Of course you’re dead right. At $47,500 Californians will be able to buy the BEV Phoenix short bed pickup later this year. With a >100 mile range it covers most commutes. I don’t know whether the dramatically reduced maintenance footprint (25% of ICE) and the fuel efficiency will actually cost justify it, but there’s an outstanding chance that the vehicle will last for 250K miles using up rear breaks and tires only. That buys a lot of time to amortize capital premium.

Just wait a few more weeks and you will see it for yourself. I hope you don’t poke your eye out Prab.

That’s the absolute best-case scenario (14,600 miles/year with 40 miles EVERY day) for the Volt and I notice you didn’t look at the projected price differential. If the Volt becomes available for $42K and Toyota holds the Prius to $21,100 (they’re ramping up to 1/2 million/year, so I think we can reasonably expect further economies of scale), then the Volt has to show $20,900 in savings over some reasonable projected lifetime. Presuming the ‘10 Prius gets 50mpg (they are at 45 now and Toyota intends to better that), that’s $1460 for the Prius in fuel each year. You shortchanged the Volt a little, I get $321 to “fuel” it for the year, electric-only. The advantage to the Volt is $1139/year in “fuel” costs and the simple Volt payback is $20,900/$1139 = about 18 years.

Now, add a time value to your money. If you put your $20,900 left over buying a Prius instead of a Volt to work, you earn about a thousand dollars a year. The Volt advantage shrinks to just $139 per year. The revised payback is $20,900/$139 = about 150 years, or 120 years after the cars have been junked. That’s not a payoff.

Another way to look at this is, buy the Prius in 2011, keep the $20900 in your pocket and buy a true, longer-range BEV for your daily commute in 2012 or 2013, in addition to you Prius.

If you change any of the parameters of use (add some periodic long trips, figure a longer or shorter daily commute), the Volt loses some of its fuel cost advantage over the Prius. 40 Miles per day, every day, is absolutely the Volt’s optimum use cycle. Anything other than that either diminishes the miles traveled and, therefore, the savings over the Prius or increases the cost of miles traveled and the Prius gains on incremental cost. Either way, a change lengthens the Volt payoff or negates it altogether.

The thing about the Prius is that, although people criticize it for it’s “lookitme” green factors, it’s still reasonably priced. Hard-headed people with no stake in the environment, oil independence or any other societal factor can look at the cost of operation and see a savings over a mid-priced sedan and go ahead and buy it. If gas goes up, their savings look even better.

With the Volt’s projected large price penalty, it’s very difficult to make a “business” case for the car and that means its principal value is in societal factors. In other words, it’s “lookitme” greenness that will sell – or not sell – this car. And it’s a $20K committment to “lookitme” greenness, which is a big chunk of change. For that, you could buy solar cells, solar heat/hot water or a windmill.

GM has got to find a way to manufacture it at a reasonable price. I don’t mean subsidize it from other profits, that’s the road to Chapter 11. They have got to do what Toyota’s doing; relentlessly drive down the cost to produce each additional vehicle and get that incremental production cost down to the point where they can afford to build and sell a lot of them and still make a little money (or at least break even).

This is where GM has, apparently, failed with their current crop of hybrids. Given their financial position, it’s not a mistake they should repeat.