Chevy Volt a Failure - GM to Layoff 1,300

Bingo. It is a car that makes no sense for most people as it exists. All the subsidization in the world, and all the public debt we have saddle our country with to try to advance it (when it would advance on its own -- a la the cell phone -- if there is legitimate demand for it) doesn't change that most people are like you.

 

Do you understand the concept of demand? Nobody mandated that people use smartphones. When they offered people something that brought them utility, and did it at a price point that met that demand, people bought smart phones. It's called a marketplace. People are quite adept at figuring out their needs, and when supply and demand factors put something that meets a need into the market at a price that people are willing to pay for it, like the smartphone, people buy it.

I haven't told people what they want and don't want from a vehicle. If you weren't so thick, you'd understand that a MARKETPLACE provides evidence of what people want from a car. The Chevy Volt -- despite the billions of public debt it has cost this country -- has been a failure in the marketplace. It isn't because I, or anyone else, told people what they want. It's because people are quite adept at figuring out their needs for themselves. Smartphones being one case in point. If they didn't satisfy some demand, at the prices they sell at, they would be a marketplace failure.

And. ... for what it's worth, you have a long history of making WRONG assumptions about my life on this board. You posted dozens of non sequitor questions under the assumption that I don't own a car at one point, which I ignored, until I finally clued you into the fact that I do have a car. In fact, we own two. No, I don't driveevery day, but I drive way more than I suspect you'd assume. I spent all day yesterday in my car, for example. You don't know me. Even if it had any bearing on the discussion, stop making stupid assumptions about me. You don't know me. And all of that said, my car or my driving habits don't preclude me from engaging in this conversation any more than anything personal about you (which I don't care to know and don't make assumptions about) does.

 

How much national debt -- under government mandate -- did we rack up between 1946 and widespread adoption of mobile phones in the 2000s trying to force mobile phone technology into the marketplace? How successful was that initiative (which didn't happen, but if it did happen, was a waste of money, because throughout my childhood and into my 20s in the late 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, mobile phones were not affordable or practical)?

Cell phones gained widespread adoption when the technology and its pricing caught up with the utility they provided people, and satisfied marketplace demand.

That is not the case for the EV. That isn't me telling people what they want from a car. That is the marketplace talking. We are in the third year of the Chevy Volt, the car that started this thread, and even with all of the subsidization and efforts to try to induce people to buy the car. ... without the inducements they used to try to pump up sales figures heading into the election (and sales were still anemic and missed every optimistic projection they have thrown out since they introduced the car), sales were back down to 1,140 cars last month. With the development and marketing costs, at the pace of sales, any other vehicle, being marketed by a non-politicized auto company would have had the plug pulled in year three (no pun intended).