Insight is going to own Volt, sorry to burst everyone’s bubble.

oh, heh, “bubble”… pun intended…

Last fall, Lutz, who was “personally” supervising the Volt project, said they’d have a driveable Volt “by Easter Bunny time,” and made some other, fairly obnoxious remarks, dissing Toyota’s vehicle. Turned out they did NOT have a driveable Volt by Easter Bunny time. They haven’t appeared to pick a battery supplier (at least, it looks like they haven’t told the winner) and they only recently picked an engine. They keep advertising the wrong body shell.

This is not the way a healthy project should run. And they’re doing this over a decade after others successfully launched hybrid cars. And they’re now begging for loans to make tooling for new-tech vehicles possible. I’d say “struggles” is entirely justified.

Toyota’s got another round of cost reductions coming down the pike in their vehicle:

http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN0518895920080905?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=10216&sp=true

This is bad, bad, bad news for GM.

#59, MetrologyFirst,

I see no reason to ridicule your choice of car. You’re happy? Fine. However, I wouldn’t endorse those as class-leading in reliability and I doubt that I’d want one. But that’s not ridicule; tastes and expectations differ.

That also doesn’t mean that I can’t point to certain Pontiac design elements and say, “ugly.” I do note that the ‘03 doesn’t have the ugly plastic cladding that many Pontiacs had. That thick stuff with big cutaways for door clearance that looked really, really cheesy (Pontiac was not alone in this, I walk by a recent Chrysler with the same affliction every day and even a recent Honda). The ‘03 has an improved, cleaner look.

As it happens, I like the front-end treatment on most Pontiacs (e.g., I think the Vibe is better looking than the Matrix) but Pontiac has an unfortunate tendency to do weird things with the grille and intakes, sometimes putting in too many (e.g., Aztek) or making them look bizarre (a late Firebird got a very unfortunate “snout” treatment, looks like nostrils frmo some sort of dinosaur).

Form don’t follow function for you guys, hunh?

It’s TOTALLY brain-dead, if a car review lists a vehicle’s weight, not to have the co-efficient of drag in there. It’s like physics.

Demand that your purple-prose car reviews tell the vehicle’s cD.

Long live Phil Knox, and basjoos. [and google]

Am I the only one who thinks it sounds crazy for Honda to name this the same name as their discontinued 2 seater? Aren’t they worried about the confusion? This sounds like a completely different car, different frame, a 5 seater, different skin, etc… anyone who didn’t like the original Insight may not even look further.

And yea, as for the Volt being a Prius killer, that’s Lyle’s wishful thinking. Volt and Prius are not only in two completely different price categories, the Volt is only a 4 seater, but also have two different target consumers… on top of that, the Volt won’t be made in any meaningful quantity for at least another 4 years even if they were competing for the same customers.

Folks have to remember that it’s going to take a bit longer to completely electrify general transportation, so any high mileage vehicles, be conventional ICE, BEV’s (pure or series hybrids like Volt), or other hybrids, is going to help us wean ourselves off fossil fuels.

Quite true, when you put it that way. Actually GM has been doing me a favor by dangling the Volt carrot out in the future. It gives me emotional cover to keep driving our old car, which is by far the cheapest option for us, even a today’s gas prices. Just by chance, we moved about half the way to my wife’s work about the time the real spike hit. So now we are driving the old Impala about 5-6K miles/year instead of 10-12. At that rate, the car will last another 13 years, and our gas bill has remained about the same.

Even so, this Honda deal scares the he** out of me. If Herm Perez is anywhere near right at #82, they will sell every one they can make. Then what happens to the Cruze, et al? What’s the old saying, “It felt like someone just walked over my grave”?

60 mpg over 40,000 mi is pretty impressive. Can you tell us a little insight on your insight?
1. Maintenance issues ?
2. What kind of mileage at 75 mph on the interstate?
3. Is acceleration acceptable?
4. Ever get out of Florida and drive it in any hills/mountains?

Note that the insight system is different from the prius, in the prius the gas engine can be stopped and the car will run on electricity only.. in the insight the engine is turning (valves closed, no gas injected) when the car is running on electricity. The one to beat will be the plug-in Prius whenever Toyota makes one.. or you can get the Hymotion A123 pack and upgrade the Prius to a 40 mile electric range car.

I think the Volt has been a Prius killer as far as I am concerned. Last summer I wanted to buy a Prius, but held off because I wanted a Volt instead. So, the Volt killed that sale. Of course, I was hoping they would get the Volt out to the market by the fall of 2009 as a 2010. That did not happen and it will probably be 2011 or 2012 before I will be able to purchase one because there will not be one available in my area. So, now I am back looking at the Prius or the new Honda Insight.

Edited: I went back and looked at the Honda press release once more. They did not state if this was going to be a 2009 or a 2010 model year Insight. My guess would be a 2010 and the release date probably around April 2009.