Chevy Volt: A metaphor for Obamanomics

[_bcspace]

The Jurassic Press is missing much in their reporting on the $50 billion bailout of General Motors (GM). The Press is open channeling for President Barack Obama - allowing him to frame the bailout exactly as he wishes in the 2012 Presidential election.

The President is running in large part on the bailout’s $30+ billion loss, uber-failed “success.” And the Press is acting as his stenographers. An epitome of this bailout nightmare mess is the electric absurdity that is the Chevrolet Volt. The Press is at every turn covering up - rather than covering - the serial failures of President Obama’s signature vehicle.

The Press has failed to mention at least five Volt fires, myopically focusing on the one the Obama Administration hand-selected for attention.

The Press has failed to mention that the Volt fire problem remains unsolved. Is it the battery? Is it the charging station? Is it the charging cable? All of the above?

GM and the Administration don’t know. And the Press ain’t breaking their necks trying to find out.

In more recent news, the Press has almost as one hailed the June Volt sales increase.

GM's Volt Sales Up in June

Surprising June Sales for Volt

Chevy Volt Leads US Plug-In Car Sales

Chevy Volt Sales Increases

Volt Records Second-Best Sales Month

The Press has for the most part failed to mention how pathetic this “second-best sales month” actually is. And even when one Dinosaur does, the unwarranted enthusiasm is palpable.

GM sells 1760 Volts in June, double from 2011

Wow. Huge number.

The Press also fails to put this pathetic tally in perspective.

The Chevy Cruze is basically a Volt without the dead-weight, flammable 400-lb. electric battery. Which makes it $17,000, rather than the Volt’s $41,000.

Chevy in June sold 18,983 Cruzes - more than ten times the number of Volts. And that’s down 1/3 from last June’s 24,648.

But that feeble Volt tally has the Press all revved up.

And speaking of the Volt’s ridiculous $41,000 sticker price:

According to multiple GM executives there is little or no profit being made on each Volt built at a present cost of around $40,000. Furthermore, the $700 million of development that went into the car has to be recouped.

Get that? GM makes “little or no profit” on the Volt.

So it makes perfect sense that GM would spend millions of dollars advertising it, does it not? No ideological or campaign intent there, eh President Obama?

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/seton-motl ... z20wPHsNaf

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/seton-motley/2012/07/17/media-fail-chevy-volt-makes-gm-no-money-costs-taxpayers-hundreds-thous

Ya know, as long as they're dolling out incentives for electrics, you might as well go with a better car.

[_MeDotOrg]

The article is correct in point out that sales of the Volt are pretty dismal, and that there is no way that Chevy will recoup the initial R&D costs on this car.

There are a couple of things that I would like to point out:

1. The Volt production design was first shown on September 16th, 2008, before Obama was elected. Most of the R&D money had been spent by this time, so I don't know how the Volt becomes a metaphor for Obamanomics. The decision to make the Volt was made long before he took office.

2. G.M. is not just investing in a car, they are investing in a technology. First generation technologies are usually expensive and cumbersome. I worked with 20 megabyte hard drives that cost $5,000 and were the size of a couple of pizza boxes. A couple of days ago I picked up a 32 gigabyte flash drive, smaller than a pen knife, for $20. Now you're not going to see changes on that order of magnitude, but batteries will become smaller, lighter and cheaper.

3. The 'Halo effect'. The Volt is exotic and new. The hope is that it gets people into the showrooms. Even if they don't end up buying one, they may buy a Cruze or another Chevy. That's one of the reasons that Chevy spends advertising dollars on it.

4. If G.M. is spending all of this money on hybrid technology at the behest of the Obama administration (an unsubstantiated claim), how do you explain Toyota, Honda, Mercedes, B.M.W., Volkswagon, Nissan, et al, all developing hybrid or electrical cars?

Personally, I don't understand the U.S. aversion to clean diesel technology. Most car makers seem afraid marketing most of the diesel cars they sell in other countries. Low emissions, great mileage and reliability. (And, at this point, a lot less complicated than hybrids).

I can remember when Hummers were all the rage. Funny how things change. If you filed a Schedule C corporate tax return you could drive a Hummer to work and claim a $100,000 tax deduction because it weighed MORE than 6.000 pounds. Ah, the good ol' days...

[_Drifting]

What car does Romney drive?

"I love this country. I actually love this state. It just feels good, being back in Michigan," Romney said. "I like the fact that most of the cars I see are Detroit-made automobiles. I drive a Mustang and a Chevy pickup truck. Ann drives a couple of Cadillacs actually. And I used to have a Dodge truck, so I used to have all three [big automakers] covered."

The reference to the sheer number of cars he has, and his wife's two high-end cars, is likely unhelpful to a candidate who is trying to shake an image as a wealthy elitist out of touch with the economic worries of everyday Americans.

The campaign quickly issued a clarification saying that Ann Romney's cars are 2007 and 2010 Cadillac SRX models, and that one of them is at the family's house in La Jolla, Calif., while the other is at their residence in Belmont, Mass. Romney has said before that the cars are small cross-overs.

So...two cars each...nice...

[_Bond James Bond]

Bcspace drives a Nissan Leaf.

[_bcspace]

Actually, I drive a BMW (Big Mormon Wagon) and a couple of old Toyota's. When I was a teen, I was paid for babysitting a family's boys by being allowed to take their Toyata Supra on a date twice a month. When I could, I subsequently bought a Toyota Celica (because I could not afford a Supra).