Volt Birth Watch 55: $45k? 20-Mile EV Range? Huh?
Tony Posawatz is the corporate QB looking to deliver GM’s Volt-shaped Hail Mary. In a pre-game chinwag with Reuters, the senior engineering executive sheds some light on GM’s playbook. Production will be ramped up slowly “to make sure everything [the battery pack] is bulletproof.” Meanwhile, GM will be lobbying utilities to offer rebates or cheaper off-rate charging rates, and other forms of tax relief. GM is also planning on selling used battery packs to utilities as power storage systems. Posawatz acknowledges that financial losses are inevitable: “to make this thing a sustainable business, we have to drive it to volume.” So, a low price then? “The nature of this technology is that it’s going to be expensive, and we will not underprice this vehicle.” Ah, BUT– GM is may build a 20-mile range version as “part of an effort to cut the cost of such vehicles by half or more.” Translation: the 40 mile-range Volt will be an expensive ($45k and up) low-volume “halo” vehicle for GM’s bragging rights. It will take several more years of cost (and range) cutting before something resembling an actual Prius competitor hits the streets. The loyal cheerleaders at Volt-nation are apoplectic, calling for Posawatz’s head. Their hopes for GM’s populist electric Model T are fading as fast as GM’s cash reserves.
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Phil Ressler, on serial (Volt) vs. parallel hybrid technology (Toyota's HSD): "It’s fundamentally inelegant to have two drive technologies humping each other around; no more than a bridge." Serial hybrids are no better in that regard. Once you're out of your 40-mile EV-range in the Volt, you're carrying around a large, dead battery. When you're inside your 40-mile EV-range, you're carrying around a large, inert mass of engine (and a radiator, generator, fuel tank...). And that dead battery is an expensive component. If you're going to carry something useless around, make it a cheap something useless and save some money.
Phil Ressler: "Frankly, we don’t know today what a Volt will retail for when it’s launched." That was the 16th... Today, we do: $40K