Chevrolet Volt, too little, too late and too expensive

I've long suspected the American car companies were tied to the oil companies in some way--especially GM. Gas consumption seemed more important than conservation. Maybe the Obama team has seen through this. Major changes in philosophy are needed, and I'm not sure any of the current GM executives are capable of it. They all came up the same ladder, and had the same gatekeepers at the top.

The thing that struck me about GM is they came out with several hybrids (Vue, Malibu, etc), but none of them gave real gas mileage boosts like the Ford Escape/Fusion and the Japanese models did. That's a management failure.

 

The Ford Fiesta looks good to me (its no hybrid but)

 

Whatever happens, restructuring or bankruptcy, the Volt will more than likely be in the product line of what survives of GM.

Saying it's 'too little too late' is saying that a car that will do 40 miles on plug in electric power is 'too little too late', like it's impact will not be significant anymore.


The things that will make GM leaner and better able to survive will be to shed the parasitic union labor everywhere it can and be more responsive to the market.

GM rode the wave of the SUV fad and is learning the very hard way that putting most of your eggs in one basket can lead to a huge mess.

I'm hoping for bankruptcy, because the less government is involved, the better our country and our economy will be. The less taxpayers have to pay for will be better for our economy. Letting us keep more of our own money, letting unsustainable businesses fail and new businesses to take their place in the free market will be better for our economy.

It's too bad the administration doesn't believe in Americans enough.

 

I didn't know people who worked for a decent living wage were parasites. I suppose the 500K-per-year investment bankers that came up with credit default swaps are the real heroes of American industry?

 

Living wage? I'm in IT Management, and there were guys at GM that made a lot more money turning bolts on an assembly line.

Where does that get efficient?

The unions used government sanctioned blackmail to get compensation beyond what the market would bear for their labor, and they negotiated the minimum work each member has to do to obtain it.

Here's what I think should be done: Each laborer gets a wage and benefits comparable to other company's manufacturing. You want more? You get stock in the company for performance rewards. That way you'd have a vested interest in how well the company does. THAT is how the free market would do it.

Unions are antiquated. The appalling conditions that workers endured in the early parts of the Industrial Revolution no longer exist. Unions now primarily exist for workers to get more than they are worth by threatening their employers with the Sword of Damocles that they hold over their own company's head.

 

Yea, $81.80 per hour is really tough to survive on (over $160,000/yr) for one person much less an average family. Four years of high school and that's all they make on the line? The conditions are brutal inside the assembly plants. Having the A/C set at 76 degrees instead of 72 in the summer. Those silly ergonomic work stations. Forced vacations every year....

I don't know how they can do it on such piddly pay...

As for the investment bankers and those other evil investors, hopefully soon it will be illegal to make more than the magic $250K per year (or at least a flat 100% tax above $250K/yr) for any individual or married couple. Then we can get rid of those stupid greedy rich people once and for all.

Imagine, no one will be poor and everyone will have everything they want.

Rick
#4 2006

 

(I'm no fan of GM.)

You have be careful w/that number. That's not money the workers see, even before taxes. Numbers like that have been thrown around in the media. As your link states, that includes wages AND benefits. UAW Workers Actually Cost the Big Three Automakers $70 an Hour is an example of a break down.

GM - Corporate Responsibility Report - Economic Performance - Labor Force says "The average labor cost per hour for the U.S. hourly workforce, which includes both wages and benefits, was $65.38 in 2007."

 

Yeah, those grossly overpaid union workers. Why can't they just sit back and let their livelihoods be decided by the upper class? After all, they don't have anything to gain by shortchanging their employees, except a few million dollars here and there.

 

It is too little too late because a car that gets 40 miles on a charge but only sells a couple thousand units because it is so expensive only people on 6 to 7 digit incomes can afford it is very little and considering the date the EV1 was taken out of production it's too late.

yeah I agree, what right do those union bastards have to get a real living wage when CEOs get a $20m golden handshake for fu**ing up the company, disgusting.

Too right and I'm not being sarcastic this time. Unfortunately GM marketed those stupid things like crazy and the American public bought it hook line and sinker. You lot have alway always loved cars that are much too big but you never needed an SUV to take the kids to school until the late 80s, even though families are smaller than they have ever been. Sucked in.

If GM go down be ready to suffer big time. GM is a huge and important part of the US economy.

Your current administration believe in the people more than any ever did before. I think looking from the outside you have the right team in power now for these times. Time will tell.

 

Yep, Europe has always had a love for smaller smarter cars.
Fiesta comes from Ford Europe not Ford USA.

 

Amen to that!!
The bottom line on unions of any kind these days is they are simply out dated. Back in the early days 1920's - 1940's they served a good purpose. Now days if you are that good in your job then the company will pay you well to keep you. If you are not then you can go elseware. Nobody forces you to stay at your current job. As in any job your value is what you bring to the table. Demanding more benefits from a company or you will strike is bs. If you don't like what you are getting just leave. No one has a knife in your back keeping you there. Thank god unions are slowly on their way out.

 

GM brought the Opel Astra to the US as the Saturn Astra. No takers (11,768 sold in the US in 2008 according to Wikipedia) and they're shutting down the Saturn badge.

(Headline fuel economy from the EPA website: manual transmission, 24 city, 32 highway; automatic transmission, 24 city, 30 highway.)

Ford's big competitor in the UK is Vauxhall, the British arm of GM. In practice Vauxhall has mostly rebadged Opel cars, except for the Holden Monaro. The Fiesta's direct competitor is Vauxhall/Opel's Corsa.

Unfortunately, I think GM management were right. They were selling what their customers wanted. Those in the market for a small fuel-efficient car were expecting Japanese levels of reliability and weren't even looking at GM. It's just that GM's market was declining while their fixed costs were increasing, having to pay out on all the benefits they'd promised to retiring employees, in lieu of paying them well during employment. That's the real story: not the hourly wages paid to current employees, the carrots paid to former employees to get them to accept the stick of low wages at the beginning.

I don't even know if management have been excluded from the high numbers that have been touted around. You can play great games with numbers, like claiming the 'average' UK wage is £471.90 per week. That may be the mean value, but in fact the mean falls between the 60th and 70th percentile, so fewer than 40% of workers earn this much.

With regard to the Fiesta, I seriously doubt that the US will get any of the diesel variants, and since the general opinion is that the (10.9 second 0-62mph) Prius is slow, my crystal ball says it will be the 1.6 Ti-VCT (think VVT-i) engine, which is the only one sub-10 seconds, even with manual transmission. UK test numbers: 7.9L/100km 'urban', 4.7L/100km 'extra-urban', 5.9L/100km 'combined', 139g/km CO2. For comparison, the 2G Prius scores 5.0, 4.2, 4.3L/100km (urban, extra-urban, combined), 104g/km CO2. (Lower numbers are better.)

Also bear in mind that the Fiesta engine will have been designed for 95 RON premium unleaded, as is common in Europe, not 87 AKI (~91-92 RON) regular. Either you'll have to buy 92 octane fuel, or Ford will have to reduce compression, reducing power, to make it run on 87. (Anti-knock will retard timing, deliberately igniting the fuel early, and losing more power/burning more fuel than if it had the correct compression ratio to begin with.)

Of course Ford could do anything crazy, like copy VW, whose only US Golf model (badged Rabbit) has a 2.5 litre engine. VW does have smaller engines in the 'three-box' Jetta.

 

There's a lot going both ways here...

I think GM was the 'perfect storm' of situations and circumstances. As one poster pointed out, GM WAS in fact marketing what it's customers wanted. In that way, they were meeting the demand of their customers, which is what any company strives to do. The problem came when oil prices shot up and consumers realized that feeding those huge beasts was too much of a pain. GM didn't have much to meet the shifting demand of the consumer. In that respect, they were not agile enough. They had to start playing catch-up, and do it FAST. This was all on their management. They focused on milking the golden cow until it died.

The unions, like I've mentioned, have become a boil on the nice person of the auto industry. Were you aware that a union auto company is REQUIRED to buy parts and components from union suppliers? If some other company comes along and makes a component better and cheaper, the auto company can't buy from them because of the union contracts. That stifles innovation and competition, both of which are key for the free market.

As someone else pointed out, the hourly cost to GM for it's labor is over $80/hr. That doesn't mean anyone is taking home that money... it's all of the costs of current labor and benefits, along with the pensions and retirement benefits. I believe the comparison was Toyota's assembly in the US which costs about $45/hr.

Seriously, if it costs you $80/hr to produce something, but your competitor does it for $45/hr, how can you compete?

GM should be allowed to file bankruptcy. That doesn't mean that the company will completely cease to exist, though. Some assets and capitol will have to be liquidated, and some divisions may get spun off, but the company would survive. United Airlines (iirc... one of the major US airlines) went through bankruptcy, and they did not cease to exist... they were restructured and within a few short years were profitable again.


As far as a 'living wage', just how much is that? In another conversation on another forum, a GM employee that works in manufacturing divulged that wages where he worked were in the $25-29/hr range, and the comparable Toyota jobs were in the $22-26/hr range (my numbers may be a little off, but are close). That's up to almost $30 for an assembly line job! For turning nuts and bolts! That's only slightly more complicated than flipping burgers and pulling fries out of the boiler when the buzzer goes off. Should we force McDonald's to pay their employees $30/hr?

Wages should be set by what the market will bear. When it comes to corporate salaries, they are frankly none of our business. Companies like GM are beholden to their shareholders and board of directors. Those two groups get to decide how compensation is structured. Consider that the position of CEO of a large company cannot be filled by some college graduate schmuck with an MBA. CEOs generally have decades of business experience, and the good ones are highly desirable.

If we try to dictate what private companies can pay their employees, the top talent will simply migrate. It's already happening with bankers going to work for banks in other countries. If not migrate, they will simply quit while they are ahead... and the leadership leaves.

You also have to realize that our economy is not a zero-sum equation. When one guy makes millions, he is NOT stealing it from someone else.

Competition and success are key to American principles and the American Dream.

 

God forbid that you IT types should unionize and win better wages. Much better to drag everyone else down with you. Is there still a "W" sticker on your car? Or maybe "Let 'Em Work!"?

The less we have the harder we fight over it. That's just the way that the plutocrats want it. To the people who get $2 million per year, the differences between people who make $20,000 and $200,000 are meaninglessly small, invisibly small.

Oh, yeah, the Volt: it is a $40,000 econobox because Rick Wagoner thinks that fuel economy is for eco-weenies and other losers. If he had started with a $45,000 plug-in hybrid Cadillac he might have had a viable product.

 

It's time to return to the "Good Old Days" and pay people to work. Why should you be paid to lounge around doing nothing?--no paid vacation. Be sick on your own time and if you want medical insurance pay for it yourself. To eliminate slackers everyone should be paid piecework. Want more money? Make more stuff. Since people should be paid only what they are worth then all those labor laws need to be repealed and since safety regulations increase overhead they need to be abolished. Nobody is forcing you to work in an "unsafe" environment so if you don't like it, leave. Immigration restrictions & quotas need to be abolished as anyone who is willing to work harder for less should be encouraged to come into this country & work. Retirement plans should also be eliminated. Anyone can stop working when they have saved enough to support themselves. Once all this is in place the USA will be just as competetive and prosperous as India, China, or Vietnam.

In the coal mines they used to say, "Better to lose a man than a mule." Why? Because they had to pay for the mule.

The rich & powerful have always screwed over everyone they could. Unions formed to balance corporate power.

 

Well, with the news today, I think the Volt will *never* come out now.

GM's ceo quits, then there's non-April 1st news that GM needs another 2.6B just to be able to make the Volt a reality.

Like we say in Québecois : GM est kaput

 

now that GM's W is gone hopefully they will pull their head out of the sand ...

GM Marketing Czar Turns Toward Efficiency | Hybrid Cars