drivetrain. The Volt is capable of traveling 35 miles on battery power alone.
“So frustrating to use it will make you do the greenest thing at all: Kill yourself.”
“Why pollute around you with exhaust when you can pollute far away with coal?”
We're just the messenger here, folks.
Today Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) sent letters to the Director of Enforcement for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan to share records CREW obtained through its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against Education. These documents show high-level Education officials colluded with Wall Street short-sellers, improperly leaking the contents of highly controversial gainful employment regulations in advance of their publication. Click here to read the letters.Remind us again of what the DOE brings to the party.
“These new documents, combined with others previously uncovered by CREW raise troubling questions about the actions of high-level Education officials, the fairness of the agency’s regulatory process, and investors’ efforts to manipulate Education regulations for their own personal gain,” said CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan. “It is incumbent on the SEC to fully investigate this matter.”
What could possibly go wrong?
President Obama yesterday formalized indefinite detention for dozens of men held at Guantanamo Bay and announced that the Pentagon would move ahead with military trials for a handful of other detainees.
In an executive order [1], which we first reported on in June 2009 [2], the White House created a board to periodically review the dangerousness of prisoners being held without charge or trial. The order says the new process will allow detainees -- some in custody for nearly a decade -- to challenge the government's determination that they pose a threat if released.
While the order is new, most of the ideas [3] it contains are not. This is the third time such a board has been created for nearly the same purpose. Two similar processes to review detainee cases were in place during the Bush administration. Like its predecessors, the Obama administration's review process will operate outside the courts and will be subject to no independent review. Also like the Bush White House, the Obama administration alone will choose all members of the review board and appoint a "personal representative" to advocate on behalf of the detainees.
/sound of crickets.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told an audience at MIT on Thursday that he thought the Defense Department's treatment of alleged WikiLeaks source Private Bradley Manning was "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid."
Blogger Philippa Thomas first reported Crowley's remarks, which she said were part of a lecture on "the benefits of new media as it relates to foreign policy" at an event organized by MIT's Center for Future Civic Media.
"One young man said he wanted to address ‘the elephant in the room'. What did Crowley think, he asked, about Wikileaks? About the United States, in [the questioner's] words, ‘torturing a prisoner in a military brig'? Crowley didn't stop to think. What's being done to Bradley Manning by my colleagues at the Department of Defense ‘is ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.' He paused. ‘None the less Bradley Manning is in the right place'. And he went on lengthening his answer, explaining why in Washington's view, ‘there is sometimes a need for secrets... for diplomatic progress to be made'," Thomas wrote.
Perhaps they just should have called it the BTU instead...
First, they hosed the secured creditors in favor of the unions during the bankruptcy cramdown proceedings.
Then, they lied and lied some more with respect to where they got the money to pay off the TARP loan.
And now we are finding out that the General Motors Volt electric car really isn't as electric as they originally led us to believe.
Our blog buddy, Harrison, over at Capitol Commentary has the goods including a run down of the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been poured into General Motors in the form of TARP loans, grants and subsidies both here and abroad to foreign companies to help, in part, produce this fraud of a vehicle.
... they didn't but perhaps they should have.
How is that we go from Bob Seeger's "Like a Rock" and John Mellencamp's "This is our country" to help sell Chevy/GM products to horror that is below? Via The Scratching Post:
And with respect to this electric = green thing, someone is going to have to sit down and explain this to us as nearly half of the electricity we generate comes from coal-fired plants.
But when all is said and done we'll never look at the inverted one-armed hand plant quite the same again.
The most recent estimates indicate that GM plans to make 200-400 Chevy Volts in 2010 and then about around 10,000 in 2011. These numbers are down significantly from predictions a few years ago of 60,000 Volts in the first year. CNET, though, thinks that the actual number of plug-in hybrids, like the Volt, that will use LG Chem's lithium-ion packs that GM can make a year is actually 70,000. CNET is also willing to put a price on the Voltec system's pack: $8,000.
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