Chevy Volt a Failure - GM to Layoff 1,300

The girl scout down the block sold more cookies going door to door in her spare time than Chevy is selling those cars.

Seriously, Chevy loses quite a bit of money on each of the Volts and Bolts, but they are willing to subsidize those losses because to the extent they sell any in California (and it's the only state they have made a push to sell the cars in -- I would bet 90 percent of their piddly sales are there over the last 2, 3 years), they get ZEV credits that they need to sell the gas-powered cars that they can actually sell profitably. ... thanks to California making it difficult to do business for automakers. It's probably close to a wash for them, because they need those credits to sell gas-powered cars in Cali. In fact, sales of the ZEV credits that state hands them, has been the only profitable business that Tesla has come up with. It effectively has had auto companies that know how to meet actual consumer demand being forced to subsidize Tesla's business (or put more honestly, forcing them to hand over cash to Elon Musk so he can incinerate it).

 

Give me a brake.

 

So not 90 percent in the case of the Chevy cars. I should have known they couldn't limit their sales to Cali, as much as I suspect they would prefer to. It's still a wash for them on the Bolt at least, but only because of California subsidizing the car. They lost between $8K and $10K on every Bolt sold outside of Cali. But the 4 ZEV credits they got from every Bolt they sold in Cali were worth around $8K to $10K according to stuff I have read. Using the numbers you provided. ... they might have even made a little money at the expense of California's citizenry. But the point still is, they are not making money in any productive way. They are getting subsidized by the state of California to sell a car unprofitably.