Motortrend article: 100 MPG+ Chevy Volt, GM's "Moon Shot"

They don't. They're starting to get it... but GM currently does not have
any economy cars worth a damn in their product line. Compare the Aveo with
similarly-priced offerings from Toyota and even Hyundai. They look similar
on paper, but they sure don't drive similarly.

They're getting a LOT better, mind you. It's clear that they are trying to
do something on the economy side, and they have done nothing short of amazing
with the Cadillac CTS which actually is the first GM car to actually be fun
to drive in many years.

I think getting into the hybrid business is a good idea, and I think GM is
going about it the right way. But what they are doing now is stuff that
they _should_ have been doing twenty years ago.

I want a small car because I like the way it feels more than because I want
good mileage. I want a car with a tight turning radius and good handling,
that is light and nimble. GM isn't doing that. Even GM's sports cars
don't have great handling.

That sure didn't help. But I think they let themselves get too far behind
the technology curve, they spent too much time concentrating on one or two
market sectors rather than trying to keep a diverse product line, and they
did so much to use the same platforms for different models that they wound
up blurring the differences between makes. When you can buy the same car
from Chevy or Buick, you lose whatever cachet the Buick name has.
--scott

 

Do you really think all the people driving pickups and SUVs bought them
because they spontaneously got the urge to purchase an oversized,
overpriced gas-guzzling behemoth? I think it's more likely that they
were finally convinced by the advertising assault the car companies run
day after day, year after year, umpteen times an hour showing their
vehicles charging up mountains, braving the snow (over freshly plowed
roads) and getting that last parking space because they can drive over
medians (and terrorize the smaller cars.)

The car companies make a big profit on the big metal, because they can
charge much more $$$ for them, even though they're really mostly
passenger cars with oversized sheetmetal and big engines to haul around
all that extra weight.

So no, it's not that the car companies want to sell us small, fuel-
efficient cars, but people demand otherwise. It's their advertising
that convinces people that's what they need to drive, and the idiot
consumer is happy to oblige.

 

Sure, but that's not why this early adopter (engineer) bought the Prius.
I quickly installed indicators on various system functions, and a
ScanGauge, to make operating it more satisfying. It was years later that
gas prices skyrocketed. Somewhere in there, the state provided HOV-lane
stickers, which was a cherry on top of the cake. I could (and still can)
drive by myself in the HOV lanes.

So calculating the five-year costs of the Prius vs. a Corolla would not
influence the decision.

Back to your point, in my opinion the Prius is more comparable to the
Camry than the Corolla, so the difference is much less. And, there were
nifty features on the Prius that weren't on the Camry - at any price.

All in all, the Prius has been a good experience.

 

The Corolla is the most comparable Toyota model for the older Prius (we have
two 2002s in the family), but it is hardly a straight-across comparison. The
Prius comes standard with amenities like power mirrors and automatic climate
control (not available even as options on the Corolla, as I read the specs)
and power windows, power door locks, cruise control and ABS. In the last 40
years I have had a lot of cars. The Prius I now have is my second favorite,
edged out by a Lotus Europa from my bachelor days. If you haven't driven a
Prius long enough to get the feel of it you can be excused for wondering
what the attraction is. The perfectly smooth and competent delivery of power
is addictive - when I drive any other car I wonder what all the revving and
shifting is about. I can't speak for the current model Prius, but my wife
and I absolutely love the maneuverability of the sedan. I bought mine used a
couple years ago with 103K miles on it, and the seller's wife (it had been
her car, actually) got teary when they left it with me. I totally
understand.

The Prius (applies to my wife's and to mine) is also the most reliable car
I've ever owned, by a huge margin. Mine has 120K miles on it and my wife's
has 95K on it, and each has needed a windshield (this is Arizona, after
all!), tires and routine maintenance... nothing else. Neither is anywhere
close to needing brakes.

So, over the average 95K miles of my wife's Prius it burned about 2000
gallons of gas (mostly city miles). A Corolla would have used somewhat more
than twice that, especially since a lot of the driving has been short trips,
but let's call it 4000 gallons. At an average price of $2.50 the extra gas
would have cost... lessee, $5000. How 'bout that. Now we are paying half the
amount for gasoline (it's like buying gasoline for $1 per gallon, in fact),
are driving cars we absolutely love, not paying for repairs. Kbb.com says
the base 2002 Corolla with auto tranny at 100K miles is worth $4300 as a
trade-in in my zip code, while the base 2002 Prius is worth $6400, which
puts us about $2000 ahead and increasing every day. What's not to like?

Mike

 

That is probably a good measure of the cost of such a car.. But you would
have to add the
cost of maintenance, with respect to the cost of maintaining a more
traditional car, including
of course the cost of replacing batteries,etc.

Cost accounting makes these sorts of calculations relatively easy. But
breaking through the
bullscheit to get real numbers is perhaps a bit more difficult.

Let's look at the REAL total costs of ownership, energy, and maintenance.

 

"needed a windshield (this is Arizona,.."

What or who breaks out windshields in Arizona?

 

Rocks being flung up from the road are a fact of life here - the state is
mostly rock covered. My work truck averages a windshield every two years or
so, but I put 25K per year on it and most of that is highway and freeway
driving.

 

psssst--you have to acquire (and depreciate) the vehicle first.

 

Sounds like you could be talked into buying anything. You don't happen
to have a mortgage that you have no possible way of
paying off. Do you?

 

I don't know why you would say that. They have built such luxury cars as
the Park Ave Ultra since the very early 90's that got mid-twenties in the
city and over 30 on the highway. At the same time the Grand Am got equal
mileage. Two ends of a scale in terms of types of cars - one excellent
luxury and the other a fairly sporty car for American tastes. They are by
no means the limit of GM's offerings, just two representative examples.

Maybe we are talking two different things here. I'm not talking about the
smallest possible thing you can mount on 4 wheels. Those cars all suck, no
matter who they are from. They ride like crap, are under powered, and feel
like junk when you sit in them. Why would anyone want that kind of
offering when you've been able to match or beat the mileage of those pieces
of junk, with a decent sized car?

Notwithstanding the hybrids, just how many of those Toyotas and Hondas and
Hyundais, et al, smoked GM on the mileage ratings? Do you really even know
what GM cars got for mileage over the past 10-15 years?

Ok - I understand that you want a small car. Clearly not GM's strength.
But that does not make their offerings weak in the mileage area. As has
been stated - they've made the mark on mileage. How many of those very
small cars get the mileage of GM's offerings? I'll give you that they are
not as nimble and tight as some offerings from the competition, but they
sure are a lot more comfortable. And - they aren't horrible.

Not so true Scott. There has always been a big difference between a Buick,
and a Chevy and a Pontiac. Built on the same platform, but handling
packages, trim packages, etc. made them completely dissimilar. Completely
different suspensions, sound deadening, seats, engines. The list goes on.
The common platform was not as bad an idea as it's getting credit for these
days. The only people who would state that there was no difference or
little difference between a Buick and a Pontiac and a Chevy, were people
who never drove all three.

 

You don't seem to understand how marketing works. It doesn't set many
trends, it responds to trends and capitalizes on them. Marketing does not
convince anybody of anything they don't already lean towards. All of those
advertisements only appeal to a base of people who are already convinced of
the need for those things - real or perceived.

You don't know much about pickup trucks do you? Or even a large segment of
the SUV market. Yeah - the foreign SUV's were/are typically cars with more
sheet metal, but you need to look under one of the American SUV's (not
those foolish what-ever-they-call-them-now - crossovers.

Again - you don't understand how marketing works. It's nice to bluntly
throw the blame on a big old machine that forces something upon the people
that they really don't want - thus creating an evil empire to hate, but
that's just not how marketing and consumer purchasing works in the real
world.

 

What's your point? People buy what they want, and no one forces them to buy
anything. Unless you are saying you would purchase something just because
the advertisement told you to, in which case, I would advise you to start
using your brain, and to think for yourself.

 

Aside from your mistaken perception of the quality of small cars compared to
larger ones, I have had a preference for small cars since I first learned to
drive. I have bought larger cars when my family needed them but have always
appreciated maneuverability and nimbleness. My all-time favorite car was a
1969 Lotus Europa S2, which was a poster child for poor build quality and
unreliability and had no creature comforts but was a dream to drive. At 1455
lbs kerb weight (British, you know) and almost exactly a metre high at the
roofline (I could bend at the waist and put my chest flat on the roof, and I
have short legs) it was the epitome of a small car, but I doubt you would
call it underpowered... even though I routinely got mid-30s mpg in mixed
driving. Then I went and got married :-(

My daughter just bought a 2004 Chevy Classic with the Ecotec engine - on my
recommendation - and grumbles about the difficulty getting it into parking
spaces, but she will have the car when her family needs the interior space.
It's only about 2-3 inches wider than my older Prius across the back seat
but with the child seat that is a critical couple of inches! The fuel
economy is in a league with the Honda Accord she has passed to her husband,
and the power is adequate. It won't keep up with the Prius merging with
heavy cross-traffic (especially here at 7000 ft, where the electric side of
the Prius doesn't get short of breath) but it is okay. Like the Prius it is
somewhat noisy on strong acceleration but is quiet at cruise. The ride is
very similar - no surprise, since the weight is less than 10% greater than
that of the Prius. But she never takes her car to the movies, since the only
theater in town has notoriously narrow parking spaces.

My work truck is a 2005 4WD F350 SD. I would never try to take the Prius
where I have to go in the truck and it would never carry the loads I need to
take there... but which one do I prefer to drive? It's not even close.
Neither is the reliability. The truck has been at the dealer for repairs
several times in the three years I've had it: injectors, replace rear axle,
parking brake flakiness, replace the stock tires that made the steering
wheel shake like a wet dog when I hit a rough spot on the freeway. The
speedometer went wacky once and gradually returned to sanity. Now the cruise
control isn't working and even on its best days the gearbox is one of the
balkiest things I've ever used. But so far it hasn't stranded me far from
civilization.

Mike

 

I think this is generally true. There are probably cases where marketing
has
elevated a product to desirability rather than following trends, but that is
something
of an unusual case.

There was definitely a fad for people wanting SUVs. And the companies who
made
them capitalized on them. The love of the pickup truck, especially here
in the South,
has been around so long it cannot be called a fad any longer. I know lots
of people
who own pickups because they like to "ride up high", and who have never had
nor
never will have any cargo in the vehicle.

The gasoline price escalation was part of the fad breaker here. Some
friends who said
they were going to own a big car, pickup, SUV no matter how high the price
of gas went
started to change their story.

Now with unemployment high, the spectre of high fuel costs still lurking,
and the economy
of the nation in ruins, the auto industry is going to have to react
differently, if it can. It may
be too late for the American Big 3 to survive, especially considering that
they are already
weakened and have some formidable competition.

 

If you stay within the Volts battery only range, you won't need to use
any gasoline. I think I could just make it (I have a 30 mile roudtrip
daily commute).

 

Have you actually driven all of these cars?

And Toyotas do? Please.....

So when you buy a Lexus ES350 you think you are getting something more
than a very thinly disguised Camry? Or you think the new Toyota Vensa
is not just a RX350 with a few trival changes?

Ed

 

Actually I understand very well how marketing works. And the fact that
you don't think they try to make us _want_ to by anything we didn't
already need tells me that you're a marketer's dream demographic.

 

The actual range will vary considerably depending on temperature, wind,
change in elevation and driving style. Me? I'd love to drive everywhere at
my off-peak electric rate but first need to know the following:

1. What will the car cost?
2. Will my electricity provider let me charge it at their off-peak rate?
3. If yes to off-peak, what will be involved with incorporating an off-peak
jack in my garage.
4. What is the real-world range in my real world of temperatures ranging
from -40F to + 105F?

We simply don't have enough information to make a value judgment.

Watch for other issue to arise down the pike a ways:

On longer trips it will be necessary to charge PHEVs away from home. Even
if the car's charging system involves some sort of metering, reimbursing
others for their electricity will be cumbersome (we need to know their rate)
and involve our imposing on friends and relatives.

Off-peak schemes involve the off-peak management of specific devices like
water heaters and HVAC. Presently, I know of no scheme that manages power
at a conventional 110V jack. It will probably take several years to come up
with a uniform off-peak standard. Under my present scheme, this would
involve adding a 110V breaker to my off-peak panel and wiring that to a new,
unique outlet in my garage that only a matching, unique plug from the car
could mate with. The car's charging system would have to return a low
voltage control wire to my off-peak control relay.

 

Go out right now and drive a BMW Z3 and tell me if you feel the same way
afterward.
--scott

 

The Volt can barely hold four people, and the hatch hits the two rear
passengers in the head when it's closed. Is that the right way to get
into the hybrid business?