Bob Lutz said it last month. Rick Wagoner confirmed it this month: you won't see a Volt on the road until after 2010. According to The Detroit News, GM's CEO had an online chat about GM's 100th anniversary yesterday. During this e-schmooze, Wagoner said "We continue to put massive resources into production as soon as possible. 2010 would be great, but (we) can't guarantee that at this time. We'll keep you posted regularly on our progress." He wouldn't say exactly why they were backpedaling so fast on their promise to have the plug-in electric Hail Mary hybrid on the road by 2010, but Rabid Rick did say they were still working on the design of the production version and testing battery packs. Even though the current Volt looks nothing like the production model– the brass is tap dancing around the design of the tweaked production version– GM still uses the "cobbled together" (Maximum Bob's term) concept car in its ads as if it was readily available for purchase right now. But then again, GM's doing the exact same with the Malibu so why should we be surprised?
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Well it’s not like GM Mgmt is held accountable for anything anyway. We all knew any deadline the set for the Volterware was bogus anyway and typical GM hype in order to show off without actually doing anything. So where’s the Hywire.
Gosh, it was only November when Lutz made a crack about Toyota’s having egg on their face come easter after Toyota’s exec VP for R&D questioned GM’s ability of delivering with the Volt. Actually Lutz said that ‘somebody’ was going to have egg on their face, and he didn’t like having it on his. Maybe he can hide it if he pulls that tin hat down a little.
Its probably best for GM that the Volt takes as long a time as possible to be produced. GM does not have a stellar history of introducing new technology and if they screw this one up it will simply be another public humiliation and debacle.
Sherman Lin :
Its probably best for GM that the Volt takes as long a time as possible to be produced. GM does not have a stellar history of introducing new technology and if they screw this one up it will simply be another public humiliation and debacle.
I am in awe. Seriously, that’s the PERFECT spin for this story.
Unfortunately, it would require two characteristics that are in short supply at GM: honesty and humility.
I love the way they are “selling” and advertising a car that will never exist. Even if the Volt ever gets into production 4 or 5 years from now it wont look anything like what they keep pushing on the TV ads. People are going to feel pretty lied to when there colbed up mess hits the streets and it looks nothing like the stylish one they keep advertising and keep saying will be the car of the future. I guess they mean distant future.
I forgot all about the Hywire what was their excuse for that one since Honda has theirs. I guess Honda has egg on their face for actually doing what they say.
Carmakers announcing concept vaporvehicles is nothing new. GM announced the Volt in order to forestall the realistic enthusiasm surrounding hybrids, however, and that’s something else.
GM has, consistently, sought to undermine hybrid technologies, and have been dismissive of alternative efforts. They spent a lot of resources on their similar vaporefforts with hydrogen vehicles, even advertising to the fact.
The greater question is whether there will be a GM as we know it, come 2010, given the delusional policies of its upper management as far as what the driving public needs.
Are the people running GM really this stupid?
If you’re a car company, innovation, product differentiation, great design and reliability are all key to making a company successful (basing this on the most successful car companies).
What would make sense is to dedicate all of their internal resources on one goal – make the Volt happen. It’s a hot market (pun intended) for this type of vehicle, yet GM leadership appears to give it the attention to detail they gave to the timing of the Malibu marketing and dealer availability plan.
Typical GM – taking every opportunity to miss any opportunity.
Any idea what Rick and Lutz’ bonus will be this year?
Even if GM only has a few pre-production Volts to hand out to celebrities (ala 1990s EV1 California) by 2010, they need to do it. GM’s credibility is on the line — which is huge among the U.S. consumers who have as “I’ll buy the best product, regardless of who makes it, but still like to complain about China and loss of manufacturing jobs” attitude. More importantly, now that Obama’s stirring speech is still swimming in my mind this morning, it is almost a patriotic thing.
jkross22: GM management is not stupid; instead it is a culture of arrogance, smugness and has complete disdain for anyone who questions its way of doing business. It believes the world is different and the company and its’ customers are there to serve them.
Nowadays – Seems their greatest product GM makes nowadays is Concepts and Press Releases. The overhyped ‘Bu is well just a car. I really was not fallen aback when I checked one out the other day. Seems any “negative” press such as from USA Today for “faults” is now liberal media always looking to kick them down. Fact is reality sucks – well really for almost everyone and everything. Nothing and noone are prefect; especially GM.
It will take GM what — 5 years or more — to get a Camaro to market? A Camaro. With a fugly interior, no less. A car that they should be able to design, build, and spit out to the public in 24 months.
The Malibu debacle has been talked about to death on this site.
Why is anyone surprised by the Volt delay? New, untested technology in a configuration that they’ve never tried before. Good luck.
I’d by more confident in Hyundai’s ability to bring a Volt-like car to market before GM.
Now it’s a race. GM vs. Tesla.
Pass the popcorn.
A few weeks ago I went on record on TTAC and said “GM would make the Volt happen because they would lose credibility and I had faith that they would pull it off”.
Thanks a lot Lutz, you senile old bastard(!)
jaje – You’re more accurate than I. GM leadership is not stupid… just suffering from delusional thoughts that that the Sun revolves around the Earth and customers are just beating down Saturn’s doors to buy the North American Car of the Year.
I’m a headhunter and I used to work for a company whose management team was very similar to GM’s – they were convinced their company was superior to others to the point where highly sought after technical resources were just beating down their doors to work there. Reality was that their reputation had become tarnished through word of mouth regarding how they treated their employees and lackluster bonuses and pay increases being paid.
Today, their stock price is dwindling and there is talk of the executives trying to sell the company. My old employer that is, not GM.
“GM announced the Volt in order to forestall the realistic enthusiasm surrounding hybrids”
This is exactly right. it reminds me of the farcical effort Boeing made to rain on the Airbus A380’s parade. At the same time as Airbus announced the go-ahead to build the Super-jumbo Boeing announced the Sonic Cruiser, an aircraft that was to fly at near supersonic speeds and slice a chunk of time of a typical tranAt or transPac flight. They had no intention of building the thing and it existed solely to spoil the hype surrounding the A380 which BTW has entered service with Singapore Airlines to rave reviews and stellar dispatch reliability.
“The greater question is whether there will be a GM as we know it, come 2010, given the delusional policies of its upper management as far as what the driving public needs.”
Once again, right on the money. This is the question of greatest importance. My feeling is that there is an 85% chance that GM will be operating under CH11 and Wagoner and Bobus Maximus will have flown the coup. This will have the added bonus of being the perfect excuse for the non-appearance of the Volt.
“GM management is not stupid; instead it is a culture of arrogance, smugness and has complete disdain for anyone who questions its way of doing business. It believes the world is different and the company and its’ customers are there to serve them.”
Is this ever true.
Great comments lads!
It would be fun to have a timeline for the announcements and actual progress about the Volt. Sort of like a Volt birthwatch series.
I think to be fare there should be one for the Volt and the Tesla. With a cronological timeline at the top with links to each announcement, hard dates and then missed dates.
Redbarchetta :
I think to be fair there should be one for the Volt and the Tesla. With a chronological timeline at the top with links to each announcement, hard dates and then missed dates.
I don’t know about all the dates, but WTH. Volt Birth Watch. Consider it done.
Cool.
I’ll see if I can find an example of what I was talking about online. It may or maynot be worth the web design time.
It would certainly be in GM’s best business interest to get the Volt out as quickly as they can without compromising quality. If fuel prices sail north of $5-$6, the savings on fuel costs with electric will be quite compelling.
The top people on the Volt came to Boston to speak with journalists a couple of months ago, and one or two of them indicated to me that they are getting everything they need and that the brass are serious about this. My reading of their tone and body language is that they believed what they were telling me. I hope they are right.
The Airbus A380 is a more apt analogy for the Chevy Volt than the Sonic Cruiser ever could manage. The “Whalejet” is, what, 2+ years late in entering service plus God knows how many billions of dollars/euros/whatever overbudget.
This is the plane Airbus decided it could customize for each airline customer while building it at the same time.
It had better be performing well for it will cost Airbus billions more in cut-rate pricing for it to ever snag more customers. Doesn’t it sound like the people in Toulouse read the GM Book of Management?
Not only Top management of GM are very snobbish, it flows down to most of there Dealers here in Ontario, many of them are multimillionaires so they dont care one iota for anyone including customers, I have purchased GM cars over the years as well as my current GMC Van, in all dealing with most dealers was a pain in the A!
James 2: I certainly see your point but at the end of the day they did eventually deliver. Airbus was a bit too ambitious but it looks like Boeing is making the exact same mistake with the 787. That all being said, we all know that Boeing will deliver a fine aircraft even if it’s late. In this respect GM is different. There’s the hype, there’s the concept but where’s the car?
i’m not going to say i said so, but i will anyway. i told you so.
The difference between Boeing and GM is that Boeing faced reality and made huge changes in their organization after Airbus became #1. Such big changes that they were actually able to reclaim the #1 spot and have a better business plan for the future. Now it is Airbus that is bleeding and fighting to survive.
I was hopeful that GM would do the same, but it does not appear they are going that direction. They are running out of time.
It might take Holden that long to build one of their own so that GM can slap their badge on it, or who knows maybe they’ll badge a Toyota instead, then they can say “hey we’re right on time!
Apologies for the length… but I have to speak up.
My wife and I went to the Saturn dealer to check out the Saturn Vue Green Line. I didn’t think this was such an unreasonable thing to do because heck… Toyota has hybrids, Honda has hybrids, Ford has hybrids. Besides you can even price a Hybrid Vue out on the Saturn Web.
Plus I swear I’ve seen them around. I live in the Detroit area. Proudly born and raised in Detroit as a matter of fact.
“They were supposed to be out last fall, not till spring now. The one’s you saw had manufacters plates on them”, we were told. Hmmm… got me to thinking.
Let’s see… When I was 3 years old the Trolley cars and electric buses were taken off of the city streets of Detroit. I understand that GM had a hand in their demise. I still remember seeing the overhead lines and the tracks at Mack and Alter in Detroit. I think they ended up in Mexico City and eventually in New Orleans. How prophetic I thought.
“We’ll build freeways and everyone will drive cars instead.” GM said
So how did they do with the replacement process. Initially I would judge not bad. Energy was cheap. They had a lot of good ideas but the execution was lacking thereof. And some decent ones that actually stuck around for a while.
They are able to incorporate front wheel drive
into big cars.
The Corvair, I actually liked. But GM bailed on that one, public opinion turned against them. I knew too many people that had Corvairs only to have the engines drop out after a few winters on Detroit’s salty streets. The engines blew oil.
But Geez… Porsche did and still does produce rear engined cars.
Despite the Chevy Vega being the disaster that it was, I recall the hoopla over the new technology that was developed for weight saving gains like the all Aluminum cylinder block that didn’t require steel liners. There was even a Cosworth derivative with dual overhead cams and 4 valves per cylinder. Big stuff at the time.
Who bailed? GM. Who delivered? Mercedes and Porsche.
GM promised us a rotary engined car. I believe it was a Corvette. Who bailed? GM. Who delivered? Mazda
GM promised us Diesel Engines in our passenger cars. Who bailed? GM. Who delivered? Mercedes and Volkswagen.
WHere is the Vue Green Line? GM’s competitors seem to be able to do this successfully.
It will be interesting to see who delivers on the Fuel Cell promise or the Electric vehicle promise.
My gut tells me it won’t be GM. They had a go at it with the EV-1. I saw several on the road… oh ya… Manufacturer’s plates.
Well, according to the dealer, they’re getting better at making promises. The Volt is a really nice looking promise. It must be a promise, because it is not, and I fear will it never be, a car.
********** Message to GM *********
Dear GM,
I don’t buy promises. I cannot drive a promise.
Take as long as you need to, get it right, because now Mr GM, Mr #1 Car company, the race is on and you’re playing catch-up. These aren’t practice laps, the competition has already started and you’re going to need good wheels to catch up.
If you want to secure a dominant place in this race, you need to produce the Volt. THE VOLT. The one you display on your website, the one that you have been dangling in front of us for the past year.
To do anything else is another red flag. You know, the ones that say, “I’m not real” The problem with red flags is, they slow you down when you’re trying to race.
Oh… and while you’re at it. Can you put the Trolleys and buses back in Detroit, they ran on electricity in case you don’t remember.
You don’t have to put them all back, because you see… there aren’t too many of us around to use them anymore.