GM says new Volt to get 230 mpg in city driving

The stupidity of the whole thing reveals itself when you see that in order to save xx amount of dollars, you have to spend 10 fold.

If I sold you a light bulb that lasts forever and you would never have to change it, that would be a good thing wouldn't it? I spend about $15 bucks a year on light bulbs and roughly $600 dollars in a lifetime, so that would be a great thing to have.

Now, what if the bulb costs $1,000 dollars? Well, that would be more than the amount of money I would have spent on the normal bulbs to begin with!!!!!

Same thing goes for this VOLT car. It only will last about 6 years or so, which will only give you about $6,000 worth of gas savings.............at a price tag of $40,000!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then after the car breaks down you have to buy another 40K car or perhaps a $20k car with normal MPG!!!

It's the most dumb thing I've ever seen revealed in the public eye.



Now, if they produce a car that lasts 50 years then we can talk! But don't price it at $1,000,000 dollars!!!

IMHO they will have to price the VOLT to around $4k for it to make sense to buy. Because $4k for a car that would save me $6k worth of gas IS a savings. But not the other way around.

Amazing...

Well I guess hope does pay off in the end.

Originally posted by manbird12000
The stupidity of the whole thing reveals itself when you see that in order to save xx amount of dollars, you have to spend 10 fold.

If I sold you a light bulb that lasts forever and you would never have to change it, that would be a good thing wouldn't it? I spend about $15 bucks a year on light bulbs and roughly $600 dollars in a lifetime, so that would be a great thing to have.

Now, what if the bulb costs $1,000 dollars? Well, that would be more than the amount of money I would have spent on the normal bulbs to begin with!!!!!

Same thing goes for this VOLT car. It only will last about 6 years or so, which will only give you about $6,000 worth of gas savings.............at a price tag of $40,000!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then after the car breaks down you have to buy another 40K car or perhaps a $20k car with normal MPG!!!

It's the most dumb thing I've ever seen revealed in the public eye.



Now, if they produce a car that lasts 50 years then we can talk! But don't price it at $1,000,000 dollars!!!

IMHO they will have to price the VOLT to around $4k for it to make sense to buy. Because $4k for a car that would save me $6k worth of gas IS a savings. But not the other way around.

Obama is so stupid to actually try to sell us a car that may need maintenance in the future. Doesn't he know cars never need maintenance? HOW DARE YOU TRY TO PEDDLE A CAR THAT GETS 230 MPG OBAMA! And it's not like this just the first model, or that prices will fall over time as with every other technology ever created. You should just go buy a hummer that gets 6 mpg for $50,000, those never need tune-ups.

[edit on 11-8-2009 by CuriousSkeptic]

Exactly, that's why the Prius was an utter joke. It cost about $60k on the market (if you were lucky enough to be next in line), and it only saved people a thousand bucks worth of gas!!!!

It's a scam at the highest degree! This VOLT will most likely break down in 3 years because of the cheap Chinese labor that will go into the components, the replacement parts will no doubt cost an arm and a leg. Charging this piece of novelty junk will cost quite a bit especially if the Cap and Trade get's going which ultimately will get passed down to the consumers.

The smallest cost in a car is the gas that it uses. Therefore, it can never make sense to BUY a car to cut that cost.

That's like buying a whole new house because it has better constructed closet doors.

The sad thing is that most people will be blind to that fact.

Originally posted by manbird12000
Exactly, that's why the Prius was an utter joke. It cost about $60k on the market (if you were lucky enough to be next in line), and it only saved people a thousand bucks worth of gas!!!!

It's a scam at the highest degree! This VOLT will most likely break down in 3 years because of the cheap Chinese labor that will go into the components, the replacement parts will no doubt cost an arm and a leg. Charging this piece of novelty junk will cost quite a bit especially if the Cap and Trade get's going which ultimately will get passed down to the consumers.

The smallest cost in a car is the gas that it uses. Therefore, it can never make sense to BUY a car to cut that cost.

That's like buying a whole new house because it has better constructed closet doors.

The sad thing is that most people will be blind to that fact.

You may be right, I apologize for my sarcasm. It would be a miracle of GM turned their quality and engineering around this short of a time with all the chaos that's going on within that company. This probably will be an expensive gimmick that won't work well or will have horrid quality (along with most GM products) however, I still remain enthusiastic for the technology hitting the consumer market.

reply to post by deltaboy


It's a nice looking car. I want one. The savings in gas make it worth it. Any half decent car is going to run you over 20K anyway.

Would look really cool with better rims, a skirt package, and a spoiler, along with a blue-tourquois metalic paintjob, with darkened out tinted windows, and a lightening bolt painted on the center hood..

reply to post by dariousg


Look at the article again, it says combustion engine in it, which is why I called it a hybrid car. Not a true electric car.

Originally posted by OmegaPoint
reply to post by deltaboy

 

It's a nice looking car. I want one. The savings in gas make it worth it. Any half decent car is going to run you over 20K anyway.

Would look really cool with better rims, a skirt package, and a spoiler, along with a blue-tourquois metalic paintjob, with darkened out tinted windows, and a lightening bolt painted on the center hood..

How can the savings in gas make it worth buying when The half decent car you quote is half the cost of the VOLT?

So assuming you're not already in the market to buy a $40k+ car, how can $6,000 dollars worth of Gas savings be incentive enough to plunk down $40k+ ?

Originally posted by dariousg


Yes, this is good news that this technology will be released. However, it just pisses me off that they think we are ignorant enough to believe that ALL OF A SUDDEN they can achieve this kind of mileage after bankrupcty and years of saying that this kind of mileage was a decade away.

While most will say that this is a great thing, I say it simply proves that these big business people are criminals.

Bam!

Point after succinct point.

You, sir, are deserving of a thousand stars for this post. It is a shame I can only lend you one.

It is all just a giant game, and we are the pawns.

Now I see why they are doing this cash for clunkers program. It's a test run, for the generated oil crisis we will have and to which we have the solution. Give people some money to buy a VOLT and change over the entire auto industry.

I just searched at the GM website for full information and can not find what is important that is being left out of the hype.

How much electricity is required to charge the battery?

How much does it cost on average to charge the car?

How much pollution does creating this electricity produce and how does that compare to high mileage low emissions gas engines?

If the country were to embrace this in a big way as it gets cheaper, what strain will it place on our already overtaxed grid? Can it even support it?

We know that the current administration is opposed to new coal fired plants, nuclear plants and only wants to invest in exotic technologies not ready for prime time. After what will be a decade of development or more we may see new power supplies on line 15 to 20 years after that. A whole generation away.

Knowing this it seems this is putting the cart so far in front of the horse as to be comical. Even if they could put us all in electric cars right away, how would they supply the power to charge them?

To make this plausible people would have to put windmills in their yards or install solar cells. Add that cost to the cost of the car and we are looking at the real cost of owning a car completely out of range of anyone but the upper middle class. Perhaps this is the plan?

reply to post by MMP

There is already a thread for this HERE.

There is one thread allowed in this forum (breaking news) and one allowed in a general forum.


On topic, I have to agree with one poster who said it is obvious we have had this tech (and MUCH better still IMO) for years. At Least something is finally trickling down to us peons.

[edit on 8/11/2009 by jkrog08]

It really is not an incredibly poor investment,

The volt cost 40k, a normal car cost 20k

you save about 400 dollars a year on gas

If you keep the volt for 5 years then the savings on gas will equal 2k
the resell value of the volt will be around 50% of the initial cost after 5 years. Lets just assume the rate of depreciation is the same for both vehicles and the maintenance cost are equal (which they probably arent).

The rough final cost of the volt would be
40k-2k-20k= 18k

a normal car would depreciate by the same rate after 5years, no savings on gas.
20k-10k=10k

So a person saves/loses an extra $8,000 but the benefits are that you help the environment and provide funding for a company that is trying do good.

If i could afford it, i would so buy it.

[edit on 11-8-2009 by CosmicYahtzee]

Originally posted by CosmicYahtzee
It really is not an incredibly poor investment,

The volt cost 40k, a normal car cost 20k

you save about 400 dollars a year on gas

If you keep the volt for 5 years then the savings on gas will equal 2k
the resell value of the volt will be around 50% of the initial cost after 5 years. Lets just assume the rate of depreciation is the same for both vehicles and the maintenance cost are equal (which they probably arent).

The rough final cost of the volt would be
40k-2k-20k= 18k

a normal car would depreciate by the same rate after 5years, no savings on gas.
20k-10k=10k

So a person saves/loses an extra $8,000 but the benefits are that you help the environment and provide funding for a company that is trying do good.

If i could afford it, i would so buy it.

[edit on 11-8-2009 by CosmicYahtzee]

Since buying a car just for the assumption that you'll recoup half of it's cost 5 years down the road is still money lost and not enough reason to buy it to begin with for $2k worth of gas savings.

Plus nobody knows what value it will hold if it turns out to be a massive failure.

Don't forget the battery has to be replaced every 3-4 years....batteries are toxic waste essentially. It's funny "liberals" like this car, which has a battery with toxins that are much more likely to get into water supply than nuclear waste which is much more likely to never be seen by the public eye.

Originally posted by CosmicYahtzeeIf you keep the volt for 5 years then the savings on gas will equal 2k

You have to replace the battery on the 3rd year though (or less)...and I'd assume that battery is anything but cheap, probably at least $2k.

[edit on 11-8-2009 by yellowcard]

I have great respect for nature, and it makes me sad how we pollute ourselves. But these electric cars ironically cost more than your 20-year taxi bill .

Electric buses are so far one big fail (rare exceptions exist though), electric boats and air planes almost non-existent. Somehow I doubt even 0.1% of drivers would buy this car, and would make less than 42% of all air pollution[1].

So, buying an electric car is just luxury. Because oil is simply not abundant, electric cars won't happen probably as long as oil dynasties live.

I agree something is better than nothing, but driving these overpriced hybrid cars would almost make me feel like a hypocrite.

1. www.bar.ca.gov...

Having a Volt will be a status thing for rich folks. It has nothing to do with "saving money on gas".

Here we are, 2009, and the best we can do is a $40,000 car that goes 40 miles on an overnight charge.

Yeah...right.

-- j.

Originally posted by deltaboy


Now thats awesome. Too bad it cost 40k so I'm not going to buy it at that price, not to mention the technology is still new as well as the vehicle so I rather wait for a few more years when they deal with all the problems it may face, as well as any problems that the people deals with when driving, parking, charging, etc. Even if it does not bode will, at least we can improve this technology which is still a hybrid since it says it has a combustion engine in it.

news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

My thought exactly. They never make new technology affordable for the masses. They always say what great things they are doing with these cars to save on gas and use alternative energy, but when it comes down to it, how many people can afford it. Then they wonder why it failed and the American public never really took off and ran with the idea. It's just like these alternative fuel hybrid vehicles.....where I live I see all kinds of hybrid SUV's that can use the Ethanol alternative fuel, but none of them do because it is not offered in our area (if it is, I sure have not seen it, and I always see the hybrids filling up with unleaded fuel). It's all a bunch of crap.....the government and the auto industry want to make it look like they are doing all the good by making these fuel efficient cars, and by using alternative energy, but then they make it where the common everyday average Joe cannot afford it.

Originally posted by tothetenthpower
Well I have one on order just waiting for them to ship. I can't wait to set my hands on it and actually test out this new car.

If anything this just shows to me that at least GM is attempting to break out of the big oil mold and provide us with a sustainable car that won't gouche your wallet.

And if you think about it 40K isn't that bad, especially considering what you will save on fuel every year.

~Keeper

But for it to really make a difference in the world it will have to be affordable to all.....not just a few. In this economy not everyone can afford to go out and get a $40,000 car (even with a rebate).

Originally posted by Donnie Darko
they've probably had this technology since like the 1980s and just hid it from us.

You are probably correct. Sometimes great ideas hide in plain sight.....for instance, there is a perfectly good Hydrogen powered car on display at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, and its only by-product is water.......yet it just sits there on display. If you have great technology like this, why would you sit on it or make it non-accessible to the public? Because technology is power....