This isn't good press

[voltage692]

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/02/02/oba...ex.html?hpt=C2

What are your thoughts? The Volt does seem like a big resale value risk. Remember when Hummers were the hottest thing on the planet and now you are widely thought of as a jackass if you have one? GM had to shut it down.

[marlow]

The only thing that will motivate the average consumer to buy electric cars is the price of gas vs the price of electricty, in concideration with the cost of the car.

Also for the Volt at least on the east and west coasts there still seems to be a reluctance of some type, to buying domestice cars.
I was shocked on my last trip to Boston to note that just about the only domestic cars on the road were taxies.

Hopefully the current quality of the design and assembly of the current domestic cars will start to win them over.

I am also betting ( by purchasing a Volt ) that the resale value will only be hurt by the ability of GM to bring the cost down, with out a decrease in quality.

Early adaptors are being compinsated for this by the tax credit.

[Mstehouwer]

When you see charging station all over and gas hits $5 a gal you will see sales take off. When my wife lease is up in 3 years we plan on buying something like the Focus that she can drive to work. It’s going to be important that we inform others on the advantages of driving an EV. I purchased the Volt because I could lease it around the same price I was paying for my current lease and it seems the right thing to do.

Matt

[Jason M. Hendler]

I think the Volt will maintain a high resale value, even if the 2nd gen vehicles are significantly cheaper, because the 1st gen Volts were over engineered with lots of redundancy that won't be included in the 2nd gen vehicles.

[evil_attorney]

Does anyone have any links to the study and who funded it? It's annoying how lazy these reporters are. They have a bad habit of publishing whatever the supposed bottom line is on any study without any critical thinking or investigation. I could put out a "study" tomorrow saying I have discovered a cold fusion technique involving a goat and two midgets and these guys would dutifully report it without question.

[SolarExec]

We all remember seeing all this before... when the Gen II Prius came out.

Here is cnn saying the car does not get the mileage it is supposed to http://money.cnn.com/2004/06/28/pf/a...test/index.htm

Here is car and driver (http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/...machine_page_3) saying, among other things "we'll never be convinced that this car, selling at this price, earns what any Ivy League CPA would recognize as a profit. We therefore expect mass-market hybrids to be more spartan, more expensive, or probably both" and also this "The fuel saving is measurable but not worth the trade-offs. If you want to be green, buy a bicycle. If merely appearing green is enough, go for the Prius. If you want the best car for the money, look elsewhere. "

of course there was this article: http://money.cnn.com/2004/01/06/pf/a...it_gm_hybrids/ where Bob Lutz is quoted after the Prius won North American Car of the Year "Lutz also argues that it doesn't make economic sense for consumers to pay several thousand dollars more for hybrid cars"

We had the crazy "Dust to Dust" report - now widely discredited - that claimed the environmental impact of a Prius is worse than a Hummer.

Remember comments like this: "The guys at Edmunds.com, who run hard numbers about the car business as well as anyone, estimate that a Prius owner would have to drive at least 66,500 miles annually for five straight years, or gasoline would have to soar to 10 bucks a gallon, to equal the cost of operating a cheaper, conventional Corolla."

Or This: "if we pay attention to the Cassandra-like fulminations of the liberal media, we might be led to believe that hybrid vehicles are our only hope to save us all from ozone asphyxiation and indentured slavery to the Arab oil barons...The Pious—oops—Prius costs about $5000 more to manufacture than a conventional Corolla and retails for about three-grand extra. ... Then we have the battery pack, that heavy lump of nickel-metal hydride juice boxes that presumably improve fuel efficiency (but not that much, according to our road tests). Although the warranties are for eight years or 100,000 miles, battery replacement will cost $5300 for the Toyota and Lexus hybrids, and the Ford Escape replacements run a whopping $7200."

And then there was endless blogger and chat board entries like: "Sure they're efficient and all, but since it's got an engine and a motor it's got one heckuvan oddball drivetrain (and a couple of other similar quirks). If anything happens to the powertrain you've got yourself quite a hefty repair bill. All the money you saved on gas would probably make up for it so unless you're a hippie you're no better off."

Most of it was nonsense. The batteries did not wear out, the environmental impact was proven to be significantly better, and most importantly the buying public has found it to be a car good enough that last month (Jan 2011) It was their third best selling car, just behind the Camry, selling more units than the other five car models (Toyota and Scion) combined or twice as many Priuses than the Lexus division sold in total cars. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-relea...115030724.html

Just got to turn off the noise.

[DonC]

From the article: "After the early adopters, what is going to motivate the mainstream people to buy the vehicles?" asked Gurminder Bedi, a retired Ford Motor Co. executive and one of the authors of the report.

Let's see, who bought mobile phones after the early adopters? Who bought iPods after the early adopters? Who bought smartphones after the early adopters? Duh, later adopters!

This guy is brain dead. Products don't die because there aren't enough later adopters. They die because there aren't enough EARLY ADOPTERS. Product uptake follows a bell curve. There are always more later adopters than early adopters. The trick is to get a sufficient number of early adopters. IOW if you have five early adopters then you're product isn't going to cut it because it suggests the later adopters will number five thousand. On the other hand if you have 5 million early adopters then you have a hit because there will be 5 billion later adopters.

Consumer oriented companies understand this very well, which is why there is no end of hype for every new product. The more early adopters the more later adopters. What is so hard to understand? In short, the answer to the question of what will motivate later adopters is the same things that motivate early adopters. Early adopters aren't different than later adopters, they're just, well, early.

[VFRMike]

Possibly as the Volt EV range significantly improves then our current version of the Volt might seem relatively low and thus support a lower resale value.

[maynard]

You guys are trying to second guess a flaky market...There are so many variables to resale value that the best thing any of us can do is enjoy our Volts and worry about resale value in 8 years or so.

[mack62]

Ok, I read the piece. Is any of this a surprise to anyone? If the cost of the car goes down with economics of scale, large scale production. Longer range as batteries tech improves.
If the cost goes down and the capably go up the value of the early models will go down, way down depending on the rate of improvement and the rate of cost decline.

It does not matter how much you paid for your high end 486 computer in the 90s, because of faster and cheaper computers since, it is worthless now.

I don't think anyone who it buying the Volt, now, is doing it to save money anyway. They, like me, are motivated by other things. In my case it is as simple wanting a choice with what powers my car.

Just saying.