Volt Charges Ahead – In Outlets Beginning in 2010
GM announced this week that the Chevy Volt is still on schedule for a November 2010 release. The new plug in hybrid (PHEV) is expected to sell for between $30,000 to $40,000. However, GM only expects to be able to ramp production to 100,000 a year by 2012. As a comparison, the Toyota Prius is selling at a rate of almost a quarter a million per year.
While GM works hard to solve battery delays, cooling issues, and other unexpected issues, other companies are also speeding up their own PHEV development. Toyota has announced a follow-on Prius PHEV that will be released in 2009 using standard NiMh battery packs, but will follow-up with Li-ion packs in 2010. Ford has basically given up and said that they hope to have a PHEV available in 5 years.
I wonder if Ford Motor Company will eventually go bankrupt?
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They are darn close to it. My guess is that we will see further consolidation in the auto market. Maybe Nissan and Ford will merge… Thanks for stopping by.
I think Ford will strengthen its wing to other developing countries like India to avoid bankruptcy..
GM’s playing catchup again, is it? That’s just depressing. The U.S. auto manufacturers used to simply lead the world, now they’re collectively cursed with a lack of foresight.
It’s just very, very sad.
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True enough, it is amazing that all three major US automakers have failed to learn the lessons from past history. They found themselves in this same situation in the 80’s, but like lemmings, they just blindly follow each other into oblivion.
There’s an old joke about the US auto industry having to do with government rules on MPG standards.
When the government mandated better MPG standards, the Japanese hired more engineers. American automakers hired more lawyers. (Or lobbyists would fit too.)
This kind of says it all.
Had we as a nation mandated better MPG standards decades ago, GM and Ford would be in much better shape than they are today.
Post (GRD) great republican depression, the remaining working population of America will drive Buick LeSabres and Cavalier-like cars made in China. These cars are a current-day reality on the streets of China, and await export to the U.S. on the docks of Shanghai as we speak! The elitist uber-rich shareholders of GM had GM – America teach GM – China how to build these cars using 85 cent and hour, Chinese peasant women, the supply of which is unending and self-regenerating in China. The Uber rich chose these women over the North American car builders for quite apparent economic reasons! The current “bail-out bullshit” is a smoke-screen devised by the Uber-rich bastards, to foist liability for the large number of unemployed they intend to create, from the private sector, over to the public sector to relieve themselves of any undue expenses, before they collapse expensive North American operations in favor of highly profitable Chinese and Asian operations. Remember, they now own both, are dumping the American white elephant, and the workers, old factories, old obligations, liabilities and all, for more profitable Asian production centers, so that they can be truly competitive with Honda, Hyundai and the like! It is a good, sound business strategy for the uber-rich shareholders, and by selling American stock and buying Asian stock, they slide away to new fields of immense profits, liability free as they collapse American corporations, and Yankee doodle gets it up the brown spot, hard, once again, and is left, smarting and holding the bag! Any truly innovative and advanced ideas will be incorporated into the new Chinese built, highly profitable for shareholders, cars. The “Volt” is a 1969 chevelle body, complete with sheet metal and hydraulic support, engine removed, battery pack added, nightmare of 1930’s greasepit engineering – no servo’s, no drive by wire, no plastics, no carbon fiber, no magnesium parts, no aluminum, no advanced polymer composites – Hell, even Hyundai is trying to make better, lighter, bodies from recycled soda bottles, and Henry Ford did a number with Soy-plastics way back when! There is no way in Hell, that a major corporation in the country that put a man on the moon can be so backwards, unless they have other motivations.