GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site

How often has the car buying public been subjected to a headline like “Big Auto Company Introduces it Fabulous Concept Electric Show Car With 22″ Wheels…That Is Coming Soon-ish,” only to have that be the last word we ever hear on it? Fifty? A Hundred Times?

Personally, when I spot a new concept EV, I think to myself, ‘it looks like somebody had a couple thousand pounds of modelling clay getting old somewhere and this is the end result. Or perhaps there was just too many design interns last summer, and they didn’t know how to keep them all busy.’

I doubt the thought of, ‘I wonder what the demand for this car will be once they start producing it,’ crosses many people’s minds. That is of course until recently.

With GM currently ramping up for production of the Volt at its Hamtramck facility in Michigan, and Nissan on the cusp of actually taking orders in a few weeks, we can now focus somewhat on the acceptance of electric vehicles themselves once they hit the market.

Given the Volt’s very low initial production levels (8,000-10,000 for the first year), it is assured that it will be a virtual sell-out heading into 2012. But what happens when full line utilization is reached?

GM hopes to be producing 50,000-60,000 copies a year starting sometime in 2012. Looking even further out to 2015, Bob Lutz (GM’s vice chairman) predicted that the total market for the plug-in vehicles “will reach 250,000-300,000 units annually,” and added “they will mostly be our products.” /that is a lot of Volts Bob.

These are lofty goals, but are they reasonable?

Brent Dewar, while having his ‘cup of tea’ as head of Chevrolet, put it pretty succinctly, “There definitely is demand. We just need to get the cost and infrastructure in balance. Our biggest problem (right now) is infrastructure.” Brent ‘elected to retire’ a few days after making this statement, so we never got a chance for him to expound on just what he saw ongoing demand for the Volt to be…and new boss James Campbell seems to have his hands full catching up with the demands of Volt’s roll out to be making his own predictions at this point. /fortunately I have all the time in the world to do some armchair quarterbacking

For the Volt to achieve a level of 60,000 units per year in 2012, GM would have to sell 5,000/month. To achieve Lutz’s goal of more than half of his estimated plug in market for 2015, GM would have to sell 12,500 copies per month in five years time.

Demand will come from one of three main areas:
-existing customers currently buying vehicles at a similar price point
-current hybrid/eco sensitive buyers
-price trade ups in the same size (middle/compact) class

Existing High End Customers (Luxury/Sedans Over 30K)
This segment is the playground of the more affluent among us. According to NADA (National Automobile Dealer’s Association), 1 in every 13 cars sold in January (7.8%) were in the luxury car segment. More specifically than that, there was 46,000+ 4 door sedans sold in the month that had a starting MSRP of over $30,000 (only 7,000 of which were domestics). At a $40,000 price tag, that number drops to under 15,000. The Volt with a estimated MSRP around $40,000 (pre-rebate) would seem likely to take a portion of this segment.

The most likely casualty from the arrival of the Volt in this niche would probably be the Nissan Maxima, which tips the scales starting at $30,460. (The Maxima also sells the most of any non series/class car priced at this level, with 4,016 units sold last month)

Hybrid/Eco Customers

While this is the smallest of the three groups, statistically the Volt stands to gain the most ground as a percentage here by far. The hybrid group is growing at a year over year rate of almost 30%, and adding electric vehicles into the mix will only expand it further. (Last month there were 14,511 hybrid passenger cars sold compared to 11,221 the year previous)

While it is hard to judge at this point whether the Prius’ numbers (8,484 units sold in January) will take a direct hit from the Volt, it would seem likely that its sibling, the Lexus HS 250h (think suped up Prius with a trunk) will certainly lose some business to Chevy’s extended range car. The hybrid Lexus sold a not insignificant (considering the base price point of $34,650) 1,247 units. That was good for 3rd spot on the hybrid best sellers list. (156 ahead of the Fusion)

The Sell-Up
This is the wild card, and where ultimately the future success or failure of the Volt will be judged. The willingness of a customer to expand their price range to make the massive jump into MSRPs that start with a 3. This is where the Volt’s eventual MSRP and the government rebate ($7,500) really comes into play. At a pre-rebate starting price of $40,000, you are not likely to convert a lot of Honda Accord/Toyota Corolla buyers…but at $35,000, many will choose Volt over traditional best sellers.

The most likely casualty of the Volt’s success in this category, would be GM’s own Chevy Malibu/Impala. (Which I’m sure they would be ok with in the long run)

So What Is the Secret to Demand?
No secrets here at all. Even Brent Dewar knew it in his short stay at the top of the Chevrolet pecking order; GM has to “get the cost in balance with the market.”

With gas prices hovering at $2.60 nationally, the economy not going so well, and Nissan now threatening to make good on the rumor to set the price of the Leaf in the mid 20s after rebate, (“…we promise there will be a “wow” factor with how affordable it is!”) GM will have to do a lot better than $39,999 to sell at the volumes they are looking for.

Hopefully with the benefit of scale, good engineering, and falling battery prices, GM can find a way to get to market with a MSRP in the mid 30s and be a leader in this new segment. But then again…maybe they really don’t want to be. Maybe selling 2,000 Volts a month plus a few hundred even more pricey Volt-based EREVs is good enough for them. /I hope not

There is no debate that GM is years ahead of the competition in getting a extended range EV to market. The platform’s advantages are obvious. Hopefully, GM management doesn’t use this opportunity for short term gain by over pricing a handful of cars (relatively speaking) in lieu of owning a big piece of the future of the automobile.

(My own ‘guesstimate’ for ongoing sales (post initial demand) for the Volt follows below)

According to an opinion piece by Jerry Flint, Forbes’ senior automotive editor it will.

He writes, “The question isn’t whether the world is ready for the Leaf. It’s whether the Leaf is ready for the world.” He then continues that the Leaf is “is more likely to be a sales failure than a sales success” because of 5 reasons.

Range – it doesn’t have the range of a conventional car
Recharging stations – the lack of them is clearly a problem, and most will be west coast
Recharging time – “eight hours or so for a full charge from ordinary household current, much less with stepped-up voltage at charging posts that don’t exist”
Price – he is “guessing the price will be closer to $40,000 with the batteries”

There was also something else about “it doesn’t have the top speed,” which I thought was a little jejune to the argument; it goes 90 MPH for goodness sake. Tell me the truth Mr. Flint, you just googled an old article that estimated it topping out around 75 didn’t you?

For these reasons, he states “I’ll stick my neck out. The Leaf will get all the favorable publicity in the world but be blown away in the market.” Mr. Flint then goes on to quantify what ‘blown away’ represents in actual yearly sales; a few thousand, or maybe 10,000, or maybe 20,000, ok well no more than 30,000.

In the advantages column he states, “electricity costs less than gasoline” /you don’t say

I guess the Leaf really has very little going for it then. I guess freedom from foreign oil, or a healthier environment/better future for our kids doesn’t come into play here then?

To be fair, I usually end up on the same side of the coin as Mr. Flint. He was ahead of his time warning of trouble with the domestic automakers. He pointed out the dangers involved with their massive legacy costs, and has had a lot of other good insights, all the while being the very best ‘cranky old dude’ that he can be. I can respect that.

However, sometimes he is so committed to his own position, to viewing the auto industry only through Detroit-colored glasses, that he goes completely off the rails.

He has put out such whoppers as the only reason Korean car maker Hyundai has done so well improving on sales of late is because of the currency swap (even though Hyundai offers thousands less in incentives that of their Detroit brethren)…but just you wait, that failure is still coming (because they are over zealous and want to be number one. How dare they!)
— just check back in three years to see he was right.

/yeah, we will all bookmark your article on that one and check back in 3 years (Hyundai success is totally not because of smart/timely product planning at all)

I feel Forbes’ senior automotive editor is putting out another ‘Hyundai’ story when he reflects on the Nissan Leaf’s future prospectus. In fact Mr. Flint has been pretty much negative of a electric future for quite some time now.

A year and half or so ago he was “skeptical about how quickly manufacturers will solve the lithium-ion batteries’ problems, such as overheating,” and questioned if they would “be able to put the batteries into mass production.” This kind of fear mongering is not restricted to just the Leaf and pure EVs, he has suggested that the Volt itself may fall prey to “rebooting at 60 miles per hour,” which could mean “crashing into a highway post.” /oh no!

As for premise of the article, I do agree that Nissan is being way too ambitious with sales forecasts for the Leaf in North America. I think if Nissan does come to market in the low-mid $30s, a sell rate of 20,000-30,000 copies a year sounds just about right.

Also, Nissan building a plant to produce 150,000 cars a year in Tennessee feels more like a DoE money grab than a sound business plan; unless of course they are exporting them to the rest of the world as well. /and there it is…the bigger picture

This is where Mr. Flint falls down, you see his version of success is measured only by its reception in America. If this piece was on the Volt, and he concluded that it was not viable in the US, then the project would then most likely be considered a failure. However, Nissan is not GM, and it is not banking on the US to be the measure of its success for its electric car. The Leaf is being built and marketed as a world car.

The Leaf will be coming to market as the uncontested leader of electric vehicles in many countries around the world. In the majority of these markets gas is much more expensive, a lot more people live on top of each other in big city centers, and the regulations/taxes and tariffs (that the Leaf will be exempt from in many cases) on gas powered cars are steep, making the prospectus of a BEV a different proposition entirely than say in…Nebraska.

The electric cars Nissan sells in the US are the gravy, not the potatoes. Sure they would like to sell hundreds of thousands, but every Leaf that Nissan does ship to North America next year, whether that be 10,000 or 30,000 is purpose sent…as a sale, or at the request of the dealer. There will not be 25 electric cars lined up outside a Nissan dealership because the mothership is forcing inventory down their dealer’s throats with $10,000 ‘red tag’ signs plastered all over them.

/the ‘world’ is larger than the North America Mr. Flint, times have changed.

For what seems like forever, hydrogen fuel-cell technology has been a shimmering mirage dancing on the distant horizon of the auto-tech desert. No matter how long we keep trudging, how many reams of press-releases we wade through, nothing definite ever seems to happen to bring it any closer. Until now?

Honda Motor Co. has announced the development of it’s latest (fourth generation), compact, solar-powered, home refueling station for the hydrogen fuel FCX Clarity (200 of which are being leased in a California pilot project). With a compact 6-kilowatt solar panel array for power, the station contains a revolutionary high-pressure electrolyzer that can deliver 0.5 KG of extremely pure, pressurized hydrogen gas to the car for every 8 hours of sunlight. Why is this significant?

Although every major automaker has a fuel-cell research program, with GM in particular proclaiming that hydrogen (rather than advances in batteries) is the basis of it’s long term energy strategy, there are several obvious barriers to the success of the technology:

* Hydrogen is actually an energy storage medium rather than a fuel in the petroleum sense (i.e. all usable hydrogen fuel must be produced by electrolysis or reformation, which consume electricity).
* an entire hydrogen refueling infrastructure would need to be built, across the U.S. and around the world.
* vehicle fuel cells remain incredibly expensive to produce.

Since before 2000, billions of dollars have been pouring into vehicle fuel-cell research, but if any practical developments in these three areas have occurred they’ve been kept remarkably quiet. Critics like Doug Korthoff of LiveOilFree accuse automakers (and oil companies) of having used fuel-cell technology as a red-herring to distract lawmakers from requiring battery electric vehicles. Even among those critics who don’t suspect bad faith, many point out that the first barrier is not so much a challenge we can hope to overcome as it is inescapable physics. In other words, the whole proposition may simply not make much sense, particularly if we see competing improvements in battery technology.

But here is where the potential significance of the home refueling station becomes apparent. With one relatively small solar panel and some plumbing that could easily fit on a garage wall, the Honda home station provides enough purified, high-pressure hydrogen from a single day’s sunlight (0.5 KG) to power the car for one standard commute for most drivers.

Voila! Both the first and second obstacles appear to have been dealt a serious blow! It would seem that with this equipment, both the “problem” of where to get the energy to create hydrogen, and the crushing economics of building all the refueling infrastructure necessary to get the system on the road, have been significantly reduced. Of course hydrogen filling stations would still be required, but early-adopters should be a lot more willing to buy a vehicle without waiting for a filling-station network that blankets the earth, if they know that at least they can fill their cars at home. And conceptually, this system works even better if it’s paired with a EREV such as the GM-Volt, with the fuel-cell taking the place of the existing range extender. Days might pass before the vehicle actually consumes any hydrogen, days in which the home system is gradually topping off the tank. Filling station construction could, initially at least, be concentrated on the highways.

Of course, all this may not be quite as wonderful as it sounds (what ever is?). Omitted in the Honda press release and in many of the press accounts is the fact that the electrolyzer requires natural gas as a raw material to generate hydrogen. So the solar panels are not simply providing 30 miles/day of travel directly from the sun, they are in effect converting one fuel to another, albeit a tremendously abundant, environmentally friendly fuel. How much energy is coming from each source, and at what efficiency is of course proprietary information that is not available. We can hope that the technology will ultimately be adapted to water electrolysis, but who knows? And none of this speaks to the third barrier, the current exorbitantly high cost of vehicle fuel cells.

Nevertheless, those of us who until now have been skeptical of the coming “hydrogen economy” can look at this development and say that if it’s not exactly the light at the end of the tunnel, at least it’s starting to look like there really is a tunnel, and not just a black arch painted on the side of a mountain by a lunatic coyote.

Sources: (Cartech, New York Times, HondaNews)

Jon Vandervelde is a designer, writer, and robot combat promoter, with a love for all things mechanical.

While the damage to Toyota’s reputation has certainly taken a hit of late due to the widely publicized problems with stuck accelerator pedals on many models, a case could have been made that it was insular event. At the time, it was fortunate for Toyota that the ‘image flagship,’ the Prius, was not involved in the recall. It would seem the other shoe has now dropped as well.

Several hundred drivers have filed complaints that they have experienced delays before the brakes fully activate in the Prius, or that the brakes sometimes became ‘confused’ in certain situations, leading to accidents.

The problems at the company have gotten to the point where Toyota President and professional hermit, Akio Toyoda (who is also the founder’s grandson) left his bunker and made a rare public appearance at a hastily called press conference Friday. Of interest, when Akio tookover the position at Toyota he promised to be the President “closest to the frontliness,” but instead has earned the nickname of “No-show Akio.”

Shockingly, he offer no apology and blamed the previous president and his management team for any and all problems, claiming that everything was perfectly fine now at the ‘new’ Toyota…and the public was just being ridiculous about the whole thing and should move on with it and start buying cars from them again.

Alright, none of that last paragraph is at all true. Mr. Toyoda did exactly what was expected of him; he apologized half a dozen times and promised to fix the problems plaguing the automaker and once regain the trust of the car buying public…while not actually offering anything of real substance.

“We are facing a crisis,” he said. “I offer my apologies for the worries. Many customers are wondering whether their cars are OK.” Mr. Toyoda then promised to strengthen the quality control, and announced a special committee would be formed to ensure Toyota’s return to former glory, and that it would be headed up by himself personally.

However, his rare televised news conference was not without incident. In Japan, it is customary for executives to bow at the start of such a conference, and also when giving a apology. Mr. Toyoda’s bow during the apology portion of the program was received by the local media as being half-hearted and ‘not deep enough’. /the horror

The Toyota president also failed to address the Prius situation directly, and offered no immediate solution or direction to current Prius owners, just that he “has ordered swift action.”

Officially, Toyota has stated that the situation has already been rectified at the factory. Apparently, they retooled the brake mechanism in January and also did a software update to ensure the problem is not a issue going forward. Which is great if you want to buy a new Prius I guess…but not so good if you already own one of the 270,000 odd copies on the road and have been zipping around on bad brakes the last few months (while Toyota has known about the problem) and are still looking for a fix. (The NHTSA has not yet weighed in on the repair procedure, and announced Thursday it was opening a official investigation)

These situations have lead to Toyota taking a lot of heat, both at home and in the US, for acting too slowly. There is also a growing perception that Toyota is only reacting to safety concerns after being taken to task by US and Japanese transportation authorities.

In the US, Toyota has taken blow after blow by the NHSTA Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood, who recently gave Toyota’s share price a 7% haircut by uttering the statement, “my advice is, if anybody owns one of these vehicles, stop driving it.” That statement was later ‘taken back’ by Mr. Lahood, but retractions are nothing like headlines…and the damage was done.

A few days ago, I wrote a piece entitled, Is Toyota’s Pain GM’s Gain? and although this crisis is badly hurting Toyota’s sales now and for the foreseeable future (they posted a 8.7% loss in January with only a few of the days at the end of the month being affected by these recalls) it is still unclear if GM will directly benefit.

Will a customer looking for a Toyota Camry make the jump to a Malibu? Or will they look to another manufacturer? Honda would seem to benefit the most from that scenario. Or will they simply insist on still buying that Camry, but look to postpone that purchase until well after the US Transportation Secretary gives Toyota the rubber stamp of approval and stops saying things like Toyota is “a little safety deaf”? I wager many will fall into that last camp. People don’t need a excuse to not buy a car right now, and many of Toyota’s customers in the end are probably still fairly loyal. (JD Power surveys puts the retention rate at over 60%) I expect the bulk of Toyota’s lost sales to be mostly customers deciding to just not buy. A no win situation for the industry as a whole.

However, coupling Toyota’s damaged brand name with the tarnish that has been put on the Prius’ halo, it will definitely help one car in particular at GM, our own Chevy Volt.

The Prius is purchased for not only how it performs and how much fuel it saves, but also for how it makes you feel, and how you are perceived by your peers. (The ’smugness’ factor if you will) Many cars have come and gone attempting to compete with, and dethrone the Prius…all have failed. In the end, it may be this convergence of events that opens the door enough for another car to someday take over its halo, and the mantle of the car of the future.

/I don’t see why that car can’t be the Volt

What a difference a year makes. The domestic auto industry (forgetting Fiatsler for a moment) is seemingly firing on all cylinders, while Toyota and Honda are hitting road bump after road bump. Which begs the question, can GM take advantage?

For years a trip to the doctor or dentist’s office meant the forced perusal of endless stacks of historical Consumer Reports magazines (unless you really fancied reading May 2006 Issue of Soap Opera Digest). This also meant you were generally treated to a glowing report on Toyota’s latest people mover (unless you were talking about the Tundra), which was usally summed up by a comparison to a similar, but ultimately unfavorable product from Detroit.

To be fair, a good bulk of the criticism was well deserved, but most would agree that the gap has narrowed significantly over time as Toyota has struggled with pressure of being both the number one manufacturer in the world and holding onto the crown for quality and reliability.

Very often public perception is a market-trailing result, gained from a historical experience with a product and does not accurately reflect today’s reality. It takes time for sentiment to change, and in the auto business that can be a very, very long time. A fact GM knows all too well…but sometimes a perfect storm of events lead to things changing in a hurry.

Enter a nationally focused recall and production shut down at Toyota, coupled with a resurgent Detroit auto manufacturing base, and you have some real momentum to change the public’s mind.

Toyota has been dogged by claims of a stuck accelerator pedal for months leading up to this week; at first they claimed it really wasn’t a big deal, didn’t exist, that no real accidents of any significance had occurred, and that maybe it was just floor mat in the end…basically they did whatever they could do to contain the damage.

However, the floodgates opened when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration got involved and claims started coming to the surface on hundreds of accidents. Eventually, millions of cars were recalled, and contrary to what Toyota would have you believe, they were federally mandated to stop production on 8 models until a fix was submitted and approved by the NHTSA.

Throwing even more gasoline on the fire, we now have a House panel holding a hearing at the end of next month, requesting documents from the automaker and the NHTSA about everything they know on it, referencing “persistent consumer complaints of sudden unintended acceleration,” all but guaranteeing the issue stays at the forefront of the news.

When you start hearing statements from the Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman like, “I am concerned by the seriousness and scope of Toyota’s recent recall announcements…our hearing will help us better understand how quickly and effectively Toyota and the NHTSA responded to consumer complaints about the safety of the recalled Toyota vehicles,” you know it has gone past the point of no return.

These 8 production halted models at Toyota account for roughly 6 out of every 10 vehicles sold by the Japanese automaker…which means if you have bought a Toyota car in the last half decade or so, the thought of involuntarily charging into traffic has, at the very least, crossed your mind…and that is not a good thing for Toyota. The only thing worse for Toyota would have been if the recall/stop work order included their flagship Prius…or if Michael Phelps was in a head on collision in one and could never swim for the US again.

Has the focus and criticism of Toyota gotten out of control? Yes. Is it fair to Toyota and the image they have worked so hard to gain over the past couple decades? Probably not. But that is the way it is…and that is the business reality that GM knows all too well of late.

Couple the hit Toyota has taken on its image, with the massive loss they took last year fiscally, along with its gloomy forecast for the coming year and put it up against Detroit’s new found renaissance and you would think it was Toyota that was in trouble.

Conversely, GM now has a clean balance sheet, a forecast of profitability, and potentially a car in the Volt that could steal the thunder from the leader of ‘all things green’ in the Prius. While, the other half of the Detroit equation (Ford) also just finished reporting a 2.7 billion dollar profit for 2009, increased market share, and had a fantastic 4th quarter. (although don’t look behind the curtain too much at that gross negative cash flow, or 1.3B loss from automotive operations…but I digress)

Toyota’s Japanese counterpart Honda has had its own share of troubles. On Friday it announced the recall of some 600,000 cars and has been soundly panned for its abysmal attempt in the strong hybrid market with the Insight (I myself walked from a $500 deposit at my local dealer when specifics/reviews on the car began coming to light). Not to mention introducing what I feel is the ugliest car of the new millennium, the Crosstour. (what the heck is that thing anyway?) Lets just say the new Civic can’t come soon enough for them, and leave it at that.

By no means is General Motor’s all the way back, and I don’t expect to see them atop all the JD Power ratings next year, or even on the cover of Consumers Reports the next time I sit down at my dentist’s office, but they have come along way in a short time.

How has GM reacted to the touble at Toyota? Well…while Toyota has been in a production shutdown, they have been adding salt to the wound by offering (albeit on the ‘down-low’) an additional $1,000 to any current Toyota owner to make the switch…on top of the (on average) $4,000+ in incentives already in play.

/twist the knife GM…twist the knife

Sidenote: It is reported that Toyota believes they have a solution for the gas pedal problem; a small spacer that would increase tension on the accelerator and (hopefully) cause it to not remain in a depressed position. Due to the NHTSA’s involvement, it must first be approved by them before production will resume.

Looking to bolster sales in a post CFC (Cash for Clunkers) world, GM launched a new campaign entitled “May the Best Car Win,” led by a 60 day ‘Satisfaction Guaranteed’ promotion, designed to bring more buyers into their showrooms.

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