Chevy Volt - A Reprise

I keep returning to the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf because they are such colossal boondoggles. Patrick Michaels of The Cato Institute has dug further into the facts of this rolling disaster and uncovered a lot. For instance, didja know that:

• The battery for the VOLT is made in China and is expensive to dispose of and has a 4 year life cycle. For some of us who may keep a car past 4 years - it costs $5,000.00 to replace the battery.

•  Sales are anemic: 326 in December, 321 in January, and 281 in February. This increased to 3,071 by June 30, 2011. GM has announced a production run of 100,000 in the first two years, but who is going to buy all these cars? Great question!

• Jeffrey Immelt, that's who. GE will buy a buttload of those uneconomic GM cars. Recently, President Obama selected General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt to chair his Economic Advisory Board. GE is also awash in windmills waiting to be subsidized so they can provide unreliable, expensive power. Soon after his appointment, Immelt announced that GE will buy 50,000 VOLTs in the next two years or half the total produced.  As Michaels notes,"Assuming the corporation qualifies for the same tax credit, we (you and I) just shelled out $375,000,000 to a company to buy cars that no one else wants so that GM will not tank and produce even more cars that no one wants. (Ed. note - GE also has sent much of its so-called green manufacturing and its x-ray division to China too.) I'm sure glad this guy is the chair of Obama's Economic Advisory Board!

• To preserve battery power, the heater is exceedingly weak. Consumer Reports tests averaged a paltry 25 miles of electric-only running, in part because it was testing in cold Connecticut. GM engineers said that cold weather would have little effect.  It will be interesting to see what the range is on a hot, traffic-jammed summer day, when the air conditioner will really tax the batteries. 

• When the gas engine came on, Consumer Reports got about 30 miles to the gallon of premium fuel; which, in terms of additional cost of high-test gas, drives the effective mileage closer to 27 mpg. A conventional Honda Accord, which seats 5 (instead of the VOLT's4), gets 34 mpg on the highway, and costs less than half of what CR paid, even with the tax break.

It would be more humorous if this wasn't our money.  Moral of the story: if you are a Friend of Obama you do just fine. If not, well, unemployment has been extended again. November 6, 2012 is just over a year away. Amen.

www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=12892  

(Tip o' the hat to George McGreer for this article!)