And In the “Gee, What a Surprise” Department . . .
Volt sales drop 32% in October
GM blamed the drop in sales on “declining gas prices”.
An underpowered, poorly-designed, poorly-built, short range “gas saving” $40,000 Adam Sandler Mobile (warning – link is DEFINITELY NSFW or around children) that wasn’t worth half what people paid to buy it and was overhyped from day one whose sales fall by 1/3 when gas prices fall 15% or so. Gee – who could have predicted that?
In contrast, sales of a well-designed and well-built competitor – Toyota’s trendy car for the smug and arrogant, the “Prickmobile” (AKA the Prius) – rose 7% in October. And Toyota’s Prickmobile doesn’t have a huge government subsidy backing it, either.
I’d say YGBSM – but I’m dead serious.
Look, I’m OK with people driving a hybrid or other “energy efficient” vehicle if that’s their choice. But I don’t think they deserve any “special reward” for doing so – they get their reward every time they get fuel. And I really hate people trying to sell me a turd sandwich while telling me it’s a delicious hamburger. The Volt was government-subsidized turd sandwich from day one.
“Well done”, GM. Next time, listen to the market instead of some community organizer with no clue about real-world business or economics.
Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Economy, Global Warming
No real surprise there at all…. Government Motors producing a government “suggested” vehicle that was unaffordable and did not meet the hype? Shocker…
If somebody wants to foot the bill for automobile research, I’m fine with it. What I do object to very strongly is any notion that these are “reduced emissions” vehicles. The energy, it must come from someplace. Studies of these “low emission” vehicles show that the emissions are heavy on the manufacturing end, and of course, wherever the energy that they use is produced.
They are not more efficient, and they do not result in net lowered emissions.
Maybe someday, but not yet.
Yeah, gee whiz, when do I get my Jetsonmobile?
If GM wants to sell some vehicles how about introducing a 1/2 ton full size pickup with a clean burning diesel engine that lasts 2 or 300,000 miles like the Cummins? Oh…wait, Nissan just announced the Titan will do just that….oops..
So if sales dropped 32% how many did they sell last month? Six? Volt sales have always been slower than Obamacare sign ups. Funny, both of them are federally subsidized flops. This is what happens the government interferes with the market place.
@jonp – Ford Motors has been selling diesel-powered pickup trucks since 1983. The 2014 F350XLT has a 37.5 4L V-8 diesel engine, three different cab sizes and two box sizes.
http://www.ford.com/trucks/superduty/
And it comes in pretty colors, with chrome or black trim.
Ooooops! That should be ‘37.5 gallon’
YGBSM? WTHIT? ITL LBBT?
TSHB LGBT, N LBBT.
Just wait ’til y’all see Chevy’s new ad campaign for the Volt.
They’re going to be called “Chariots of Fire”!
2/17 Air Cav: “YGBSM” is the acronym for the unofficial motto of the USAF SEAD (suppresation of enemy air defense) crews popularly known as “Wild Weasels.” It is an acronym formed from the first letters of the last five words of the following, reportedly uttered by a former B52 EWO (electronic warfare officer), Jack Donovan, on learning of his new mission:
“You want me to fly in the back of a little tiny fighter aircraft with a crazy fighter pilot who thinks he’s invincible, home in on a SAM site in North Vietnam, and shoot it before it shoots me, you gotta be shittin’ me!“
The motto – and the acronym – stuck. It’s a part of the USAF Wild Weasel patch.
With the possible exception of PJs and Combat Controllers, if there’s anyone in the USAF with a bigger package than a USAF Wild Weasel team (pilot and EWO), I’ll be damned if I could tell you who they are. My hat’s off to those guys.
@#6 Ex-PH2 you missed JonP’s key rquirement of. 1/2 ton pickup. An F350 is way too big, expensive and overkill for most pickup owners. Ford won’t even put a diesel in an F150, despite the demand.
With the Diesel engines they have today, I wouldn’t mind having one, you keep the oil changed, and put some kerosene in the fuel tank every now and then to clean the injectors. (Kerosene also works great as an anti-gel additive in cold winters!). I remember the diesel VW Rabbit my folks had when I was in high school, VERY fuel-stingy with plenty of get-up-and-go! We just need to muzzle the tree-huggers and let the carmakers market more diesel cars &trucks!!
Arby, you either get the diesel or you get the wienie truck size. Take your pick. I’d rather have the bigger truck. I’m short and I want to be UP where I can see the pavement without sitting on a phone book. The 350XLT does that for me. So does my Escape.
Proud Infidel: rather than using kerosene to clean the injectors, a high-end injector cleaner fuel treatment (STP works OK, the Chevron Techron is better) every oil change works even better. You’re spot on about 10% kerosene working as an excellent anti-gel additive for winterizing diesel fuel.
You can also use 10% regular-grade gasoline to winterize diesel fuel. But that’s a bit chancy – the resulting mix is as flammable (and as explosive) as gasoline. I was never real comfortable doing that, so I almost always used kerosene instead.
I drove a diesel VW for 17+ years and over 250,000 miles until the block cracked (still had the original rings/clutch/bearings and only burned about 1qt of oil every 800 mi). To this day, I wish I’d bit the bullet and just had a new engine put in it vice getting rid of it. It was the best car I’ve ever owned, hands down.
Some units used diesel-powered four door Ford Ranger trucks in A-Stan (They were referred to as LTV’s, Light Tactical Vehicles) for short runs, and the turbocharged four-banger engines in them had plenty of spunk! I was interested in seeing if I could buy one Stateside, but alas, the damned EPA regs forbid it. FACT: When using the proper fuel, diesel exhaust is less polluting than gasoline exhaust!
Not only can’t GM make vehicles that sell, they also have the government stealing proprietary information from other car companies and giving it to GM.
http://raisedonhoecakes.com/ROH/2013/01/12/bought-and-paid-for-winners-and-losers-the-xp-vehicles-limnia-saga/
Other than a few Jello-spined liberals, who else other than the US Government has purchased those toxic klunkers?
HA! HA!
– N. Muntz
@18. Do you know whether they come with OBAMA stickers on them from the factory or does the dealer affix them?
I have no idea if they are related to the Volt, but GM has been experimenting with all-electric cars for decades. I went through the GM training academy in Farifax, VA about fifteen years ago (before they switched to correspondence-style training at the dealerships) and our instructor related his experience with a prototype the school received (GM sent many of their one-offs and prototypes to the various academies back in the day–my class got to play with a Beretta convertable–as well as new cars that were unsellable (a brand new Corvette was there as well; it was offloaded from the carrier wrong and dented a floorpan).
Anyway, the electric car didn’t have very good speed control (forget if this was due to a poor rheostat or what), and would go from a dead stop to way too fast in the blink of an eye! I got out of automotive repair before hybids and such becemae popular, but I did spent a couple of years as a material handling mechanic specializing in electric forktrucks. At least circa 2001, those required massive 48v (average) batteries, and most larger warehouses had charging stations with spares. The technology was proven for forktrucks, floor scrubbers, golf carts, and other equipment I worked on, but those were rarely used far from a spare battery or charging station. I know strides have been made, but after working with electric equipment I’ll stick to gas or diesel power for my daily commute.
fm2176: there’s no way in hell I’d own a purely electric vehicle.
A well-designed and built hybrid that is competitively priced, on the other hand, would make sense for a daily commute of short to moderate length. That’s precisely where a hybrid works best.
For a long trip, however, a conventional vehicle (gas or diesel) is IMO still far superior. The batteries in a hybrid can’t sustain that kind of trip, so you’re using solely the on-board engine to power that. And the batteries add enough weight that the engine just won’t hold up that well long-term if most of your driving is long trips. It has to produce more power (more weight due to the batteries), and thus experience more internal stress – and wears out faster. Hybrids just weren’t really designed with long trips in mind.
Hondo,
My thoughts exactly. The electric equipment I worked on was always close to a power source–spare batteries and/or a charger. The golf carts, scrubbers, and some pallet jacks had onboard chargers and simply needed an outlet. The big equipment required a bit more support. Hybrids seem nice, but as you stated, they are ill-suited to long distance travel. Looking at them from a gas perception, consider full-sized trucks. Until recently (from what I understand, Ford’s Ecoboost offers efficiency and power), a V6 might get fewer MPG than a V8, since it would have to work that much hardeer than the larger engine. My 5.3L Sierra has averaged from 12 mpg (towing a heavy load) to 21 mpg (during a week-long quasi-hypermiling experiment in Northern VA). The weight of the battery is a major concern too–a Crown RC standup lift truck has a 36v battery that weighs around a ton.
Hybrids seem to be as much a statement by certain types as they are a means of efficient transportation. One of my Soldiers (one of only a few die-hard liberals I’ve met in the Infantry) got this wife a Prius last year. We rode to lunch with a SFC one day who was driving his VW with a turbo diesel and the conversation turned to mpgs. The SFC claims to get close to 50 mpgs, so I mentioned asked my Soldier about his Prius. He was visibly upset about his car being less efficient than the TDI, and a few minutes later tried to play it off when he asked how much diesel costs (trying to make a point of the Prius still being cheaper to drive). He’s caught quite a bit of grief over the Prius, mainly because he was convinced he was saving the world by buying it.
If I want fuel economy I’ll buy a TDI myself and get some level of performance with it. Until then, I’ll stick to my V8 do-it-all half-ton. Haven’t met a hybrid yet that can haul, tow, go off-road, seat five comfortably, and fit in at the local bar!
Well, except for those hybrid half-ton trucks… 🙂
The Japanese had hybrid cars on the road in Japan for 2 years, maybe more, before they ever started unloading them in the USA. The Honda hybrid – whatever it was – was supposed to get 50 MPG or more. I saw a couple on the road in 2001, when I was commuting between Chicago and Milwaukee, and when you put one of those slick little cars on the road next to an 18-wheeler, the comparison was frightening. I don’t think either the Prius or the Honda hybrid was meant for the kind of distance commuting and hard driving that we do in this country. And while I know that Ford had hybrids being tested in the field by fleets for two years before they were marketed to consumers, by the time they became available, I was no longer impressed by them and stuck with the V-6 Escape XLT, which I still have. Ford was also working on a fuel cell powered truck back then. I think that has gone nowhere, although at the time, it made sense. I know there are CTA buses in Chicago that are hybrids and fuel cell-powered, because they’re specifically marked with that on the side of the bus. Back in the 1970s, there was a drive to convert to grain-based alcohol (ethanol) entirely as a fuel source, but it went nowhere. There was some farmer in Switzerland who was using cow manure from his dairy cows to produce methane to power his delivery trucks. That was fine for him, but I couldn’t produce fuel for my car in my apartment, so it was a useless bit of information to have. It’s too impractical – all of it – and doesn’t address the real issue, which is a need for cheap fuel and vehicle reliability. And every time I see the libbies grumbling about the dangers of nuclear power, and other cheap forms of electricity, I wonder if they have the faintest idea about the real source of the electricity that powers their toys and gadgets. Wind turbines are fine; the farmers who own the… Read more »
And there is no one size fits all in automotive needs.
Ex-PH2: actually for most US commuting, yes – the Prius works well for that.
I worked with a couple of guys who owned one. One had 120,000+ miles on his over 8 years or so. His was quite reliable.
Most US commutes are mixed stop-and-go traffic and highway, and are short enough that they’re in a hybrid vehicle’s “sweet zone”. For those, the battery pack can be used to boost mileage in the stop-and-go portion, then recharged as necessary while the vehicle is cruising on the higher-speed portion of the commute (highway). Hybrid vehicles excel under those conditions.
They’re not really designed for extended highway trips of several hours. The newer Prius might handle that better than many – it has a 1.8L 4 cylinder engine. But it also weighs over 3100lbs. My diesel VW from years ago weighed about 2000lbs.
I know which one I’d bet on to get 200,000 miles without major engine repair – especially if most of it was highway driving.
And unless they’re designed from square one as freight vehicles, hybrids are not typically good choices for hauling substantial amounts of cargo, either. That’s true of pretty much any vehicle, actually – which is why so many of your newer SUVs (most of which now are based on auto vice pickup truck chassis) are so much less rugged than you’d expect.
PH2–believe it or not, the F-150 I own has the Ecoboost (3.5L V-6 turbo) engine which, while I only have 20K miles (in 8 months) on it, it has more torque and horsepower than the 5.0L V-8, gets better mileage, and is more responsive than the V-8 by far.
Screw it–I’ll buy a Prius when I can put in five people, their luggage, and hook up a trailer behind.
Is the horsepower of any engine based on the number of valves per cylinder? My 24 valve V-6 has more power than the 1969 Chevy V8 station wagon I used to haul two fat horses in a double trailer to shows.
On the other hand, the maximum towing capacity of my Escape is 3250 pounds, which means either hitch the trailer on behind the car and make the horses walk, or make the horses pull the trailer.
I saw a lot of hybrid Escapes on the lot at the dealership when they first became available and everyone jumped on that wagon, and then people seemed to stop buying them. I don’t see them so much these days. I know they’re still around, but they’re almost invisible.
Nope–net horsepower, not per cylinder.
The Ecoboost (V-6) cranks out 365 hp and 420 ft-lbs of torque, while the 5.0L V-8 does 360 hp and 380 ft-lbs of torque.
It was pretty interesting hooking up the trailer for the first time and the salesperson said, “You feel safe hooking that up to a V-6?” and then he looked up the specs.
#20. Nope, the Obama stickers are a dealer-installed option. The option, however, is not optional, you vill haff der shticker.
[…] This ain’t Hell… has surprising info on Volt sales […]
Well, there go my dreams of a Toyota Tacoma Hybrid anytime soon. That’s the only way I’d buy a hybrid.
I could never understand the economy of using two power trains in the same vehicle. How can one engine dragging another one around be economical? To me, the hybrid concept would be a small engine powering a generator that supplies electricity to an electric motor. Even that system suffers from the energy losses inherent to complex systems. Every time you convert fuel to energy you incur losses, mostly heat. It does not make sense to force a small engine to work so hard to drag several hundred pounds of batteries along that are not payload.