Volt Sales Figures

Sorry, actually read analysts, and reports from WSJ, BW, etc, not just the rags. This story is dated 1/23, but misleadingly messes up timing of information. It distorts the facts with no intent to inform.

So to your new blog type post

Nothing but opinions pretending to be facts. Why won't the damage be temporary, well Americans aren't ready, at least the opinion pieces pretending they are news will keep telling them they are not ready. Why not lead with the real story? That at least is in this latest blog you are posting. Exaggerated reporting of hybrid fire damage may have hurt plug in sales in December and January. Leaf sales seem more affected than volt sales.

What do the analysts actually say? December was the biggest sales month for the volt. The story broke in November, so December should bear the full brunt of the news cycle. Lower than GM predicted volt sales happened before this news cycle in July through November. January sales might also be hurt, but this is a smaller increase in sales, not slowing sales. Finally burried in the end of the blog post is part of the real story.

They left out a concerted effort by some, Mike Kelly in particular, to smear the volt and all plug-ins. You will notice that the negative stories were started well before the fire stories.

A real news story would have at least thought about the possibility that Dealers in California and New York might prefer to take delivery in March of cars that are AT-PZEV and contain the modified bracing from the factory. It might also have noted that January and February sales may suffer a little as customers wait for these cars that can hit single driver car pool lanes.

GM dealers took large allocations of SUVs that sat on their lots. This led to GM bankruptcy. Toyota dealers did not want allocations of prii when they were new either. Some, like the local austin dealers, and Jeff's dealer in northern callifornia are taking all that gm will ship them.

 

When I speak of tenability I mean the volt's future, and the question of whether it is financially viable; how long GM will keep the volt going if it doesn't start to move units.

 

GM learned when it killed the ev1, that it made a bad mistake. I'm sure GM is set to lose money for years on the volt, as long as they keep making money on the cruze and silverado. The bulk of fixed costs already set. They need from a pr and technology point of view to keep going. I'm sure they would prefer something profitable making 50K-200K units a year, but they will keep going even if its only a couple thousand units, and I expect over 20K this year. Volt sales should be more than corvette sales for the next few years, but I don't see them killing the corvette either.

 

IIRC, the slightly less than pathetic Dec '11 sales includes fleet, used cars dealers were finally allowed to dispose of, a nationwide market, and basically no supply constraints.

Only AG and GM can try to spin that as a positive trend in Volt sales LOL

 

Right - I think a lot of people don't understand that plug-ins are here to stay. There is no alternative.

 

I agree. But that is a very different question from whether or not the Volt is here to stay. Whether its particular take on the plug-in architecture, pricing, space, etc. will be successful or not is a different question. Plus as AG points out the success of the Volt may be measured in added Cruze sales.
The question of Volt sales seems to be getting muddled with the larger questions of plug-in adoption and design.

The other point that the quoted news reports miss: so what if 60% of Americans don't have a garage to put a charger in? No vehicle model is aimed at 100% of the market, and 40% of Americans is still a large potential market. We need a mix of hybrids, plug-ins, EV's, diesels, and economical conventional cars - after all at the moment not everybody buys a pickup (though sometimes it seems that way!).

 

The impression of pick-up sales is misleading. It's something like 15% of the vehicle sales market. The small car, midsize car and CUV segments are all larger.

The distortion comes from two things:
- there are large sales of F-Series, Silverado, RAM and Sierra but sales very quickly fall off.
- the margins are high so there's heavy advertising.

Pick-up sales grew last year, but small car sales grew faster. (Note however that Ford sold more v6 than v8). The fastest growth was in small and mid-size SUVs.

Auto Sales - Markets Data Center - WSJ.com

 

And Ferrari sells even less and keeps going, but they make money on their cars as does GM on its Corvette. Is the Volt profitable? I can't find an answer either way right now.

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Depending on how one perceives the numbers I still see claims that the F-150 is the best selling vehicle--not only truck--in the US. It sells a half million units/year, which is crazy.

Ford F-Series - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Corolla sells 1-2 hundred thousand year less, and dito for the camry.

Of course it's only one truck and kills the other ones, and there are far more passenger cars sold overall than trucks.

 

have not had a chance to read it yet but the basic premise is there is not going to be an economic recovery or will the economy expand again, EVER. we simply dont have the resources left

what we will do is decline to a stabilization point then essentially "tread water" using renewables as a primary source of energy and transportion is our only chance of stabilizing at a level even close to what most people would think is acceptable.

fact is; most of the people are moving from the middle class to the lower middle and below

 

GM said that costs in 2011 were around $40K a volt, we can assume that they lost money on every one. Now that fixed costs are paid, the engine/exhaust redesign, the line changed for 2012 my, variable costs should be lower. If you only look at costs going forward the volt is profitable. If you try to spread the cost of developing, marketing, building the line that has gone before to the cars they are unprofitable.

Its an accounting thing, the volts aren't really profitable, but producing them is more profitable than killing them. Killing them also would be a bad pr blunder, likely hurting sales of its other cars. Finally killing the volt would likely mean GM is not investing in R&D to produce efficient cars, which was a major reason it went bankrupt. Without this R&D GM will not meet cafe standards and end up paying large fines, leading to more financial trouble. The volt is a much more effective halo than the 'vette, and I doubt the C7 corvette will make money. Ferrari maybe profitable enough now for fiat to sell some stock.

 

I just scanned it on amazon real quick. The idea that the economy is facing a novel difficulty is certainly easy to believe and I do believe it. The idea, though, that humanity itself is literally at a wall and we're going to tread water now as we try to make do on dwindling resources is absurdly pessimistic.

New ways to harness the offering of the earth are coming along all the time with tons of alternative energy sources. They are viable and they work. We don't use them because they are expensive, but we could if it was between than and sitting around a campfire in a cave. Agriculture and genetic engineering of vegetables along with other farming technology has made a given acre of land able to produce far more food than ever before. We can desalinate water, we can grow food indoors in Michigan in the winter in huge quantities.

There are major problems economically with debt, and the middle class is being squeezed, but these are myopic issues as far as mankind is concerned. They'll sort themselves out, even if it takes a few generations to do it. In the grand scheme, we'll keep having kids, more and more of them, and if you look at the future in hundred year increments as you could look at the past now, they'll be living longer and have more convenience in their lives.

A dishonest approach I've seen others use. Money spent is money spent. If GM is making money on them NOW, it's definitely water under the bridge as to the cost.

 

Well its not just the sunk-costs and per-unit profits that must be considered, its also the alternative use of the capital investments, e.g. could they produce other cars at the plant.. and get better return on the capital. I agree it will be bad for GM to shut down, and as long as the costs are not too high, I doubt they will kill the volt any time soon. But if the economics of it don't pick up in 5 years it may. Then again I'll still own mine... forever!

 

Kill isn't even an option on the table. With such a huge investment in the technology, it would get transformed into a niche instead. After all, sport cars like Camaro & Corvette will need an efficiency makeover at some point anyway.

Hey, at least it can be used for something. After all these years, Two-Mode is still far from meeting expectations. GM had no choice but to scale production all the way back to just special build quantity.

Touting green, but selling vehicles only delivering MPG in the 30's instead, won't work. Dealers will get tired of carrying inventory that no one purchases. Consumers will just seek choices from other automakers at some point. Something has to happen, soon.
.

 

No. This is GM with plenty of idled plants and laid off workers. If they have more sales for anouther car they can do them elsewhere with other people. Volt is strategic without high current cost, nor likely high profit without a second generation.

5 years, I doubt it. If they even get 5K per year they will redesign it and have a gen 2, unless they have a different plug-in. In 5 years, who knows, oil may be $2 a gallon and plug-ins may look silly, but I would not bet on that future.

 

I don't think this is something that we will see in our lifetimes. And I can say our because anyone who is old enough to read right now, won't be alive when this finally happens.

People either just don't care or don't understand fuel economy. They see a model being touted as 40mpg or 35mpg and think they'll get it all the time without even thinking about driving style, conditions, and that it is the highway number. The US still has an average in the low twenties on new car sales' fuel numbers.

Unless the feds step in and make much tougher regulations, it is not going to happen. The midsize cars that get 30 on a good day will continue to sell in the majority for a very long time.

 

It will happen in our lifetime if and only if gas prices get high enough. They get it in EU because at 6$ a gallon you effect the way people think. When personal economy is really impacted by fuel economy, people will try to understand. Now if only we could end all the subsidies for fuel..

 

Good point about idled plants, that just reduce the value of reusing the current plan. My point was that there are other costs to consider. The Volt is a great car and I hope it will continue. However, its price point will either come down (my hope), or it will die. If they want to do a niche vehicle, I'd guess the tech will be used in, say the Caddy ELR, which may be more profitable and then then it will be possible to drop the luxury feel in thee Volt to drop costs, or just to drop the Volt (depends on sales). I said 5 years because by then they will have meaningful sales and also understanding of the EREV vs BEV shakedown. EREVs are here to stay, the question is in what form, size and price range.

 

Off topic, but '40 mpg highway' the new marketing schtick and Ford is playing it as hard as anyone. What's dude's name on Focus commercial? Mike Rowe or SLT? He's like '40 mpg highway ... the new standard for fuel efficiency'.

Yeah, it's marketing and they have a car to sell. Then customers buys Focus hatch, get 32? at pump and kinda small back seats, cargo area and wonders, whuh happen? I've sat in Focus hatch. It ain't all that, but, ok, it's little quicker 0 to 60 , whoopee They've over $20k. Auto trannys s&^k. Old fashioned car.

:focus:

 

Trouble is, if gas were to be $6 / gal, I think everyone would be hurting more. Groceries, all goods would be much more expensive, therefore customers would have less $ to spend. With that, best selling advanced tech cars will have more affordable prices.

In your sig ... is total electric+gas costs $.0285 / mile?

 

I agree, we need more data. BEV's and EREV's exercise the battery much more heavily than today's hybrids and even plug-in hybrids. Battery life for hybrids was a concern which was answered for today's hybrids by limiting the range of SOC. We don't have data yet for the effects of wider SOC ranges in BEV's and EREV's, and possible heavier usage in plug-ins. And for whether liquid-cooled or air-cooled packs will survive better, and which battery chemistry will work best. And charging strategies.

It's going to be interesting.