After it electrocutes its occupants it will burst into flames and incinerate them. That sort of takes care of any potential law suits.
Yes, very lousy indeed. I've used 5 gallons of gas in 4 months. Dismal failure. $369 sign and drive lease right now. Brand new car using one gallon a month in gas for less than $400 a month. Terrible deal. Only people on the low end of the totem pole would do that.
I think most people drive farther to work than you do. It also sounds like you are able to recharge the car at home and at work too so you are able to operate the car mostly on electric power. The average commute distance for Americans is 16 miles each way so the Volt cannot make the round trip on electric power unless it is charged at work. Most people cannot charge the car at work except a lucky few. I watched a show on tv about the Volt and the person testing the car wasn't able to drive more than 25 miles before the vehicle switched itself onto the gasoline engine due to the batteries being fully discharged. His commute to work was something around 35-36 miles so the car was switching to gasoline power during the trip to work and ran completely on gasoline power for the trip home from work. The car is not efficient when it is using the gasoline engine and many new cars are far more efficient on gasoline power than the Volt. My Ford Focus gets 42 mpg on the highway and about 36 mpg in the city on regular gasoline. The tester was surprised and annoyed that the electric range was only 25 miles even though he had the car plugged in for over 12 hours every night. The original design was that the vehicle was a pure electric (only the electric motor could propel the vehicle) with a onboard generator that could turn on automatically if the car required battery charging while being driven. That is a very efficient arrangment and would have allowed the vehicle to be driven on electric power all of the time. The car could have been plugged in at home or work for recharging and the onboard generator could have been used if the batteries needed charging while being driven on longer trips. GM decided to ditch that design so that they could save money by using off-the-shelf hybrid parts utilized on their other hybrid vehicles. Then they decided to use a much cheaper battery that could not provide adequate range. Then they ditched the attractive body design and advanced coachwork so that they could use a cheaper chassis that they already were using for other vehicles. A long line of money saving decisions ruined the car and it doesn't even remotely resemble the car GM touted at car shows and magazines for years. Bait and Switch. Most people are reluctant to lease cars because of the mileage limits and lack of a sense of ownership. There are also problems with leasing because of penalties incurred due to subjective evaluation of damage and wear and other penalties for exceeding mileage limits. I guess GM insists that people lease the Volt so that they can get the cars off the road and get rid of them like they did with the EV-1. Some people will buy the car even though it does not make any economic sense and they will pay a large premium for that decision. It isn't very smart to pay a large premium to drive a vehicle that does not save the "owner" money until they've driven the vehicle for 27 years. Since GM will not likely allow cars to be kept under lease for 27 years it is 100% certain that Volt owners will never save any money by driving the Volt. It isn't very smart to own a vehicle for ideological reasons and it isn't very smart to support a company that is dishonest about the capabilities of its vehicles and who accepted massive government bailout money just to stay in business. Dumb.
So let me get this straight. Because some people have a commute that is longer than the Volt's range, it is a bad car? Your definition of a bad car is that it doesn't work for the people you are describing. Unfortunately that is not the definition of a bad car. You are twisting the circumstances to fit your argument. You think it's crazy to buy something that doesn't make economic sense according to your calculation. But to somebody else it might. I drive 5 miles to work. I think you have said that you drive 50. I think you are crazy. I would never drive 50 miles to work. But if that's what works for you, then do it. it's not my responsibilty to make a determination as to what works best for you. I would move or find a different job. I refuse to spend my life in a car. You keep saying the range is only 25 miles. Why don't you grab your balls (if you have them) and put up or shut up? Where is this supposed article where the tester only gets 25 miles to a charge? I have never seen it. I have sold a few dozen of these cars. Nobody has ever complained of getting only 25 miles. I am a real driver. I get 35+ miles. Yea sure, if you are driving 80 MPH with the A/C blasting and weaving in and out of traffic, you are going to get 25 miles. You can stop talking about the concept Volt. Concepts are just that. The all electric Leaf only provides 75 miles of range. The Volt provides more than half of that but gives the convienence of endless range using gas for only a few thousand more. It is a brilliant vehicle that is a blast to drive and most everyone who has actually driven one agrees with that. Nobody said it was perfect. Your idea of an extended range electric vehicle with a 200 mile electric range and then 70 MPG all for only $29,995 doesn't exist. This is what we have now and it works for a lot of people, including me. I'm sure most people do drive farther to work than I do. The Volt may not be the best thing for them, and I have told people that. I have never advocated that everybody should be driving a Volt. I have never said that it is the best bargain out there. Different cars fit different people's needs and desires. If the Volt doesn't make economic sense, it doesn't make it a bad car. People buy different cars for different reasons. If it was all about economics, everybody would be buying Nissan Versa's. I can't understand why anybody would want spend the money on a luxury car, but if that works for them, so be it. GM is not forcing anybody to lease the Volt. In fact, with the 0% for 72 months that they have, a purchase would really make more sense. You say people are reluctant to lease cars because of the reasons you state. You neglect to mention any reasons why people would want to lease, such as lower monthly payment, guaranteed buyout, and ability to easily switch cars in 3 years. Again, you are twisting the wrong circumstances to fit your argument. Almost all luxury brand commercials all push leases. Again, if it doesn't work for you, it doesn't make it bad. Yes, I charge my Volt at work. However it would be just as easy to charge at home. Literally, I pull the cord out and plug it in. If someone lives in an apartment, the Volt is probably not the right car for them. If somebody is going to be driving on gas more than electric, it's probably not the right choice for them. But somebody who drives 70 miles roundtrip a day and can plug in at work, wil save a couple of gallons a day in gas. That really adds up. Plus, the oil only needs to be changed once or twice a year. I'm glad you are happy with your Focus. The Focus is a great car. It only has a 60k warranty, but still a nice car. When people come to drive the Cruze, I ask them if they are going to go drive the Focus and Elantra next. They look at me funny and ask how I knew that. They are all good cars.
So the problem is that I drive too far to work? Please. I cited the national average commute distance of 16 miles and the Volt cannot complete the national average round-trip commute of 32 miles without running on the inefficient gasoline engine. So, yes, it is a bad car for only having an electric range of 25 miles. A very very bad car. The 25 mile range was cited in tests done by several cable news channels. They had a camera-man along for each commute and the batteries were video taped going tits up after 25 miles repeatedly. The number is a fact. I'll continue to mention the original design of the vehicle and how GM ruined the car completely in implementation by compromising each design innovation with a cost-cutting measure that crippled the vehicles capability. Most people cannot charge their Volt at work so both your commute distance and your ability to charge your car on your employers dime are unrealistic for the overwhelming majority of American drivers. You also fail to mention that the electric grid in much of the country is powered by coal-fired power plants so the Volt is really a coal powered vehicle and each vehicle produced is a gross polluter before it ever rolls off the assembly line. The Volts spent batteries are considered toxic waste and will end up in landfills where they will pollute ground water resources for many years to come. I'm glad you are happy with your Volt but it is a very poor vehicle from engineering, economic and environmental standpoints. I am not a car designer but I did run commerical space vehicle design for the Boeing Company for many years and ran the design efforts for countless solar/battery electric spacecraft most of which had ion (electric) thrusters with no chemical propulsion at all so I do know what I'm talking about. You're the one in here pushing the car and you are stating falsehoods to do so. I waited for the Volt for years and put off buying another vehicle until it came out so I guess I'm very disappointed with what GM did to the car. Its a really awful hybrid cobbled together from off-the-shelf hybrid parts at best and a complete marketing sham at worst. You drive the car for ideological reasons and that is not the right way to select a car.
Leasing a Volt makes more sense to me than buying it. The Volt just strikes me as a hyped-up, government-subsidized experimental car and I have no way of knowing how it will hold up over time with real-world use. I keep thinking of the Segway that was supposed to change personal transportation forever and the only place I see them is at the airport where fat fucks with government badges and guns purposely ride them through crowds of travelers. For a 3-year lease, again helped by government subsidy, the Volt looks like a decent deal. Usually when I lease a car I expect it will cost me more over the same period than just buying it outright. For me it's a cost of the convenience of being able to get rid of the car without a hassle at the end. In the case of the Volt, however, it seems to me that the leases are based on a residual value that is unclear at best and in fact may be based on an artificially high residual value to keep the Volt competitive versus other cars. As a consequence, it may turn out to be actually cheaper to lease than to own a Volt over the lease period.
Very astute post. GM insures the residual values of leased vehicles so they are guaranteed a certain value. My dad invented residual value insurance in 1987 and sold it to Nissan and a few other large manufacturers and was directly underwriting the fleet policies for awhile. Now it is widely available and most of the big car companies carry it. My dad is also credited to have written some of the first car leases back in the late 60s when he ran consumer credit at United California Bank. He would kill me if I ever leased a car LOL.
If the national average is 32 miles roundtrip, then in fact the Volt would be perfect for the average person. Since you have still not presented a single piece of evidence or story of anybody consistently only getting 25 miles per charge, I'll just have to go off of my real world experience of 35+ miles per charge. How can I be the one telling falsehoods when you are the one who can't back up youir statements? You continually cite how the concept version of the Volt was so much better and how you wanted to buy one, but just now went on a rant about how the battery's will pollute ground water. Assuming GM made the production car as you claim the concept car was, and you bought one, I don't see how using your logic, the battery disposal would be any different. So in fact, you would be contributing to the pollution. But putting that aside for just a minute, please answer me one question. I can drop my old laptop battery at any number of recylcing places in the area so it can be disposed off/recycled properly. If I can do that with a laptop battery, why would a car battery be any different? You mean to tell me that when I'm done with the car, it's just going to be towed away and dumped in a river? As stated before, I would much rather buy coal from West Virginia than oil from Saudi Arabia/Iran/Canada. Our own innovation with electric and natural gas powered vehicles is our key to energy and economic security.
The residual values for the Volt are currently between 57-61%. This is helped out by the included tax credit. Even on a completely different car like the Volt, the people who come up with these numbers are pretty good. Keep in mind that the leasing company keeps the tax credit, so it is not wise to buyout a Volt lease. I have done more leases on the Volt in the past year than leases on every other car I sell in the past three years combined. We don't lease much anymore. It's usually more cost effective to just purchase a car. It also may depend on what state you live in. Different states have diferent ways of taxing leases.
First of all, I would never do a lease-end buyout. If I wanted to keep the car I would have negotiated a price and just bought it in the first place. Second, I would not consider buying a Volt or any other hybrid car. I don't drive enough to be affected by gas prices and the technology has not been around long enough to convince me that these cars are equal to cars that run solely on fossil fuel. For a 3-year lease I might be open to trying it out to see what all the hoopla is about. However, I'm not that curious as of now. Last, I agree with you that in general it's more cost effective to purchase a car rather than lease. I have leased in the past because of convenience rather than cost-effectiveness. For the Volt, however, I'm unconvinced that buying is better than leasing even from a cost standpoint. You say the guys who come up with these residual values for the Volt are pretty good. Pretty good at what? Helping to get government-subsidized cars off the lot and into people's garages? These guys are working with fudged numbers to begin with. GM is a member of the too-big-to-fail club. If the Volt doesn't sell, I can see the government snapping them up like Segways in the next stimulus package for the government fat fucks to drive around.