Volt Birth Watch 51: Your Tax Money Hard at Work– for GM

Jonny Lieberman
by Jonny Lieberman

The price for the 2010 Chevy Volt has been going up. Once pitched as a direct Prius competitor, the mostly-electric Volt is now expected to sticker for around $40k. Not kosher, as Toyota's hybrid stickers just north of $22k. Automotive News reveals the General has a plan: make you pay for it. No, not "you" as in Volt customers– "you" as in American taxpayers. GM is hoping to get a $7K tax credit for "extended-range electric vehicles." That would put the plug-in electric – gas hybrid Chevy Volt's price within spitting distance of the Prius' Monroney. I guess when Slick Rick stated "w e want to bring the Volt to the market in 2010 at a price of less than $30,000," "we" meant GM and the taxpayer. (Of course, when he said "we want to make money on the Volt from the beginning," the taxpayer was nowhere in that picture.) As for product readiness, an unnamed source says "We still have a lot of development and testing to go." Let's hear it for representative democracy.

Jonny Lieberman
Jonny Lieberman

Cleanup driver for Team Black Metal V8olvo.

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  • Menno Menno on May 27, 2008

    The Washington people will skew it somehow to screw Toyota again. That's what happened with the prior (quite small in comparison) tax relief plans. While I actually loathe socialism, I'm kind of like Ron Paul in that "well, if those are the rules of the game, I may as well take advantage of it if it is not illegal". Ron Paul will lobby for pork for his Texas constituency, and I took advantage of getting a legal $788 tax relief on my 2008 Prius (had a two week window of opportunity before Prius was ineligible for ANY tax relief) and obtained approximately a $400 tax relief on my 2005 Prius.

  • Rix Rix on May 27, 2008

    Let's see... A Prius goes for about 22k, less 7k tax credit= 15k. Is that the math? Or is it just a deduction? Either way, I'm gonna be on that like a dog in heat.

  • CarShark CarShark on May 27, 2008
    There is also no way that the next gen plug-in Prius with a larger battery will sell for the same price as the Prius “Classic”. And you have some special insider source or are you speaking completely ex rectum?
  • Argentla Argentla on May 27, 2008

    Someone on this site said when the question of Toyota receiving Japanese government subsidies toward the development of the Synergy Drive system that if a U.S. government initiative had borne such fruit, the politicians involved would never stop crowing about it. Politicians are fickle friends, though, and any company that relies on tax breaks to make their products price competitive is, as my grandfather used to say, "cruising for a bruising."

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