Official: GM Quietly Drops Hybrid Pickups; Are SUVs Next?

Remember this question: Who is the market for Volt?

That same question especially applies to Two-Mode. There are so few people who need to tow that much, it's quite negligent to invest heavily it in and nothing else. The lack of diversity was a clear business red flag.

Do people need a 40-mile range? Sure, that's nice to have. But accepting it as a necessity resulting in an uncompetitive cost penalty no sense. Yet, that's what is happening... just like we saw with size & power for Two-Mode.

The parallels are painting a bad picture. Will they learn from it?

 

Much has changed in the Middle Calss and Upper Middle Class. I call it the sandwich effect. We are taking care of our Children and after paying there University Tuition they come home and all the work they can find is in the Service Sector or low paying office jobs. So they are living at home longer and saving up. Heck don't mind. Then our parents being helped by us with there Ever Rising Health care and many don't have Long Term Care Insurance which is an accident waiting to happen. You have to help.

So although we have homes and cars, we are looking to reduce expenses where ever we can and still maintain those vacations and dining out we do to relax. So the Prius fits in perfect into these rather dire times. You get a nice car that saves on gas and insurance. I think the big truck days are numbered unless you need it for work. But than again I think the F-150 or F-250 is still knocking em dead with sales records but will gas so expensive not sure how much longer that can last.

 

I need to haul cattle to the auction a few times a year. Ten 2 year olds are just under 10,000 lbs. I borrow a diesel F250 for the task. Most of my neighbors go to auction more often than I do and use their trucks for moving construction equipment and such to supplement their ranching income. Many of them can use another vehicle, like the wife's prius, when not needing the truck, but they can't go without a truck.

 

For every 1 person that actually needs it, there are how many that don't?

Investing so much for so few isn't how business is sustained.

 

Why do you keep posting the same stupid questions on a forum that cannot answer them?

One could just have easily argued back in the early 2000's, as many (including GM) who is the mark for a hybrid? Few people can predict the market for a product.

As Many people "need" 40 miles of EV just as many people needed a hybrid. Different people have different driving needs, but the majority of driver drive >12 and < 40miles a day. PiP may work for some, and choice is good. The customer cost penalty of a Volt compare to a PiP, is minimal -- yet you continue to suggest otherwise. The actual production cost.. you have no data so cannot really make a meaningful statement, though you seem to want to through FUD.

Funny despite all the complaints against GM and its two-mode trucks, no one else even tried to sell hybrid trucks. They took a chance, tried and the market is not there. Good time to kill it off as the sales cannot support it -- they sell more Volts in bad month, than two-mode in a year.

I agree with

The problem with two-mode hybrid trucks.. is that its not manly enough and that group of people won't pay much of a penalty for being "green".

 

I realize there are some folks that buy the biggest thing they can, just like some buy the fastest, but I really don't see that many people getting an F250 that can get by with a F150. The cost difference is just too much. But I live on the fringe of ranching country, not in a city.

 

Like you said, you don't live in a city. In our city life, we see people buying expensive, big, or fast cars in a lot of cases for "keeping up with the Jones".

 

Compared to the costs of letting GM go belly up, which I was sort of supporting at the time, that looks like the taxpayers ended up with a fairly reasonable deal.

 

we call that "big hat, no cattle"

but before anyone thinks I'm a big cattle rancher, I'm not, and I wear a cap, not a hat.

 

It's not a great deal any way you look at it. Especially if I have to pay (indirectly) a car company for a car that I am not driving.

 

For some reason I do remember. It seems strangely familiar.

Do people need a 12 mile range? 21 mile? Plenty of people would like to have enough range to limit their charging to off-peak hours at home. Or, they commute longer distances and Volt lets them drive EV the entire distance with some additional charging at work while other cars would use gas. There is plenty of evidence that many people prefer driving EV rather than ICE.

People live in a free market economy and expect a variety of options so they can choose what works best for them.

Volt is still the top selling PHEV in spite of its higher price. I think they are learning that plenty of buyers will prefer the compromises in the Volt design over the compromises in the PiP design.

 

I'm pretty sure the question was rhetorical
Saving carbon based fuel's reserves was just as big a need in 2000 as it was in 1971-ish - back when our society first understood how limited a resource carbon based fuels are. There's a clear difference between transportation's fake reality we call market demand and couching the necessity of conservation. Payments to/for our welfare system, social security system, national debt, etc, are tantamount to a Ponzi scheme or pyramid scheme. You have to continually bring in more and more tax payers making good wages to pay for the folks at the top of the pyramid. More jobs and more buildings and more infrastructure only come about with ridiculously cheap fuel. Instead of saying "oh I've just got to pull 10,000 pounds down the street" in 2012 ... we should have been saying in 1990, " good thing we began taking care of business in 1971". Optimistically I like to think we've come a long way. But there's a huge huge way to go. Hopefully as a society we can at least begin to figure out the difference between what the ad man says is market demand, and the reality of what happens to society that squanders limited resources.

 

Target audience is a fundamental business question. If you cannot answer it, you are very likely to fail. Fortunately, there is an answer... and even GM supporters are tired of providing it. Why certain people refuse to acknowledge that is beyond me.

From now on, I'll just include the exposition instead.

 

John the point here, is you are asking about what gm's business plan is on a prius fanboi sight.

Go ahead ask gm. Buy a share of stock and go to the share holder meeting. But it seems rather silly and fruitless to ask this here. Its as if I were to ask siri why in the f do we need a $100K Lexus hybrid?

her answer was a map to a lexus dealer. Maybe you should get a map to a gm dealer and ask there.

Obviously you can check out sales and see that the volt is selling better than the prius phv, despite all your problems with it. You may want to go to your local toyota dealer and ask about that.

Anyway you cut it its totally off topic. This is about the death of the gm hybrid pick up truck, and here I gave the answer. The hybrid system was too expensive.

But like today, the politicians back then gave hollow answers. At least when it comes to hybrid trucks many people in business are looking at the problem. The gm 2-mode was a failure, but there may be success around 2016 when the cafe rules on trucks start to kick in.

There is no demand for a hybrid truck. There is great demand for an affordable truck that gets better fuel economy, and if it happens to be a hybrid it will sell despite that fact. This may come from cng or phev or even traditional engine improvements. GM's problem was they focused on the hybrid, and made it too expensive for the truck buyer.

The exhaust coming out of the tailpipe have come a long way since '71, or so I've heard. I don't really think trucks need tons of airbags and heavily outfitted king cabs I have a friend with a working truck, that was complaining about how much worse his mileage was in his new silverado than his old one. There is a long way we can go...

But its the gov'ment that was also telling people bigger is safer. That's the real shame with the SUV explosion in the late 90s. Very little of the problem is the working trucks, its the folks buying big SUVs and other vehicles that guzzle.

 

I never said having no target market is good, but only the business can answer what they think is their target audience.. GM has not stated their target market it in any formal document I've see, so anything we would answer would be pure speculation.

Its clear part of the Volt intendent market is early adopters that are interested in either tech or getting off gas. (One can reasonably infer that from their marketing campaigns.) However, we cannot determine what else is in their intendent market -- nor can you.

Why you expect people to speculate so you can later ridicule them with your baseless FUD, is beyond me.


The volt is NOT a 2-mode hybrid, and your FUD to try to relate the to is just showing your anti-GM bias. The same type fo FUD people tried to use against hybrids in the early 2000s -- you just being hypocrite.

The 2-mode was more cost effective than any Toyota or any other hybrid truck.. but it seems a hybrid truck does not seem to be a viable segment at the added cost.

 

Speed of Recovery.

That's been a major problem with GM on several fronts.

We all know the hopes for Volt to reach mainstream volume (5,000 per month) in the second year didn't work out. That in itself puts GM in a position without a clear next step.

Ending uncertainty with Two-Mode pickups helps. As for Two-Mode SUVs, selling less than 2,000 per year is far from what had been expected at this point. It's not returning enough to justify major investment anymore. eAssist doesn't seem to be making much progress either.

Then there's the 500 million shares of government owned stock. Was it a good idea to provide the assistance? Most likely. But not recovering fast enough could allow the some problems to return though... which is exactly what we're seeing signs of now.

How long should we continue to wait and for what?

 

I didn't say anything about the engineering.

How the BUSINESS and APPROACH has played out is a remarkably close match.

As for being labeled as "anti" for wanting GM's recovery to be swift, that's not constructive.

 

Ok. What will the choices be? Is it more realistic to expect different configurations or different vehicles?

Volt supporters told us to wait until the second year, not drawing conclusions until it was available nationwide. Why isn't that same precedent being observed for the plug-in Prius?

 

Here is my take..... Customers will have to balance price, EV range, hybrid mileage, space & seating, and HOV access stickers along with more subjective aspects like appearance and power/performance and match those to their needs.

An obvious major differentiator is battery range and EV capability. Now that we have Energi, I think there is a good spread of choices yet even more are on the way. I'm guessing that PiP, Energi, and Volt will all do well and that the overall market will slowly grow as "later adopters" gradually become comfortable with the technology and can see other happy plugin drivers in their neighborhood. Just based on pricing, the natural scheme of things would have the PiP selling at highest volume followed by Energi and then Volt.

I'm observing that rule since it seems sensible. I think things are still settling in. Energi has only been available for a month.

It's already clear, however, that Volt won't be comparable with 2-mode truck sales volume. Volt sales, customer satisfaction ratings, industry awards PR, etc. have already made the Volt program a win for GM.

I think the battery tech pipeline is primed for the necessary continued incremental commercial improvements. I think world gas prices will rise due to supply/demand (in spite of increased U.S. petroleum output) and increasingly more expensive drilling and processing overhead. I think carbon taxes of one kind or another are coming.

I see the crossover point of greater than 3% PHEV market penetration coming around 10 years from now. I think Voltec or some derivative of it will be a significant part of the sales mix then. I think GM will also start selling non-plug clutchless 1-mode power split hybrids within 5 years as well.

 

Each automaker must offer choices.

We see diversity from Toyota, Ford, and Honda.

GM only has eAssist and a 38-mile plug-in with a huge void in between.