From a company point of view, a sale to Prius is not a good thing for GM as its a potentially lost sale. Capping production simply pushes people to the enemy and boosts profits for them allowing for more investment (by them). Truth be told, neither company cares about the environment unless its good for sales. a company is a creature devoted to returning the best profit for their share holders- this is their fiduciary duty, the environment is only a consideration of regulations, and public image to assist in the profit taking.

Again, I’ll repeat, it is not an either scenario. Both companies will independently produce and sell their vehicle. Chevy plans to produce ~10k 2011 Volts regardless of what Toyato does with Prius. Likewise, Toyota has production volume plans regardless of Chevy’s Volt plans. Whatever each volume of each vehicle is sold will work together in raising the national fleet mpg.

My point is that each Volt sold will produce the equivalent benefit of 3-4 non-plug Prii. I wish there could be 400k Volts to go along with 400K Prii in 2011, but that won’t and cannot happen. So what? That doesn’t deminish the benefit of each Volt sold or detract from the longer term benefits of the Volt program.