Volting Through The Snow, In A Really Limited-Range Car.....

Henry Payne in the Detroit News has an interesting comparison of the three different engine stylings of the same car sold as the Chevy Volt, Cruze or Cruze Diesel.

As most people know, cold kills batteries, and the Volt's winter performance is pretty darn underwhelming:

GM claims the Volt is good for 50 miles on a full charge, but range plummets to around 25 miles on a sub-freezing December day.

25 miles between plug-ins makes the car a no-go for most people who would use it to, you know, drive places, at which point it switches to gas and then the economics of it get even less desirable.

At current gas prices, recovery of the operating price of either the diesel model or the Volt over the standard gas Chevy Cruze is well in excess of the typical expected life of the car - around 13 years plus, depending on the numbers, and the purchase price of the Volt over the Cruze would take 5 years to recover (Yeah, the math in the article is weird and I wonder how they got to those numbers). Anyone want to pose a guess on how many volts will last 13 years without major overhauls?

Now,if you've got the means to throw away money, have an enviro-uber-alles sensibility, and don't have to go farther than 25 miles between plug-ins, then by all means buy the Volt.

For the Volt to be viable, you have to revolve your life around the limits of the vehicle, and most people rarely want to by a car to limit their options.

"For the Volt to work, your life has to be set up for it,” says Devin Scillian, WDIV-TV news anchor, best-selling author, and Chevy Volt evangelist. “And my life is set up for it.”

Most people's lives aren't, nor do I think most people want to switch their lives around just to have a Volt. Cars are supposed to be liberating and expanding your options, not confining and limiting them.

For now the Volt can't be considered a primary vehicle in Michigan unless you have a very limited range commute without much in the way of side trips and have charging stations everywhere you go, and that's not the case for most people.

The Electric Obama Lada Receives A Price Shock

Funny how people don't want to overspend on what is a short range electric vehicle, no matter how much the administration and GM, but I repeat myself, doubles down on it.

The Detroit Free Press: GM cuts Chevrolet Volt price by $5,000 as sales stall

General Motors is cutting the price of the Chevrolet Volt by $5,000 after rebates failed to revive the extended-range plug-in’s sales when competitors also cut prices.

GM said the 2014 Volt will start at $34,995, including a $810 destination fee. The 2013 model will continue to be priced at $39,995 with $5,000 cash back.

There is still a $7,500 federal tax credit for buyers and additional tax incentives in certain states and localities, especially in California.

Sales have stalled in 2013, rising a meager 0.1% to 11,643 vehicles through July. The Volt was the best-selling plug-in vehicle in the U.S. in 2012, but Nissan’s pure-electric Leaf and Tesla’s luxury electric Model S could surpass it this year.

Even with all these incentives piled on incentives and tax breaks its not enough. After all, $35k for a vehicle that could only be a secondary car for non-urban folks is quite the expense in return for false environmental consciousness othat comes from owning a coal-powered car. Note that even with all the push for electric cars and the high sticker price,

GM is not making a profit on the Volt, according to analysts.

But fear not, the 2014 version will have - ta da! - A leather-wrapped steering wheel! Oooh, now that should increase sales!

GM Can't Sell Volts Even As Gas Hits $4/Gallon

The bad news is yes, stations around here are now selling gas at the 4.00/gallon mark. That's not good for the economy but a market response to Obama's war on oil production and the many rounds of quantitative easing.

The bad news for GM, even with high gas prices, they're producing more Volts than the public wants to buy.

The Detroit Free Press: GM to pull plug on Volt production for 5 weeks

Even with gas prices climbing past $4 a gallon, General Motors plans to halt production of the Chevrolet Volt for another five weeks to keep inventories from swelling, the second extended shutdown since late December.

Production of the plug-in extended-range electric car will stop at the Detroit-Hamtramck plant from March 19 to April 23. Chevrolet sold 1,023 Volts in February, or more than twice the number of all-electric Nissan Leafs sold.

"Volt sales are increasing but we are currently at a point where we have to maintain inventory levels," said GM spokesman Chris Lee.

In February, hybrids and electric cars accounted for 3.2% of U.S. industry sales, up from just more than 2% for 2011, said Jessica Caldwell, senior analyst for Edmunds.com.

However, GM ended the month with a 154 days' supply of Volts, according to WardsAuto. That's more than twice the 60 days' supply considered adequate.

Read the rest of the article on how smart GM is to pause production because no one is buying the $40,000 car, even when the price drops to $32,500 after the federal tax credit for purchase.

It's expensive, short-ranged, immature technology that occasionally goes up in flames?

So now why is it again that Americans aren't buying them?

Senator Levin Loves Himself a Government Motors Volt

The Detroit Free Press: Sen. Carl Levin loves his new Chevrolet Volt -- and what it means

But its electric power was the reason he bought it.

"It's much cheaper to run it on electricity. And cleaner, of course. So I bought it to get those savings downstream," he said.

Cleaner out the tailpipe perhaps, but not if you take into account the coal needed to provide for the electricity to charge it. Also accoridng to the article he seems to run it on gas a lot, nullifying the whole "cleaner" claim. Nor is the Volt cheaper if you run an total cost of owenrship analysis - wish it was, but it isn't yet.

The article does show that, at least on this occasion, even Senators can be hampered by Washington bureaucracy and regulations, namely the difficulties in getting a charging station for the Volt installed at the Capitol building. Of course unlike us, he can push legislation through to make this annoyance go away.

The sad thing is, he's pretty representative of the congressman that passed the bailout of GM among other things and are helping run this economy into the ground:

At one point, the glowing digital letters on the dashboard made him wrinkle his forehead.

"This A and B, I'll be damned if I know what that means," he said. (A and B are trip odometers for separate journeys.)

Democrats in this modern day can't even figure out what a trip odometer is, much less the fine art of good governance.