6340 Volts painted/produced in 6 weeks

[Ziv]

GM continued to paint Volts/Amperas at a higher rate, it looks like approximately 1143 were painted last week, which means that they built/painted 6340 Volts/Amperas in just 6 weeks since the last production hiatus. This is interesting in a lot of ways. First, with the Quad 0 lease and HOV Volts flying off the lots in California there are a lot of pre-January Hiatus Volts leasing and post-Hiatus Volts selling. Second, there is a large inventory of Volts building up. That has never been the case before. In the 3 cities that I check there are 50 Volts within 20 miles whereas it used to be 50 within 70 to more than 150 miles. Third, as Canada begins to get more Volts and more of the production run is sent to Europe, (plus the smaller dealers are finally getting more than one Volt), there is simply more demand than ever. [On edit: Or rather, there is more demand in areas that are now being supplied Volts that were not supplied before.] Fourth, most of these Volts won't be delivered for at least 2 to 3 weeks, by which time the next hiatus will be nearly over. Who knows when the Amperas will be delivered, since their shipping time will be even longer.
I think my guesstimate of 1800+ American Volts sold/leased in March may be a bit low. Add the Canadian Volts and the Euro Amperas to March record sales (even more so in April) and we could see two record breaking months in March and April for domestic sales/leases, plus the first real month of overseas sales (April?) will be setting records as well.
It would be great PR for GM if they were 'forced to restart Hamtramck early due to strong domestic and foreign demand'. This spring may be when the Volt goes mainstream. Sorry Early Adopters! You are going to be seeing your currently rare Volt at every other stop light by September!

8/1 - C440 - building around 150 per week (first 100 were test cars)
8/23 - C1736 - building around 420 per week
09/1 - C3032 - building around 500 per week
10/3 - C4260 - around 273 per week for Sept
10/17 - C6992 - around 1366 for each of the first 2 weeks of Oct
10/25 - C8129 - around 995 for the third week of Oct
11/1 - C8996 - around 873 for the fourth week of Oct
11/8 - C9508 - around 512 for the first week of November
11/16 – C10253 – around 745 for 8 days (rate of 652 per week)
11/19 - C10372 – 119 in 3 days (rate of 278 per week)
11/26 - C10921 - 549 in 7 days
11/30 - C11581 - 660 in 4 days (rate of 1155 per week) or 1209 in 11 days (rate of 769 per week)
12/19 – C13071 - 1490 in 19 days (rate of 549 per week)
12/27 -- C13775 - 704 in 8 days (rate of 616 per week, 704 wkly if you take off a day for Christmas)
01/04 – C13775! – 0 in 8 days
02/05 – C13775! – 0 in 38 days
02/16 – C15414 – 1639 in 11 days!
03/03 – C17736 – 3961 in 4 weeks
03/10 – C18972 – 5197 in 5 weeks (1040 wkly) or 1236 in 1 week
03/17 - C20115 -- 6340 in 6 weeks (1056 wkly) or 1143 in 1 week


Production by month estimates

1/11 - 580
2/11 - 620
3/11 - 800
4/11 – 700
5/11 - 600
6/11 - 0
7/11 – 600
8/11 – 2592
9/11 – 1128?
10/11- 4836
11/11 – 2585
12/11 - 2194
1/12 – 0
2/12 - 3561
3/12 - 2780 (closed for the month?)

[frankydude]

Very nice update, Ziv
that clearly correlates with my wife's car that was constructed tuesday march 13, and has VIN
B-19249. If we take as another point another fellow who posted his Volt VIN C-15079 was
constructed feb 14, between march 13 and feb 14 is 4 weeks, and there is a 19249-15079 = 4170 Volts constructed.
That gives an average of 1042 Volts per week.

This is straight in line with the weekly rate of production you calculated.

Another encouraging sign is that we are now at over 20000 Volts/Amperas produced!
We are not in prototype production level, anymore.

Inventory on cars.com does not seem to increase/buildup much either, which is an indication
that Volts produced are sold at a rate near production level rate.
Inventory in Quebec's dealer is at about 4 to 7 Volts total for all dealers of the 7 million persons province.
Most Volts coming to the province are already pre-sold, else they certainly don't stay on the lot
for a long time... We have a posting about this on http://roulezelectrique.com
(but written in French).

So, it's clearly all positive signs, I still don't figure out this production temporary stop, as numbers of Volts
on dealers lots don't seem to be high enough to justify the stoppage.

Francois et Line
B-2653 C-19249

[tboult]

Thanks for the update.. It would be cool i they had to reduce the idle time because of sales, but also good to know they can produce them at this rate which is about 60K/year so as demand increases they can keep up without significant increase in cost.

[Ross Buchan]

Ziv, I certainly appreciate your efforts in keeping this blog informed about Volt production but like others I try to sort out just what is actually going on. I can check cars.com for myself and see very little fluctuation in the pool of available Volts. I can check for myself the GM statements that production is being suspended for 5 weeks. On the other side are the rumors I would like to believe that GM is actually anticipating a rise in gasoline prices and building a surplus stock. Export sales are growing. The largest market, California, is going to overwhelm Volt production for March and April. I try to square this with your actual numbers of cars painted (a reality?) with the Hamtramick work force sent home earlier in the month. I hope you are correct on all counts and the cloud of confusion lifts.

[ClarksonCote]

Ziv, you should take past historical estimates and create a table that shows actual production from GM reports. It would help us to validate or visualize the data points better. Thanks for tracking these production estimates!

[Ziv]

Frankydude, I am kind of relieved that the numbers we are seeing seem to be congruent. I was way off in September and I still am not sure why. Like tboult I am glad they can tool up to a rate that approximates 60,000 Volts/Amperas a year, but like Ross, I am from Missouri on this one, I want them to show me that they can not only build them, but that they can build them profitably at a price that will match demand to the growing supply. I think GM is releasing VIN's that are accurate because in the past my data has led the numbers that actually were available to sell pretty closely. The tough aspect of this is that now it isn't 98% production for the US, we have Canadian Volts and Euro spec Amperas that are mixed in among these VIN's as well. Clarkson is right about how this would be even more useful if it was in some form of graph or table, but I have to admit that my graph didn't look very informative.

Techtom did a great pair of graphs a few weeks ago, lets see if I can link to his post #18...
http://gm-volt.com/forum/showthread....295#post126295

[fishhawk]

It's probably more efficient to buid them at a rate of 60K/year and shut down for 5 weeks than it would be to build at a slower rate over the same time period without a shutdown. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that's reason for the shutdown. And, if sales improve, they can ramp back up to the 60K/yr number.

[Sunvolt]

Guys, thanks for the update! My neighbor just ordered one today, the dealer told him three months! I saw yet another one in the wild today. I say north of 2,000 for March and only 3 weeks of downtime! BTW I have sold three volts in my hood! Faux kiss my...

[Koz]

It's probably more efficient to buid them at a rate of 60K/year and shut down for 5 weeks than it would be to build at a slower rate over the same time period without a shutdown. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that's reason for the shutdown. And, if sales improve, they can ramp back up to the 60K/yr number.

That is the reason GM gave but they will have only produced 6340 in the first quarter. If the assumption that this includes Canadian and Ampera builds, this would only be 25,360 annually. GM claims 10k European orders, adding in Canadian Volts and GE orders doesn't leave much even if you extrapolate from January sales being typical (typical being about 30% down for all car models). Since there was public knowledge of HOV Volts coming soon to CA back in January, those numbers are not typical. Since some areas were just coming online with demos, Jan numbers were not typical. No matter how it's sliced, it appears there must be something more to the 5 week shutdown than just a simple adjustment of supply to demand. Perhaps adjusting supply below demand so dealers can sell closer to MSRP.