Featured Nationwide Gen 2 Chevy Volt delayed until 2016

A last minute leap-frog?

The anti Fuel Cell crowd is not responsible for this Nationwide delay of the 2016 Chevy Volt.

 

No problems with the 7 Corvairs I've owned down through the years.

 

IMHO a screw up by gm's management again. I think they want to scrape as many of the HOV stickers before they run out, not caring how this looks. GM moves much too slow to be using this to change for competitive information. They likely will try to push the higher optioned vehicles in california before offering base models elsewhere.

Bad GM. Something that could have turned out to be good pr is turning out bad. There is not much time before the tesla model III and the gen II leaf are out.

Not sure what this has to do with fuel cells, other than much improved plug-ins driving fuel cell people crazy. This car will roll out to all the states next year, while fuel cells? What 20 dealerships in one state a year or two from now?

 

I have no knowledge of the actual reason for the distribution planning change but the most plausible sounding explanation I've seen so far is that customer orders and dealer allocation requests are higher than expected in California and the other 10 CARB states.

Therefore, the theory goes, it makes the most $$ sense to maximize sales in those states to get low emission credits. Something like 40-50% of Volt sales are in California alone and the remaining CARB states seem likely to have higher than average sales as well.

So, their existing 11 state 2016 model year distribution may already cover 70% of their typical sales. This change may be annoying to potential customers in the other 39 states who have to wait an extra 3-4 months but as far as sales volume goes this might be a non-story. We'll know more as the monthly sales reports come out.

 

It was also brought up that there may be a supplier problem.

 

jeee - thanks ... no no really you go ahead & buy it - we in California will go ahead and wait. I insist !

so did my 72 Cheyy Vega ....

ooo, danny has gone to the dark side.

 

font looks familiar @Volt-land

 

The OP article mentioned GM moving the engine production to US. I found that interesting because the 2016 Malibu base engine is supposed to be the same block, but on the Chevy site, they have a 2016 Malibu limited up that is equipped with a 2.5L, an engine not mentioned at all for the new model's unveiling.

So, my guess is GM got a high number of orders in those CARB states, and there is an engine shortage while they are moving the production.

 

why would you decide to move production at the last minute?

 

Also, what about dealers around the country who may have put in their initial orders back in April, just found out; No Volt for you!, Chevrolet Cars (Build Out Final Order Start Up Dates)

 

because they are moving ice production? stranger things have happened.

 

They are moving it to an US factory, and that will boost domestic content. Moving production isn't last minute. It should have been planned for, which is why I think the delay may be a combination of moving it with higher than expected orders or an unseen issue with moving.

Since the California and 10 CARB state roll out aren't affected, and the rest of the nation customer orders weren't going to be taken until October originally, I think very few dealers will have their orders cancelled for the 2016. Besides, the April cut off date was for 2015 Volts.

 

I believe the "2016 Malibu Limited" is essentially a 2015 Malibu aimed at fleet sales like government and rental cars so it's still using the old 2.5L Malibu engine. The new 2016 Malibu redesigned car apparently uses a turbo version of the new Volt's 1.5L engine or a 2.0L turbo with conventional automatic transmissions , or the new 1.8L engine with a Volt-like hybrid transmission.

 

Keeping the old model for fleet sales makes sense.

Any news on when the real 2016 Malibu arrives?

 

Jeff Cobb reports by model, not model year. Is there a good source for the model-year sales for the Volt?

In fact, it would be useful to have model-year numbers but it isn't clear when we can tell customers are actually leaving the dealers with the new model.

Thanks,
Bob Wilson

 

Recalls is the only time I think we get some model year info, When they recently recalled Prius v, if you added up 2012 - 2014 it did not quite add up to the recall number, but if you consider some 2012 may been sold in 2011 and some 2015 sold in 2014, then it made sense. Like the state sales, probably Polk and other firms own the data if you want to pay for it.

 

I recall that the hybrid version, at least, arrives sometime in the spring but I haven't been tracking the Malibu dates closely.

 

I'm not sure why the number matters. I think insideeves has the number of unsold gen I volts, about 3200 on sept 1. Just assume they get sold in september though feburary, and subtract 1/6 from each month (533) as a good estimate of 2015s versus 2016s. Or use any other way to allocate those cars in the coming months. There isn't going to be a way to get the 2016s versus 2017 numbers though. Be sure to include canada as a destination for those gen I volts, here is a good source of US and canadian volts.
Chevrolet Volt Sales Figures - GOOD CAR BAD CAR

They aren't. The plant could not change over until gm finished making 1.4L iron block engines. That has now concluded, and they expect to be up on the new aluminum block 1.5L di engines and others by the end of the year. Once the engines are in high volume production in about 5 months, the cost per unit for gm will go down. They also get to say more US content, which for some reason includes Canadian but not Mexican parts. They could have built more engines ahead of production in Mexico and had more parts to make the volt. Still that is bean counting, from a marketing point of view this is an important car, and they should just ship them at a slightly lower variable profit to have more satisfied customers. Short sighted accounting decissions cost gm in the past, this is a minor one, but one that shows the corporate culture has not completely changed. Long term profits are more important than short term costs to shareholders, but often old corporations change slowly.

 

Unlike Toyota, GM is probably making different versions for CARB states and non-CARB states.