Beginning September 14th, the premise is straight forward: you buy a GM car; you later decide it just does not offer enough cup holders for your needs, or perhaps does not have the same quality of cup holder as the competition, then between day 30 and 60 of ownership, you can return the car for a full refund. Simple. Easy. Excellent.

Ok, there are a couple catches. For starters, it is only valid for surviving brands, so you can not return a 2010 Vibe to your now Pontiac-less, sales starved, Buick/GMC dealer as a early Christmas present. Same goes if you leased the car, or if you have driven it more than 3,999 miles from purchase.

Unlike some recent marketing snafus, (see any Buick commercial in the past couple years, or the 230 MPG fiasco), this one seems solid, and pretty original. A good combination.

The program gives some real peace of mind and just general good vibes to prospective buyers. It may actually offer some enticement to have shoppers come back and consider a GM product, time will tell. It is still early, but I would rate this akin to Hyundai’s “you lose your job, you can lose our car” campaign…which was very well received. Best of all, the cost to GM itself is fairly minimal, unlike putting $3,500 on the hood of a car to get it out the door.

So that is a winner, good job and good night, right?

Sadly no. GM also decided to ‘jump the shark’ at the same time by having Chairman Lee Iacocca deliver the program directly to the public with some straight talk. Alright, they didn’t do that, Mr. Iacocca was not available as a shill for hire. (How awesome would that commercial have been though?) In Lee’s place, they had newly-minted Chairman Edward Whitacre Jr. dub his voice over some old 80s Chrysler commercials. Ok, that is also untrue. GM shot a whole ‘new’ commercial from scratch, with GM’s Chairman doing the walk and talk.

About halfway through the spot, Mr. Whitacre deadpans a line that probably should have been left on the editing room floor, “We are putting our money where our mouth is.” Erm, sorta. Who isn’t mumbling at this point, “putting OUR money where your mouth is,” under their breath here?

Watch GM Chairman Ed Whitacre Here:

Watch then Chrysler Chairman Lee Iaccoca Here:

Side note: The new GM commercial has some shots of the Volt (huzzah for black), a ‘hood peak’ shot (that we are not unfamiliar with here at GM-Volt) of the new entry level Cadillac, and the as yet unnamed Buick Delta II CUV in clay form.

Not content to stop there, GM throws more gas on the ‘going too far’ bonfire, by introducing this site, The Best Car Wins, which basically asks you five simple questions on which brand you feel has the best fuel efficiency, best safety, best quality, best performance and best overall cars. At the end of the quick questionnaire it displays what the public opinion (to date) is, with a note to please, “stay tuned.” I’m thinking, I probably won’t be back.

You would figure being a GM site, some of the answers should come up with a GM brand…but no. As of going to press, the respective answers to those five questions were Toyota, Volvo, Honda, BMW, BMW. I guess nothing says “come to GM” more than by promoting the fact that everyone else believes that other company’s do things better than you do.

Overall thoughts? Good idea, bad follow through. Hopefully the site, and that commercial die a quick death, and the program lives on, filling a hole for GM in the near term.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go find a dealer with a in-stock, black Corvette ZR1 with the 3ZR package and chrome aluminum wheels, but hold the floor mats please (they don’t give refunds on dealer accessories).

Official GM Release

A simple green background shows the number 230, with a winking electric outlet instead of the zero. Below is the date 8-11.

AdAge determined that the source of the campaign is none other than GM, but the automaker and its ad agencies won’t say what it means.

Speculation has varied on its meaning from the MPG of the Buick plug-in to the MPG of the Volt or even something to do with charging at 220V.

GM is holding a press conference in Detroit on August 11th, and yes I will be there.

Reports quote sources as saying the number will be the Volt’s official MPG rating, but how they came to it remains a mystery; highway, city, average, none of the above?  And if so how was it calculated?  The EPA city cycle is 11.04 miles, the highway cycle is 10.26 miles.  The car goes 40 mile without any gas, and 78% of drivers drive less than 40 miles per day (utility factor).  Do your own math.

Here’s my guess:

I heard of a method to determine the MPG of an EREV; first the car is driven from a full battery until it reaches charge-sustaining mode, then one more cycle is driven. If we use the highway schedule, the first 40 miles are electric.  One more cycle is 11 more miles. If the Volt gets 50 MPG in charge sustaining mode, it will use .22 gallons of gas for that 11 miles.  Thus 51 miles/.22 gallons = 231.8 MPG.

We can have fun guessing for now, but be sure to logon to GM-Volt.com on Tuesday morning and we will have the answer as soon as it hits.

Plus, if you have any questions you want me to ask the Volt team and execs while I am there, leave them in the comments.

Source (AdAge)

[UPDATE:  The method referred to to measure the efficiency of an EREV is far more complex and still under development.  Though my calculation came out similar the methodology GM actually used to determine the MPG was different.  See this post.]

Singer/Songwriter Sarah Spiegel (shown above) wrote me to hear a Chevy Volt jingle she produced. Sarah was a national spokesperson for General Motors last summer and is currently recording a CD and writing jingles.

She says some GM execs have heard this.

You can hear it by playing the audio file at the bottom of the post.

Lyrics:
Once I had a guzzler,
I could not afford,
It cost me more every day.

Once I had a guzzler,
Now it’s gone,
Chevy Volt’s here to stay.

Don’t you remember?
It was “filler up”?
So much we couldn’t‘ pay?

Don’t you remember
Where all your money went?
E flex came and saved the day.

Chevy Volt! Chevy Volt, leaves me money for play.
Chevy Volt! Chevy Volt, Chevy Volt’s here to stay.

Performed by Sarah Spiegel
Lyrics by Sarah Spiegel
Music by Eddie Hedges
(c) GOOT MUSIC ASCAP

And if there are any other singer/songwriters out there why not give it a shot too? Maybe we can hold a contest for the best Chevy Volt jingle.

PRESS PLAY BUTTON BELOW:

Also the more people we can demonstrate to GM as wanting the car, the more likely they will be to build it in necessary volumes.

Early on the Volt was just a concept.  In June of this year, GM’s board of directors approved production.

A new television ad featuring the Volt has begun airing during the Olympics.  The ad is being shown regularly from 8/8 through 8/24, and is shown below.

Per GM the ad "combines Chevy’s key Fuel Solutions stories into a memorable 60-second commercial that demonstrates Chevy offers answers to America’s transportation energy needs. The upcoming Chevy Volt range-extended electric vehicle makes a brief appearance."

Considering 60% of all US households watch the Olympics it confirms how serious GM is about this car.

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ITuKHpWKlQ]

The TV commercial will apparently begin with the following Dear John letter from GM:

“Dear Oil,
We’ve had this great relationship for many years. We think we will both be a lot happier and healthier if we see less of each other.”

It truly remarkable to see the changes that are underfoot. A massive industry, and a leading giant within it is beginning to swear off the stuff that made it all happen for the last 100 years.

Source (Automotive News, subscription required)

On a related note, GM has just announced a partnership with Clean Energy Fuels Corp to build a new hydrogen fueling station in Los Angeles near LAX. GM has been engineering hydrogen fuel cell vehicles for some time and already has a fleet of 100 fuel cell Equinoxes in consumers hands called Project Driveway (see my test drive video). The fuel cell generator Volt is also production intent (2012′ish), and now has Nick Zielinksi as its vehicle line director.

Despite GMs clear desire to bring fuel cells to the masses, they have been stymied by the lack of infrastructure. Apparently reluctant to wait for the infrastructure to build itself, and spurred by the latest gas and oil prices, GM has obviously decided to help do it themselves.

In the words of Mary Beth Stanek, director of energy and environmental policy & commercialization at GM, “Developing and growing hydrogen infrastructure is vital to GM’s efforts to bring larger volumes of fuel cell vehicles to the market.”

Source (GM)

View it here.

Neilson ratings suggests that the audience for this broadcast is roughly 8 to 9 million viewers.

The segment kept the message clear with a little stock footage and an interview with GM exec Robert Kruse.

Anyone coming to this site from seeing the Volt on the news, welcome. This is the place where we who are extremely interested in getting this car on the road convene to analyze, discuss, and contribute to its development. Be sure to read our FAQ.

We review relevant topics on a daily basis, and if your very interested, join our waiting list.

It turns out that GM will be the exclusive automotive sponsor for this venture.

As a result, the General will get to air a series of eight two-minute documentary style ads featuring their executives. At least one of these will feature our friend, the Volt’s vehicle line engineer Frank Weber.

The network will reach 50 million U.S. homes.

Now that sounds like it would be a good venue to unveil the production Chevy Volt to the world.

Source (MediaPost)

This information although exiting did not match with what the vehicle’s chief engineer Bob Reuter told me in Detroit. There he noted the car could go 10 miles all electric, but that it was a blended 2-mode hybrid design, and would only intermittently run on EV only, lending overall to a roughly 50% improvement in mpg over the current VUE XR line. This is not an E-REV, it is a 2-mode hybrid with a large plug-in electric battery.

Seeking clarification from GM on the ad, spokesman Brain Corbett advised me of the following:

“We’ve officially said more than 10 miles.”

and

“The writer mistakenly used the figure for the all-electric range of the Flextreme concept that was introduced along side of the plug-in Vue.”

There’s no bigger a fan of the Volt than me, and I’m happy Chevy is advertising a car that doesn’t exist yet, but couldn’t GM spend their money better than on this commercial?

There certainly have been better ones before (see post).

[UPDATE - GM sources have confirmed that this is indeed an official Chevy Volt commercial.  The above picture is a still from the video.  If you do not see the YouTube video below, go to this link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBXK4EE7Lg8]

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBXK4EE7Lg8]

At the L.A. Auto Show last week, Bob Lutz announced a deal between GM and Walt Disney Productions. The entertainment company agreed to take ownership of 10 Chevy Equinox hydrogen fuel cell vehicles as part of the project driveway program. This will be an example of an experimental fleet.

Today, an article appeared suggesting there might be a new theme park in the Epcot Center featuring the Chevy Volt.

I don’t know the source of this comment, nor am I aware of any press releases. However, it would be an excellent idea. Over 10 million people pass through Disney’s Epcot Center each year, and a ride/show about the Volt will help to educate the public (not everyone reads this blog yet!) about the importance and value of plug-in electric vehicles. And, it should lead to greater sales.

BTW, Happy Thanksgiving!

Source: (Half Life Source)