The Volt Saves A Crapload Of Money? GM Is Shitting You
New and old media feigned outrage about the crapload of money the Chevy Volt supposedly saves its drivers if the new testimonial ads are to be believed. Honestly, we don’t give a crap. GM’s agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners probably told the client that in order to cut through the clutter, you need some shock value. When that didn’t work, the admen most likely put up a PowerPoint that showed that a YouTube video with “crapload” will receive 695.5 times the clicks of an ad that uses “a whole lot of money.” That would clinch it with Joe Ewanick, who wants to save a true crapload of money by increasing the efficiency of GM’s ad dollars.
No, being Thetruthaboutcars.com, we think the ad is shit, because the statement simply is not true.
We don’t want to bore you with cost of ownership calculations. They would most likely overtax mathematically challenged GM groupies anyway. The $40,000 Volt does not save you money. Not a crapload. Not even a little bit. Thanks to a generous $7,500 tax credit and gasoline savings, when all is said and done, the Volt will cost you as much as an average car. Says Tony Posawatz, line director for the Chevy Volt. He told Bloomberg in an interview:
“The Volt’s cost of ownership matches the average car when including the $7,500 U.S. tax incentive and gasoline fuel savings.”
Not a word about a crapload of savings. That revolutionary car ends up costing you as much as an average car. But only because each car costs the tax payer that crapload of money.
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
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flintisover - don't let the screen door hit ya on the way out.
The commercial is completely fake though for a reason no one has yet pointed out. The woman is Indian and according to my self conducted research, 48% of them buy Toyotas, 41% of them buy Hondas and 11% buy Nissans. 0% buy Chvrolets. Go figure.
Did anyone notice that her name is Priya, and she chose the Volt over the Prius?
The reason the Volt is so maligned is not just that it's a poorly engineered and expensive answer to a question no one is asking that moves less units in a year than GM's pickup divisions do in a week. It's that it's the opening salvo of the government telling us that somehow a 40,000 dollar poorly engineered expensive car is the car we ALL should be driving and if we aren't, it's because we're stupid right wingers. Buried in all of this is the echoing voice of the Obama agenda that we ALL would love expensive alternative fuels, electric cars, sky high gas taxes and prices only if we weren't so stupid and Fox news wasn't indoctrinating us to think that a 40,000 car can't save us a "crapload" of money. If we only all drank the Kool-Aid and ran out and bought the Volt the technology within would miraculously advance and the car would somehow achieve its purported 200 plus mile range, its price would drop, and suddenly electric chargers would pop up in parking lots everywhere and not just at the cost of taxpayers.