Chevrolet Volt, General Motors, Great Britain, and Global Warming

One of my brothers is that co-owner of a trucking company (more about his company again tomorrow). In that capacity, he really does keep up with transportation news (along with oil price news, etc.). The information in this entry comes mainly from him, although I am aware of some of it myself.

The Chevrolet Volt is supposed to signal the resurgence of General Motors. Sometimes, the hype is so strong that General Motors seems to be staking its entire survival on the Volt, if it can even survive to that point. The car, of course, is a sort of electric car hybrid, and therefore is one of those examples GM uses to show how "green" it has become. Problem: If GM is relying on the Volt, GM is almost certainly doomed--unless we bail it out again by massive subsidies of the Volt, which is what I think GM is counting on (as that Communist, good old boy T. Boone Pickens was counting on the government to force people to use his natural gas powered vehicles).

To recap, the Volt has a range of only 40 miles on its electric batteries, at which point it switches over to gasoline. Since if you wanted to use gasoline, you would presumably have bought a fully gasoline powered vehicle, this means the Volt is intended to be a commuter vehicle--with limited range before needing recharging of its electric batteries. This much you should know.

Even this much made me doubt the Volt. Why would people want to drive a car with only a range of 40 miles on its battery? It hardly is of much use as a full service family car. Still, if oil had stayed high (it didn't, as I predicted), you could see the Volt having a market.

Then you have to consider the information my brother is giving me. First, it appears that GM has not fully perfected the battery, and is still not fully happy with the battery as it now stands. This is pretty late in the game for GM to be still trying to perfect the battery. The car is already subject to possible glitches that face any new technology. Just how well is that changeover to gasoline from electricity going to work, anyway. The Japanese hybrids have not been free of glitches, but the Volt can afford few of them (see below).

The Volt was going to have a sticker price of $26,000. To me, that was already too high for a vehicle with such a limited range (on the electric battery). I thought that original price was on the edge of being uneconomic. The (planned) price quickly rose to $31,000-32,000. I thought that was definitely a price which guaranteed failure, absent an enormous government subsidy (taxpayers subsidizing an uneconomic product). My brother tells me that GM is now saying that they can't make money on the car with a price under $40,000. We are now in the realm of total fantasy. We have left reality behind. This vehicle has "Edsel" ("failure") written all over it.

Did I mention that the vehicle is not even due out until 2010 (although I am not sure if that means model year, which would make it fall of 2009). That is likely too late. That is not even to mention that California wants a government subsidy for Silicon Valley to develop California's own electric car. If oil stays below $50.00 a barrel, it is all irrelevant. The electric car is doomed.

You doubt me? Great Britain announced today that sales of the electric car in Britain had fallen by half, in the face of predictions that they would increase. That is why I long ago labeled you a kook (my "you are a kook if" series which I plan to revive, in the Age of Obama) if you believed that movie that alleged GM killed the electric car for some sort of nefarious reasons. The electric car is not taking over the world. It is failing all over again. It will continue to fail, unless and until the technology improves and/or the price of oil stays ver high (like about triple where it now is). California is right, in a way, although not about the subsidy to finance one type of technology in preference to others (T. Boone type central planning). We need better electric car technology--probably from a source other than GM. Or maybe we need something else entirely.

Meanwhile, the world has not warmed since 1998, and there never has been a sustained warming trend in the United States. See the chart in the late Michael Crichton's "State of Fear". This year is no exception, where the temperatures in the U.S. are no warmer than about average (average since temperature records began, which is also the period over which no trend is established). The U.S. has cooled since both 1936 and 2006--the years which basically share the record as warmest years.

With present technology, and present supplies of oil (which we could increase by opening more promising areas to drilling, especially now that we have some time bought by the economic slowdown), the electric car is not the answer. It will not save GM.