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Leaf Jolting Volt In EV Popularity Contest
by
Edward Niedermeyer
(IC: employee)
Published: June 5th, 2010
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Google Trends says it’s so, according to gm-volt.com [via Autoblog]. The Leaf also has 54,000 Facebook fans to the Volt’s 24,000. Plus, the Leaf has 130,000 people on its official “interest list” while the Volt boasts a mere 42,000. The danger here: that Leaf beats the Volt to becoming the EV segment’s first successful brand, earning it “the new Prius” status that Bob Lutz so badly wanted to bring home to Detroit. [Hat Tip: gslippy]
Edward Niedermeyer
More by Edward Niedermeyer
Published June 5th, 2010 1:37 PM
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The G8 was popular with the internets too and me all know how well that turned out.
The gap isn't as extreme as the initial chart let on. You should re-run the analysis and use the cumulative total of "chevy volt" plus "chevrolet volt" in your analysis. The rank-orders don't change, but you should consider this for the sake of presenting what that website author failed to have thought about. You'll have to export the data to a .csv file and re-combine them since the online Google Trends results are always scaled where one of the search terms becomes 1.0. The exported CSV files can be normalized against a 0.0 fixed result. http://www.google.com/trends?q=nissan+leaf%2C+chevy+volt%2C+chevrolet+volt&ctab=0&geo=all&date=2010&sort=1 As an aside, I wonder if GM realizes that dude is using the GM logo on his site. He says he doesn't work for GM in the "about" page... but who reads the about page? He's got enough GM stuff on there that it makes it hard for a casual reader to conclude the non-affiliation while reading the site.
Gosh, a popularity contest between two pieces of vaporware. Does either run on phlogiston?
I bet the gulf disaster is drawing a lot of buyers who would like to boycott the oil industry altogether. The Volt still uses gas and I've read it will get an estimated 31mpg when not running on electricity. A Toyota Corolla does much better and you can buy one for at 40% of the price.