Jump to content
SASS Wire Forum

Chevy Volt--The car of the future


Dusty Balz, SASS#46599

Recommended Posts

My most favoritist car ever was my ol' '73 Super Beetle. "Texas Gelb" in color. Nearly double the trunk capacity (would hold a blacktail buck nicely! :D ). Used it like a Jeep... if we got stuck, just lifted it off the offending rock or out of the hole a wheel might've gotten stuck in. Cozy, but I was young and slender; my kid bro and cousin and my ol' Brittany, Woody, had many hunting and fishing expeditions in Otto.

 

Fondly remember guys b'side the fire trail with pickup hoods up and steam spewing outta their engine compartments flippin' us off as we puttered past with big grins, Blaupunkt blaring the William Tell Overture, and yelling "Air-Cooled Engines Forever...!" :lol:

 

With Koni shocks and struts and nice Michelins, I could beat my buddy's TR-6 on the road to Stinson Beach....

 

Dumbest thing I ever did was selling that rig. :( Sold it to buy a Chevy long-bed pickup... which I later had to sell 'cuz I literally couldn't park the danged thing - lived in San Francisco at the time, and parking spots were dear.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I recall one night at a highschool basketball game, a fellow from the visiting town came in his VW bug.

 

He parked it right outside the door to the gym. It was a small space that the custodian had

cut down a tree from and there was a stump. When the guy parked his car, it was sticking out a bit from the edge of the roadway. Well a few of us more helpful guys picked up the rear end and

set it on the stump. The rear wheels just cleared the ground. Not sure how he got it off of there. :unsure:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Saw many a VW on parking lots at Texas Tech University....stuffed and packed inside with snow. Worse part was when it thawed a tad and then froze solid. Wonder if VW owners just naturally tick people off or they're easy to open.

 

I do remember that you could pack 4-5 cases of Coors under the hoody trunk. Or is it the trunky hood? :huh:

 

For sheer ugly anyone remember the Dodge Valiant?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Saw many a VW on parking lots at Texas Tech University....stuffed and packed inside with snow. Worse part was when it thawed a tad and then froze solid. Wonder if VW owners just naturally tick people off or they're easy to open.

 

I do remember that you could pack 4-5 cases of Coors under the hoody trunk. Or is it the trunky hood? :huh:

 

For sheer ugly anyone remember the Dodge Valiant?

Don' tell anybody, but... I actually drove a Gremlin for a short spell. :blush:

 

Got it from my Uncle Ralph. Couple weeks later I gave it back... :rolleyes:

 

Danged thing had a 6-cyl, three-speed on the floor with no 1st synchro, and freakin' vaccuum wipers!! :huh:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Of course we didn't have all the frills that are needed in todays cars, like heaters, defrosters, heated seats....

BMC...you had seats!!!!! Why all I had was wood milk crates held down to the car frame with some rope. If my Dad was feeling generous he'd give me another piece of rope to use as a seat belt :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yeah... the Euro's get a lot of neat stuff we can't have. :(

 

Remember when Diesel fuel was cheap....? The cost of removing most of the sulfer drove the price WAY up... and now they want to do the same with gasoline - most has already been removed, but the last millisquidgens the greenies want out will create a major hiccup in the pump cost.

 

On the DOE.... we need a president to make a Kennedy-like "Gonna put a man on the moon!" type mandate, and charge the DOE with making it happen. <_<

 

Oh... and by the way... don't forget the "Sales Tax Windfall" some state gub'mints get whenever the pump price shoots up! :angry:

 

Removing the sulfur from diesel only increased the cost of refining by 5 to 9 cents of the 19 cent difference in wholesale cost. The rest of the difference is taxes, and profits (AKA, supply and demand). Demand is going up worldwide for diesel, particularly in China and India. Supply is down, US refineries are running at less than 85% of capacity. For a while it was the problems with the Gulf Coast refineries. Now that they are back on-line, the oil companies have started idling their east coast refineries. Why increase refining when you can make the same or more profit refining and selling less product?

 

Gasoline is still the major component of refining and the focus of the refiners. Of the daily usage of 19 million barrels per day, 8.76 is gasoline, 1.44 is jet fuel, 3.32 is diesel, 1.02 is fuel oil and kerosene, and 2.11 is other distillates (av-gas, lubricants, asphalt, etc).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Don' tell anybody, but... I actually drove a Gremlin for a short spell. :blush:

 

Got it from my Uncle Ralph. Couple weeks later I gave it back... :rolleyes:

 

Danged thing had a 6-cyl, three-speed on the floor with no 1st synchro, and freakin' vaccuum wipers!! :huh:

 

Yeah, i forgot about those. The were fun. Going down hill was whap whap whap.

Going up hill was whap..................... whap

If it was raining hard, you were screwed going up hill. :lol:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is an interesting perspective on the Chevy Volt.....I'll let you confirm for yourself... Published May, 2011

 

Dirty Little Secret Behind the Chevy Volt"

 

 

 

This is what happens when the government tries to run the marketplace.

 

The Chevy Volt MUST NOT be allowed to fail!

The "Dirty Little Secret Behind the Chevy Volt"

 

 

Patrick Michaels is a senior fellow in Environmental Studies at the Cato Institute and the editor of the forthcoming Climate Coup: Global Warming's Invasion of our Government and our Lives, as well as the author of several other books on global warming. His Forbes column on the Chevy Volt is a case study in the nexus between big government corruption and big business subsidies. Michaels briefly recaps the consumer fraud in which GM has touted the Volt as an all-electric mass production vehicle on the supposed basis of which its sales receive a $7, 500 taxpayer subsidy , and it is still overpriced and unmarketable. Michaels notes that "sales are anemic: 326 in December, 321 in January, and 281 in February." Do you see a trend here?

 

Michaels adds that GM has announced a production run of 100, 000 in the first two years, and asks what appears to be a rhetorical question: "Who is going to buy all these cars?" But wait! Keep hope alive! There is a positive answer to the question. Jeffrey Immelt's GE will buy a boatload of those uneconomic GM cars. Here the case study opens onto the inevitable political angle: Recently, President Obama selected General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt to chair his Economic Advisory Board. GE is also awash in windmills waiting to be subsidized so they can provide unreliable, expensive power. Consequently, and soon after his appointment, Immelt announced that GE will buy 50, 000 Volts in the next two years, or half the total produced.

Assuming the corporation qualifies for the same tax credit, we (you and me) just shelled out $375, 000, 000 to a company to buy cars that no one else wants, so that GM will not tank and produce even more cars that no one wants. And this guy is the chair of Obama's Economic Advisory Board?

 

Michaels includes this hilarious detail in his case study: In a telling attempt to preserve battery power, the car's heater is exceedingly weak. Consumer Reports tests averaged a paltry 25 miles of electric-only running , in part because it was testing in cold Connecticut. (The GM engineer at the Auto Show said cold weather would have little effect.) It will be interesting to see what the Volt's range is on a hot, traffic-jammed summer day, when the air conditioner will really tax the batteries. When the gas engine came on, Consumer Reports got about 30 miles to the gallon of premium fuel ; which, in terms of additional cost of high-test gas, drives the effective mileage closer to 27 mpg.

A conventional Honda Accord, which seats 5 (instead of the Volt's 4), gets 34 mpg on the highway, and costs less than half of what CR paid, even with the tax break.

The story of the GM Volt deserves a place in the Harvard Business School curriculum....but of course, it won't.

It's a classic tale of the GOVERNMENT deciding what the public needs, not the marketplace.

 

 

What is one of the reasons for this?

Why keep the UAW in business, because Obama owes them for his election. Starting to make sense yet?

:wacko: :wacko: :wacko:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Volt and other hybrids may not suit everyone's needs. Clearly the distribution of US auto sales indicate that. The US personal auto market is currently about 11 million new car and trucks sold annually. Of which GM sells about 2 million cars and trucks annually. The split between "cars" and light duty trucks (pickups, minivans, vans, SUVs, crossovers) is about 50/50. For US manufacturers light duty trucks represent about 60% of their sales. Even the wildly popular Prius is only 1.5% of the US market. Ford sells more Escapes than Toyota sells Priuses.

 

Right now cars like the Volt and Leaf are really only suitable for urban use in stop and go traffic. To that extent, corporate fleet sales make the most obvious source of sales. Lots of stop and go driving in urban areas with centralized overnight parking.

 

So, why prime the pump on hybrid and electric vehicle sales? Right now the US can meet 40% petroleum demand with domestic sources, that is the highest its been in 20 years. In the last 4 years we have gone from needing to increase our import capacity of natural gas to being self sufficient and are on the verge of being an exporter of natural gas. By changing our energy sources, developing domestic sources, and increasing efficiency we are now meeting 81% of our total energy use with domestic sources. If this continues we will be energy self sufficient by 2020 and an major exporter soon after. Once that happens we will no longer care what happens in the Middle East. It will be China's problem.

 

Just think about it this way. The money spent on seeding US electric vehicles and hybrids is fostering a tremendous number of startups wanting to get in on the business, not just of electric vehicles but of all sorts of domestic energy production and efficiency improvement.

 

Every day we get closer to vehicles that meet the US paradigm use. Just this week, a silicon valley startup announced it just broke a critical milestone of 400 watt-hours per kg. It is a quantum increase in efficiency and safety for the lithium ion battery. The current generation of lithium ion batteries, used by the Volt and Leaf, are in the 110 to 130 watt-hours per kg range. This should drop the cost of a battery pack by about 2/3 or increase the range by 3 times.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As Frisco says, it's "seeding" the industry.

 

I hope it's analogous to the cell phone industry... remember when they were huge, prohibitively expensive, and usage cost was $1 per minute? :rolleyes:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Car if the Future to be put on hold for a spell:

 

http://www.freep.com/article/20120302/BUSINESS0101/120302035/Volt-production-on-hold-for-5-weeks

 

 

GG ~ :FlagAm:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Don' tell anybody, but... I actually drove a Gremlin for a short spell. :blush:

 

Got it from my Uncle Ralph. Couple weeks later I gave it back... :rolleyes:

 

Danged thing had a 6-cyl, three-speed on the floor with no 1st synchro, and freakin' vaccuum wipers!! :huh:

 

My first car was a 70 Mustang... I remember a guy with a Gremlin X beating me pretty handily once. Quite the embarrassment. :blush:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just saw on the news where GM has suspended production of the Volt for a minimum of five weeks due to extremely poor sales. The production shutdown runs from March 19th thru April 23rd.

 

I imagine this shutdown is so GM can see if it can afford to continue producing the Volt. Wouldn't be surprised if production never resumes.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

While I certainly am not a great fan of the current folks in Washington DC, or the automobile industry, or the labor unions, I guess I just don't like anybody, I always come back to the issue of the first Oil Embargo

in the 1970s. Had our government had the gonads to tell the automobile industry to fix the problem and do it with private money, I think today, some forty years later, we would be self sufficient in energy.

 

Contrary to government propaganda, the market place has always found a way to make a buck off of any

given situation. For the most part, the folks on the street are smarter than the folks in the bureaucracy of our government.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not worry , you'll see a mandate coming forcing us all to buy one

 

Yup - it's already happening..

 

http://gas2.org/2012/02/20/ge-forcing-employees-into-chevy-volts/

 

GG ~ :FlagAm:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The politicians have no real world sense AT ALL. Pushing up the price of gas to discourage driving has so many other consequences. I live in farm country and wonder how long farmers can afford to run tractors and irrigation pumps that run on diesel. Everything we buy is delivered by truck, train, plane or boat. Boats are the only one with a good record of using wind power and that hasn't been too widespread recently.

 

The roads are falling apart. With crude oil going up so does the cost local, county, state and the federal government has to pay for asphalt.

 

Don't electic cars still need oil and lube? Will we see whale oil again?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.