I love the concept of the Volt so I want to see that type of vehicle succeed. Having said that, from the beginning when I saw the sticker price on it I knew it would not fly. Today I saw a headline that they are temporarily shutting production down because of low demand and laying off 1200 workers. You did not have to be Nostradamus to predict this.
Here is some basic math to see the problem. The volt costs $40,000. It is a fairly small car. I compare this from a cost standpoint to the $11,000 Hyundai accent I drive. It gets about 34 miles to the gallon. I drive 15,000 miles a year. That means I use about 450 gallons of fuel a year. So in a $4/gallon era that is about $1800/year I spend on gas. To justify the $29,000 difference that is a lot of years. Assume I never went over the 35 mile electric only range of the volt so I never used a drop of gas. Even with that unrealistic assumption that would mean it would take me over 16 years to cost justify the difference in initial cost. Not to mention the fact my car hasn’t been in for a single repair since I have owned it, with new technology there are bound to be maintenance issues as well.
The only people who are buying the Volt are those trying to make a statement and ignoring the math. Until there is a more reasonably priced alternative this type of vehicle will not be widely accepted by the consumers. Maybe if fuel costs shoots up to $8 or $10 a gallon it will start to make sense but for now I think these are basically prototypes and GM is trying to find that next breakthrough technology. I just think it needs to not be packaged as a production vehicle if it is not ready for prime time yet from a market standpoint. I love the idea of taking chances and trying to think outside the box but at the end of the day there needs to be a product that you can price competitively and something that makes some sense for the consumer from a cost standpoint, at least for most consumers as we are seeing with the low demand for these vehicles. Can’t we just skip to the Jetson style hovercrafts already? Who is working on that?!
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