Chevy Volt a Failure - GM to Layoff 1,300

Nope. No citation. Other than common sense when I wrote it. The car limits you to 25 to 55 miles a trip on electric. The EPA says the average driver can expect 35 (they actually upped that to 38 for the 2013 model). If you buy that car -- as the conversation was going -- with the expectation that you are never going to have to drive more than 35 miles a day, and you can just run it on electric, common sense told me that you are NOT the typical driver.

How many times a year do you drive more than 38 miles in a day? I drove 160 miles on Friday. Another 160 miles yesterday. If I owned a Chevy Volt, more than 75 percent of that trip would have been gas powered. Then, yeah, on top of it, I assumed that at least more than half of people who work, drive more than 35 miles round trip to get to work. Can I quantify that? Nope. But since you made me go and hunt. ... Here is a gallop poll from 2007 that found that the average workers' commute was 46 minutes round trip, with 85 percent of those people driving. I don't know what that translates into mileage on a Volt. If it is driven at 60 mph, they are switching over to gas on average. If it is because they are caught in traffic, they are getting the lower end of the Volt's range, because of the stop and go.

As operative as that, though, is if you own a Volt with the intention on getting around on electric and no gas -- what we were discussing, and where they had the car being a break even proposition in 8 years with gas at $5 a gallon (2/3 higher than the current price) -- you spent $32,000 + for a car that you are barely using, and the U.S. taxpayer is getting hit with how many 10s of thousands of dollars more for that rare person's purchase?

 

This has gotten beyond dumb. If you want a car that you are going to drive back and forth less than 35 miles a few times a week, you can spend $40,000 on a Chevy Volt and wait for a $7,500 subsidy back from the government. Of you can buy a Chevy Cruze for $17,500.

I get it.

93 will definitely be buying the Volt. Jesus Fucking Christ, he says. 1) Even Jesus, who could turn water into wine, can't somehow turn that into a smart financial decision. 2) On top of the $40,000 the Volt costs versus the $17,500 the Cruze costs (Truecar rounded numbers, before Az asks for a source that google can just give him at a bunch of reputable car cost sites), the Volt costs the rest of us (who ridiculously have to subsidize each purchase) tens of thousands of dollars per car, so even the few people buying the Volts are just being subsidized by the rest of us to a crazy extreme. 3) And he will have just spent $32,500, or thereabouts, on a car, and if the plan is to just use the battery charge and never use gas so the thing might turn into a break even investment in a decade, you can forget ever driving too far from home. You have a car you actually spent $32,500 on (plus the tens of thousands more being eaten by the rest of us) that you can't even use to visit a friend who lives 50 miles away, because 65 percent of the trip back and forth is going to be gas powered, making it that much longer before the thing could actually break even. 4) And for $32,500, you might as well spend the couple of grand more and get a Lexus and just plan on driving the hell out of it, rather than being afraid to use the air conditioning, because you might trip over into gas power.

As I said, beyond dumb. Justin is happy with his purchase. Good on him. That is really what matters. 93 is being typical 93, with his nonsequiturs with question marks next to them that don't make any sense.

And the country as a whole has made a pretty decisive financial decision based on what makes sense to their pocketbook. Which is why even with these cars heavily discounted at taxpayer expense (but not enough to turn them into a smart buy), only a small niche of people are actually buying them.