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The best thing GM could do is scrap the whole Volt project and not waste anymore of our tax dollars. After what now, 8 tries at EV and Hybrid vehicles that are batting ZERO.
http://www.freep.com/article/20111126/BUSINESS0104/111260324/Fire-during-Chevy-V- - olt-crash-test-spurs-safety-investigation
Which hybrids are batting Zero, again?
And I make this excellent point again: HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of gasoline cars have burned after crashes over the years. So this is nothing new.
Wait. Are you referring to the PU truck that the news station (can't remember which off the top of my head) rigged to catch fire?
Think Lexus and the CHP crash that killed him and his whole family.
Oh, the crash that was proven to be the driver's fault?
That's the biggest problem with sensationalist reporting: folks don't tend to remember the truth that comes out later (because it is typically less interesting).
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '08 Charger R/T Daytona; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '08 Maser QP; '11 Mini Cooper S
From your posted article:
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Friday it will open a safety defect investigation after three recent side-impact crash tests resulted in smoke from one Volt and fire in another.
All GM hybrids are batting zero or close enough to drop them from the lineup. Only someone with more money than brains would buy a Tahoe Hybrid for $12k premium to get a lousy 2 MPG better mileage. Or $85k for a Cadillac Hybrid for the rich and famous to look green.
I don't think it is fair to blame the CHP that was killed, for a screw-up by the dealers lot boy. That is a lousy designed throttle in the CAM/ES350. Toyota has since changed it. Toyota also paid the family $10 million for their part in the tragedy.
Sensation sells news. Who's fault is that?
It seems interesting that the govt/mandatory crashtest did not trigger the battery fire, but engineers have found a new test or a new measurement which does find it.
What is the difference between the tests? Maybe it's how long to *wait* afterwards to see if a fire starts, waiting a week instead of dismantling the car/batteries the next day.
As we all know, and as was demonstrated by a major mag's testing, NO car can overpower its brakes.
Sensation sells news. Who's fault is that?
The reader/viewer.
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '08 Charger R/T Daytona; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '08 Maser QP; '11 Mini Cooper S
(Reuters) - General Motors Co said on Monday that it will offer loaner vehicles to more than 5,000 owners of its Chevrolet Volt as it works with U.S. safety regulators on ways to reduce the risk of fires breaking out days after crashes involving the electric car.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/28/us-gm-volt-idUSTRE7AO1SH20111128
Out of curiosity, did the mag test hybrid powertrains? I ask as the brakes are also part of the drivetrain since hybrids turn the motor into a generator for a good part of the braking power, with traditional brakes only being used for relatively hard stops. A software bug that wants to keep the car moving forward might inhibit the switch to generator/brake mode, making it more difficult for the traditional brakes to overcome the the electric motor.
Just so you are informed, I owned 5 GM trucks up until they got so bad with my last 2005 GMC hybrid PU, that I switched to Toyota which I had hated for the POC Land Cruiser they sold me in 1964. My experience with GM trucks was good from 1988 to my 1998 Suburban. Then when they headed into the toilet they had a hard time building a decent vehicle. Since you are obviously part of GM, I understand your bias. And for your information my Sequoia was built by Americans in Princeton Indiana. And they did a fine job of it. The doors fit nicely. Something that did not happen with my 2005 GMC PU truck. Americans building vehicles for other manufacturers deserve our support as much as those working for the D2. Ford may deserve slightly more as they did not borrow our tax dollars after running their company into the ground.
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '08 Charger R/T Daytona; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '08 Maser QP; '11 Mini Cooper S
Braking force might be affected.
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '08 Charger R/T Daytona; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '08 Maser QP; '11 Mini Cooper S
For an overly simple paragraph, see http://www.hybridcenter.org/hybrid-center-how-hybrid-cars-work-under-the-hood.ht- ml#2_Regenerative_Braking
A pretty thorough treatment is at http://auto.howstuffworks.com/auto-parts/brakes/brake-types/regenerative-braking- .htm.
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '08 Charger R/T Daytona; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '08 Maser QP; '11 Mini Cooper S
I've driven a car with an unintended acceleration problem. I've literally had to ride the brakes to keep the speed down to 55 on a highway so I could make a safe traversal to the shoulder. It wasn't a hybrid, but to be honest that doesn't matter. Braking effectiveness & stopping distances were both adversely impacted.
The Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid has topped Consumer Reports' latest owner-satisfaction survey after its first year on the market.
The magazine said 93 percent of respondents who own a Volt said they would definitely purchase one again, making it the highest-rated car in the annual poll. Two second-place finishers, the V8-powered Dodge Challenger and the Porsche 911, drew the most-favorable grade from 91 percent of buyers.
Consumer Reports said the Volt--the subject of a stepped-up safety investigation this week by U.S. regulators--had been in U.S. showrooms for only a few months when the survey was conducted.
"It remains to be seen if the score will hold up as the car rolls out to a wider audience and owners spend more time with their vehicles," the magazine said. "Still, early adopters of a new technology tend to be among the most enthusiastic buyers."
They did sell 1139 units in November. 6142 for the year.
'11 GMC Sierra 1500; '08 Charger R/T Daytona; '67 Coronet R/T; '13 Fiat 500c; '20 S90 T6; '22 MB Sprinter 2500 4x4 diesel; '97 Suzuki R Wagon; '96 Opel Astra; '08 Maser QP; '11 Mini Cooper S
NEW YORK (AP) -- General Motors will buy Chevrolet Volts back from any owner who is afraid the electric cars will catch fire, the company's CEO said Thursday.
In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, CEO Dan Akerson insisted that the cars are safe, but said the company will purchase the Volts because it wants to keep customers happy. Three fires have broken out in Volts after side-impact crash tests done by the federal government.
Akerson said that if necessary, GM will recall the more than 6,000 Volts now on the road in the U.S. and repair them once the company and federal safety regulators figure out what caused the fires.
"If we find that is the solution, we will retrofit every one of them," Akerson said. "We'll make it right."
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_VOLT_BATTERY_FIRE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME- &TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-12-01-14-56-43
GM and the Volt will cost US more than all the foreign aid given to Israel over the last 20 years. Just more corporate welfare making the 1% richer.
My guess is the USA content of the Volt is far less than my Toyota Sequoia.
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/mimssbits/27397/
Much-Needed Perspective on the GM Volt Battery Fires
250,000 vehicles catch fire on America's roads every year, and exactly none of them are electric.
No electric car has ever caught fire under real-world conditions, but the battery packs of two Chevy Volts have in test crashes. The controversy that followed could have been predicted, unfortunately. For all our talk of embracing innovation, there is always someone ready to declare that the growing pains of disruptive new technologies are in fact their death knell.
That's why I created the two graphs above, based on data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics and the National Fire Protection Association. Every year, more than 250,000 vehicles catch fire, largely because every gallon of gasoline contains roughly 100 times as much energy as a kilogram of TNT.
Every year, on average, 440 people are killed and more than 1500 injured when their conventional vehicle catches fire. We're all driving what are essentially giant liquid-fueled bombs with wheels attached, and the only reason we never have to think about it are the many decades and extraordinary measures that stand between us and the earliest conventional vehicles.
Most things that can make their energy density readily available are going to carry with them the risk of runaway reactions, whether that's a short circuit or fire and explosion. Poorly made lithium-ion laptop batteries that aren't so different from the cells in a Chevy Volt have caught fire before, and might again. And it must be granted that there are a tiny number of electric cars on the road compared to conventional vehicles.
However, numbers like the above -- and the fact that GM thinks it has a fix for the Volt that will make current and future models more or less immune from this problem, demonstrate that the issue of vehicle fires in electric cars is not just much ado about nothing, but a complete inversion of the logic all new car buyers should adopt when considering the safety of electric vehicles.
So let's not put the Volt in the "failed experiment scrap pile" QUITE yet. Until someone invents a gasoline-only car which cannot catch fire, the gas cars are FAR FAR more likely to burn you up than a Volt will EVER be.
If those manufacturers awarded incentives to produce batteries the Volt may use are included in the analysis, the potential government subsidy per Volt increases to $256,824.
http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/16192
We could have bought and given away 75,000 Volts for the $3 billion in tax payer subsidies. Where is the loot?
Besides if the Gov. can get more and more electric cars on the road we the people will win. Less tax money spent on pollution for one thing, less money spent on oil companies or Wars in the Oil Countries. Its a win win deal.
You think EVs will be cheaper and cheaper. Well resources are becoming more and more difficult to acquire so you may be hoping that Bolivia will sell US cheap Lithium, but I would not count on it. We know China is not interested in selling their Rare Earths. So most of an EV cost will be from finished motors, electronics and storage cells made in foreign countries.
What is the current US content of the Volt????
Now to cost. Replacement batteries for my newest laptop are more than a 10 year old laptop with a NiMH battery. So no I don't believe they will get cheaper. I believe they will continue to go up in price. Some technologies do get cheaper, batteries are not one of them. I am paying a lot more for 9 Volt batteries today than I was 5 years ago.
And I was not in favor of the bailout of GM & C. I am not convinced it was in the best interest of the whole nation. I think that GM is still making the same poor management decisions that got them in trouble in the past.
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For example, consider the New York City market. Last month, GM allocated 104 Volts to 14 dealerships in the area, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Dealers took just 31 of them, the lowest take rate for any Chevy model in that market last month. That group of dealers ordered more than 90 percent of the other vehicles they were eligible to take, the source said.
In Clovis, Calif., meanwhile, Brett Hedrick, dealer principal at Hedrick's Chevrolet, sold 10 Volts last year. But in December and January he turned down all six Volts allocated to him under GM's "turn-and-earn" system, which distributes vehicles based on past sales volumes and inventory levels.
GM's "thinking we need six more Volts is just crazy," Hedrick says. "We've never sold more than two in a month." Hedrick says he usually takes just about every vehicle that GM allocates to him.
Kill the Volt
Volt is Safer (from a "it might catch on fire" perspective than the car you are driving right now.
Back in November, the Internet was in a flurry about a fire that had engulfed a Chevy Volt that had undergone a particularly aggressive crash test, and then had been set aside on a lot without following GM’s battery-draining protocol. Two other fires later occurred in relation to other safety tests. Though the news seemed to give fodder to EV skeptics and other friends of the fossil fuel industry, the fact of the matter was that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said that it had no reason to believe the Volt was “at a greater risk of fire than gasoline-powered vehicles.” I called the whole thing a tempest in a teapot.
And not to say I told you so, but I told you so. The Associated Press reports that the government has concluded its safety investigation into the Volt, concluding that, indeed, “the Volt and other electric cars don’t pose a greater fire risk than gasoline-powered cars.” In other words, the NHTSA has affirmed its confidence in the car, after studying the Volt for months. If there are any skeptics out there still, it’s time to put their skepticism to rest (or find some other basis for their attacks on EVs; this fellow seems to think rants about “Socialist progressives who don’t understand anything about economics” is about as rhetorically sound as calling the car the “Volt Fire Trap”).
Still, under the theory that it’s better safe than sorry, GM announced earlier in the month its intention to fortify 12,000 existing Volts with steel plates that would shield batteries during crashes like the ones that resulted in the crash-test fires. GM’s offering these improvements for free, even though NHTSA didn’t demand a recall itself.
The Volt is shaping up to be something of a critical success, but a commercial disappointment. The car has racked up a bunch of awards and favorable reviews. But sales have been a little lackluster--to such a degree that the site 24/7 WallSt.com declared it one of the worst product flops of 2011. (It seems fairly ridiculous to lump the Volt in with Netflix’s surreal and swiftly-aborted Qwikster, but the author did so.) It hasn’t been all bad news for the Volt of late; the New York Times recently reported that the U.S. Embassy in France was adding a few to the lineup, promoting the EV brand abroad and joining Obama’s call to “green” the federal government.
“We have confidence in the cars,” said an embassy official. So do I, and so should you.
By the way my Toyota Sequoia has more USA content than the Chevy Volt. So you can have those Chinese/Korean Content POC Volts. :P
By the way is your dealership accepting all the Volts offered, or are you just being a jerk?
Please include your daytime contact information and a few words about the decision you made.
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1)The cartoon about the Volt turning into a lemon - Everything I have read and seen implies anything but that. The Volt is reliable, recommended by CR, and the highest ranking car when it comes to customer satisfaction. How do those facts get spun into calling a Volt a lemon?
2)POC Volts – It’s obvious to me that you have not seen a Volt in person, much less gotten inside or driven one. I have. It is attractive inside and out. It contains nice materials, pretty color schemes, and gushes solid engineering. It handles well and is fun to drive. You might not see things as I do, but calling the Volt a POC is in no way accurate.
3)Tax dollars down the toilet financing the GM Volt – do you have any data showing how many tax dollars went into Volt development? Since the Volt was developed 4 to 5 years before any government bailout, I find your statement hard to believe. In message 860, you said you believed it was $4 billion. “Believing” should have nothing to do with it. If you could prove that $1 of taxpayer money went into Volt development, then ask Volt owners if they think that money went down the toilet.
4)The silly Volt – I cannot comprehend how anyone can say that. I have one real world example. A friend was given a Volt to drive for the weekend by his dealer. The first trip took him 48 miles before the gas engine came on. This guy spent approximately $1.30 to recharge the Volt the night before. That’s about 36.9 miles/dollar. This guy’s other car is a Prius that supposedly gets 51 miles per gallon. At $3.30 per gallon, that’s 15.4 miles/dollar. So, the Volt is about 2.4 times better on gas than the Prius for this one example. Please list how many cars besides the Volt and the Leaf that can get the equivalent of 100+ MPG. After you exhaust your search, do you still think “silly” is the correct word?
5)The Volt cost taxpayers $250K per vehicle – I read on the Volt Forum somebody’s analogy of this. Take the $1.3 billion Cowboys stadium. If you take that cost and divide by the first year’s home games, you have a huge cost per game, but if you divide by the number of games in 10 years, the cost is way down. The $250K number came from dividing by some 6000 Volts, without regard to how many cars will benefit from tax dollars in , say, 10 to 20 years.
6)Volts are falling apart in people’s driveways – where in the world did that come from??? That sounds like N. Cavuto on Fox. There is no evidence anywhere to support that statement.
I could go on. Instead, let’s just evaluate the car on its own merits. Forget politics and GM hatred. The Volt is not for everyone, but for those within the daily EV only range, the Volt can keep us from buying so much oil from those that hate us. The choice might not be economically feasible, but the outcome of getting more electric cars on our roads can really help.
Although it happened back in September, 2011, it appears many American taxpayers are unaware that General Motors struck a deal in Shanghai wherein the company has agreed to develop an electric vehicle (EV) platform with its longtime Chinese partner SAIC.
What else was included in this deal? GM has agreed to effectively move all future EV development to China. It could also mean that production of the vehicle itself will be moved overseas.
The agreement is the result of the Chinese government coercing foreign automakers into giving Chinese companies the EV technology they lack, according to an Associated Press report. Unsurprisingly, some U.S. lawmakers have voiced concerns that the deal is little more than a “shake down” from the Chinese to get GM’s Volt secrets. GM has denied reports that it will hand over the intellectual property underlying the Volt.
GM Vice Chairman Steve Girsky, in a conference call from Shanghai, said that neither SAIC nor the Chinese government have demanded Volt technology but that any future EV developments would, of course, draw on GM’s Volt “experience and technology,” according to a USA Today report first published in September, 2011.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/after-receiving-bailout-gm-may-move-volt-product- ion-to-china/