GM Hybrid Outlook: From 'suck' to 'wretched'
From TTAC commentator KixStart: "I don't know if you listened to the GM April Sales and Production Conference Call… I did. There's an hour of my life gone, again. But I have a morbid fascination for the fortunes of GM's hybrid program, so I hung in there until someone, I think it was a reporter from Bloomberg (the audio on these things makes the automotive AM radios of my youth sound like Dolby 5.1), finally popped the question. "How many hybrids this month?" Marketing chief Mark LaNeve revealed that sales of all GM hybrids were "over 1100" for the month, with "just over" 500 two-mode hybrid Tahoes and Yukons. This brings GM to "1980 for the year;" all types, all models. Or about 10 percent of a month's worth of Prius sales (I looked, they're still over 20K this month). As LaNeve put it, "we almost doubled for the month, as we continue to get availability for the models out to the field, we anticipate we'll pick up volume every month." Interestingly, the big two-mode sales are about the same as last month, so the BAS mild hybrid systems must have jumped from about 120 to about 600. Still… we're way beyond testing the waters to see if the market will accept hybrids. If they're too expensive to build, GM should just give it up and focus on products where they can make a profit.
More by Robert Farago
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Supply sux. My wife and I were looking at VUE's last week and we asked about the GreenLine with BAS mild "hybrid." The salesperson practically laughed in our face. She said thay simply can't get any... the 1 they've been allocated has been sold for 2 months. I REALLY hope they don't have the same issue with the VUE 2 mode when it debuts.
[...] [Source: The Truth About Cars] [...]
[...] [Source: The Truth About Cars] [...]
[...] About five minutes after posting this I finally found an update on GM sales. According to TAC, GM had over 1,100 hybrid vehicle sales, with over 500 two-mode hybrid sales (Tahoe and Yukon [...]