Never mind what they said before. GM is joining Chrysler on the huge-incentives-for-2008-trucks bandwagon. Starting today, they'll bump the rebates on GMC Yukons, Yukon XLs, Chevy Tahoes and Suburbans from $2k up to $6k. And get this– the Hybrid models are included. Envoys and Trailblazers will get the same $6k discount, with another $2k tossed in as a lease "pull-ahead" bonus. Avalanches and crew cab/extended cab trucks have $5k cash on the hood. In lieu of the rebates (or in addition to, in some cases), they're also offering low-to-no-percent-interest financing. On the car side, Chevy's offering 0 percent financing for 48 or 60 months on Corvette coupes (including Z06) and convertibles, respectively. Pontiac is bribing offering buyers a $1k bonus on the G8 sedan. Other GM models offer varying interest rate and/or nominal cash back offers. However, according to Automotive News [sub], GM spokesman Pete Ternes warns these figures could change "after GM releases its [Q2] earnings." If anything, you can probably expect them to sweeten the deal in a last ditch, damn-the-profits attempt to clear the '08s from dealer lots.
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You know things are bad when they are offering 0% finanacing on the (usually dealer gouged) Z06…
Today in the paper a dealer was advertising $11,000 off the Silverado.
The local dealer has a G8 that looks like it hasn’t even been test driven (or even moved) in over a month.
A local charity had an unsold 07 Solstice donated to them to raffle off.
The only thing GM seems to be able to sell lately is Malibus. (excluding the hybrid)
many of the Pontiac dealerships in SE Michigan are starting to stack up with base model G8’s.
head count at local dealership this AM was 14 G8 models (both 08 and 09 models) and 12 of those were V6 models.
Hmmm…now is definitely the time to buy!
The G8 is the result of car-guy thinking. They brought over the car they thought we wanted, rather than the one people would actually buy.
It’s a decent enough car, but the sports sedan market is not easy. Mainstream buyers will just get a standard front-drive sled; enthusiasts are few, far between and fickle: the slice of the market that would walk past the 3-Series, A4 and G35 is small. Of that slice, an even smaller segment would pass up the 300C and CTS. Or, well, the Mustang and such.
The market for this car is tiny. Buyers who will sacrifice practicality, but don’t want a premium badge and who will accept some exceedingly tacky exterior design. Oh, and they don’t want a Mustang.
So, basically, GTO and Firebird buyers. And how well did the GTO and Firebird sell?
I am seeing a lot of internet ads for 0% financing for up to 72 mos. on the “Cadillac Escalade Collection.” (I’m sure it’s quite a ‘collection’, too…15 cars across by 5 cars deep piled high at your local Cadillac dealer!)
Once or twice a week I find myself using the local Pontiac/GMC dealership as a shortcut around busy traffic. The back of the dealership used to be filled with employee cars, but now they are parking away from the dealer along the street, while the back hides overflows of trucks and such. Yesterday there were even a slew (at least 15) G8s hiding back there.
I have seen one on the road so far, in white. It was reasonably good looking and driven by a female sporting a dashboard decorated in a tacky assortment of stuffed animals.
GM is hurting and lots full of unsold dinosaurs can’t be helping dealers any. Their only hope is a fast drop in gas prices combined with typical American short-sightedness.
I think the G8 is hurting from lack of marketing support. Most people don’t need FWD much less AWD. The 300C showed Americans did crave American (ok German) RWD sedans, even if all of them are now upside down on said vehicle loan. Of course it was helped by styling that was much more bold and popular than the G8. As one of the armchair CEO’s cheerleading for that car, I stand by my decision and feel justified in asking for my $20M bonus!
Also,I thought the purpose of stopping leasing was to get rid of unprofitable financing practices. How does 0% financing help that situation?
The G8 is the result of car-guy thinking.
Exactly. And the Camaro, if it ever shows up, is the same. Wagoner could have opted to improve the Ecotec in the Cobalt and others, but his adolescence won out over whatever business sense he should have had.
These have to be terrible times for those depending on GM for their livelihoods; direct employees, supplier employees and dealers and their employees. I hope they don’t interpret comments here that direct anger at GM management as being directed at them. I know some of us at least are sympathetic to their situation.
GM’s current lineup would have ROCKED if this was 1998, not 2008. Its a shame that they are such a backwards looking, slow moving company.
“Starting today, they’ll bump the rebates on GMC Yukons, Yukon XLs, Chevy Tahoes and Suburbans from $2k up to $6k.”
This builds a lot of good will among customers who bought their Yukahoe yesterday.
I think the G8 is hurting from lack of marketing support. Most people don’t need FWD much less AWD. The 300C showed Americans did crave American (ok German) RWD sedans, even if all of them are now upside down on said vehicle loan.
The thing is, most people don’t need RWD, either. Front-drive allows better packaging, driveline efficiency and safer handling characteristics for untrained drivers. Front-drive won out for a reason, and that reason is that it’s the best choice for a mainstream car.
The 300C would have sold well if it was front-drive. The design was all that really mattered because, well, it doesn’t actually drive a whole lot better than a front-driver. It’s heavy, numb and understeers at the limit. A V6 Accord is a more entertaining driving experience. Sure, there’s a theoretical handling advantage in track situations, but the number of people who bought 300s for track duty is tiny (it’s not a 3-Series or G35) next to the number of people who bought them because they were boldly styled.
And now that the blush is off the rose, it’s not selling.
The G8 never had decent styling; even with cheap gas, if it had come out in 2003/4, the 300C and Mustang would have buried it.
“lack of marketing support”
Is this the same car that I’ve seen a gazillion commercials and ads for? If sales are not as expected, it’s really not because of lack of ad buys.
I have seen one in black. Didn’t really notice it until I heard it but it sounds good.
A lot of people are of the opinion that GM needs a “Car Guy” to be successful. This is only partly true: you want a car guy to design and build the best possible product, but you do not want said car guy to be in charge, because all you’ll get are vanity cars at the expense of mainstream models.
A good car guy needs to be balanced by a good product planner/marketer, a good manufacturing guru and a good accountant. And you want these people counterbalancing each other, so that you don’t end up with one or the other overwhelming the whole organization.
At GM, the accountants and car guys run roughshod over manufacturing and product planning and it shows in the paucity of low-end products and inability to understand what normal people want to buy. Their manufacturing is getting better, if for no other reason than the car guys and accountants may have grudgingly admitted that flashy and flakey only flies with Ferrari buyers.
Volkswagen has the same problem. They want to be a boutique maker that sells cool cars, and it shows in how badly managed the product planning is for their regular lines.
At Toyota and Hyundai the manufacturing guys have maybe a little too much influence, but it’s not that bad yet. Honda and BMW have perhaps too much input from car guys (they pull a few too many “WTFs”, but they keep the fundamentals sound).
Chrysler, it seems, has no one in any department since Daimler gutted them.
I wonder how many people that are already upside down will buy?
psarhjinian:
Booo!! Car guys rule! A good car guy is someone who knows what a good car for a particular segment is. Marketing led product design usually equals design by committee which creates a design so vanilla its invisible. Accountant led product design leads to the Aveo. Designer led design winds up with something so ridiculous it doesn’t work and no one but CCS students appreciate it. In the end you need a balance but it takes a great car guy to lead the process to ensure at the end those features which are most important to make it a great car are preserved. IMHO.
Also, “Honda and BMW have perhaps too much input from car guys”
Blaspheme!!
A good car guy is someone who knows what a good car for a particular segment is.
Ok, I’ll give on “a good car guy”. By the same token, though, a good product planner should be able to do that without getting sucked into enthusiast land, which is the risk that the “car guy” faces.
Marketing and product planning are essential skills: sometimes you want design by focus group (minivans come to mind), sometimes you want a “Damn the torpedoes” vision (a halo car), sometimes you need to make a price point (the Aveo). The problem is balancing these requirements in such a way that the end result will still sell, and developing a solid marketing plan: For the most part, Honda can do that, Toyota can do it in their sleep. GM doesn’t seem able to to save their lives.
Also, “Honda and BMW have perhaps too much input from car guys”
Blaspheme!!
Both BMW and Honda have products that come from being too in love with vehicles in general (and their own abilties) and not with their market. Both though, have the sense not to screw with their nest eggs (3, Civic). The results have been good cars, but you can almost smell the arrogance of the designer of, say, the 2003 7 Series or second-gen TSX, who thought they knew better than their customers.
I’m with psar, and to elaborate, I think Detroit is incapable of building cars that appeal to women, Mercury notwithstanding (but that’s more marketing than anything). We’ve discussed recently how much women influence car buying.
Chrysler is especially guilty of this. They scrapped the adorable Neon for the butched (botched?) up Caliber. Save the horrid Sebring and soon-to-be-dead PT Cruiser, every single Chrysler product seems to be designed by men for men. Yes, I know I’m making huge generalizations based on the gender of cars, but it seems pretty clear to me.
The New Camaro and G8 are the result of muscle-car-guy thinking.
I’m imagining a Camaro that’s not a throwback to the ’60’s but a contemporary sport coupe. Somewhat larger than a Civic coupe but not big by any means, RWD, a turbo-4 would make for quite the ride, an unboosted 4 would propel it adequately and a V6 option would probaly do well for some users (give it VCM). If you like, you can throw in a hint of the original Camaro’s nose or tail but sleek, light and sporty for our time is what’s wanted.
Marketing to women with…… Kate Jackson. Years ago Kate was in their TV ads. Ahh the smart beautiful but practical Angel. Wonder if it moved the needle?
I looked at one of these cars a month ago. It was locked so all I could do is walk around it and it is really, really nice. Dunno what the quality is like to drive, maintain and make last but I would have guessed these cars would have flown off the lots except for the price of fuel.
I’d buy one but they belong to a whole other economic wavelength from what I generally buy: used cars that get some mileage.
I think GM’s troubles are as much the price of gas as being on too many mental blacklists…
psarhjinian:
I didn’t buy a G8 because it was not immediately available with a 6-speed manual. That was enough of a dealbreaker for me.
Toyota doesn’t make cars for “car guys”. The last car Toyota made for “car guys” was the Supra, which sold quite poorly and probably lost Toyota money. Toyota said screw it, we don’t do loss leaders, so we ain’t making another Supra. Now, lots of people would have liked to have a new Supra, but there was no way it was going to be profitable, so Toyota didn’t do it. The whole “halo car” theory, when people would go to the dealer to gawk at the latest and greatest and then buy something more pedestrian while they were there, doesn’t work any more, and probably never did. The domestics still try to play this game, which is the equilvalent to setting piles of cash on fire.
In fact, the lack of a new Supra is why I believe Toyota when they say that the Prius is profitable, because if Toyota was willing do to do loss leaders, they damned well would still be making the Supra. It’s not like Toyota can’t afford to blow a few hundred million in losses on a halo car, considering how much money they make a year (they consistantly make ten billion dollars in profits each year, give or take a billion or two). But then again, one doesn’t make ten billion dollars in profit each year if one blows it on things guaranteed to lose money.
guyincognito Designer led design winds up with something so ridiculous it doesn’t work and no one but CCS students appreciate it.
Hey us designers are not all flakes, some of use form follows function. Of course I think I should have become and engineer with the way I think.
“Starting today, they’ll bump the rebates on GMC Yukons, Yukon XLs, Chevy Tahoes and Suburbans from $2k up to $6k.”
This builds a lot of good will among customers who bought their Yukahoe yesterday.
I was walking home earlier in the week and I walk through a Buick/GMC and new this month Pontiac dealer and the big rebates were on all the cars even then. I stared at the $6000 of the Hybrid Yukon for a minute in disbelief, mostly because there was 4 of them. And the G8’s are in force there too, I counted 6 V6 models in the front off the curb, I’m sure there were more, amybe even a V8 in the back lot. Some in some truely nasty colors too, what is with that strange orange color.
Out 15 billion in a quarter and $6k off invoice? Something is just not adding up. I think GM does fuzzy math.
And they think the Volt will save the company. Two years from now after sustaining 15 billion dollar quarters.
What about the 2010 model Prius which very well could have a lower price, more range, and more performance? What’s one good reason or virtue going for the Volt? What will it have the Prius won’t? Not to mention Honda even has their own version of these cars coming out.
I still think any OEM that doesn’t have a full blown electric out in 09/10 will miss the boat. Electric Prius or Volt?
Nissan, Mitsubishi, and Subaru are coming in for the sneak attack! Get ready for the next big three. How Honda and Toyota could have slept through this one we’ll never know.
What’s one good reason or virtue going for the Volt? What will it have the Prius won’t? Not to mention Honda even has their own version of these cars coming out.
I still think any OEM that doesn’t have a full blown electric out in 09/10 will miss the boat. Electric Prius or Volt?
I’m not sure why the distinction between Prius and Volt is so easily lost on people. Unless the Prius motive architecture changes, PRIUS IS NOT AN ELECTRIC CAR. Volt is.
The Prius is a true hybrid mechanical system. It has parallel co-extant drive systems powering the the car. The gasoline engine can drive the car via mechanical transmission but alone its performance is mediocre. The electric motor drive offers limited range, speed and performance but lessens demand on the internal combustion engine. It’s a neat system blending the two drive systems, but it is nevertheless a kludge.
Volt is an electric car. ALL of the motive force will be supplied by the electric motor drive. The gasoline engine is merely the debut form of charging the batteries and powering the motors for extended mobility. Having an all-electric motive architecture, the gasoline engine is replaceable. In fact, if breakthroughs in battery chemistry are achieved, the gasoline charging engine could be deleted entirely in favor of plug-in charging alone. It could be replaced by a fuel cell, with the batteries as buffer. It could be replaced with a small nuclear reactor or a future ultra-efficient solar array. Volt is EV-1 made practical, and enables a design and engineering vector for rethinking the packaging of the car.
Prius with Hybrid Synergy Drive, in engineering and enablement terms, is a dead-end. If it persists as a Toyota line, you’ll one day see it emerge re-engineered with a motive architecture exactly….like….GM’s….Volt.
Now, Toyota’s done a good job executing its kludge reasonably elegantly, and the referential psychology of the mass consumer has given it legs and volume. But Volt is important as the practical debut of a new foundation for the private automobile. Its initial version is a beginning, not an end. Volt is how you’re going to get mainstream, genuine, electric cars downstream. If the internal combustion engine’s rotational output is at any time mechanically transmitted to a driving wheel, it ain’t an electric car. Volt and Prius are not the same.
Phil
Phil Ressler,
OK, fine. Explain why Toyota didn’t build the simpler, better serial hybrid. They can do it by removing parts from the car they did build and optimizing the engine for a single RPM range. If this is, indeed, better, they’d be adding significant fuel economy to what they’ve done and building it cheaper, to boot and making it easier to repair and more reliable.
So why didn’t they?
You might also spend some time contemplating that the Prius is on the road, today, for $22K and the Volt is not only not on the road today but will be hellatiously expensive in comparison… if it ever arrives.
OK, fine. Explain why Toyota didn’t build the simpler, better serial hybrid. They can do it by removing parts from the car they did build and optimizing the engine for a single RPM range. If this is, indeed, better, they’d be adding significant fuel economy to what they’ve done and building it cheaper, to boot and making it easier to repair and more reliable.
So why didn’t they?
You might also spend some time contemplating that the Prius is on the road, today, for $22K and the Volt is not only not on the road today but will be hellaciously expensive in comparison… if it ever arrives.
I have no visibility into Toyota, so don’t know why Toyota didn’t build the simpler, better hybrid, except to say that the different approaches reflect different histories. Had they done so, no doubt the serial hybrid would be further along. GM had created the EV-1, and Toyota hadn’t. Range was the chief challenge of the EV-1. Having already proven an ability to field a useful electric car, the serial hybrid architecture of the Volt is the logical extension of the EV-1 if range is key. Further, if you connect the dots, e.g. EV-1 to Autonomy to Hy-Wire to Volt, you can see where GM intends to take the electric car. The underlying packaging principles in Autonomy and Hy-Wire are true advances in reconfiguring the car and dramatically altering its manufacturing. Volt is the first step in delivering those ideas in real, marketable vehicles. Toyota has no equivalent forward-thinking innovation that initiates a new vector for the development of private transportation, nor does any other manufacturer so far.
Toyota would need to do more work than you describe to convert HSD into serial hybrid. The electric portion of the drivetrain is of assist strength, not really viable as primary motive force.
That the Prius is on the road today in HSD form in no way negates the value of Volt, even if Volt comes in more expensive initially. Volt is exactly what we want out of our companies — longer-term thinking. What Prius does, however, is illuminate GM’s short-sightedness in not having developed higher mileage options for their product portfolio, whether small displacement ICE or stopgap parallel hybrid in lightweight vehicles. Having already built and fielded the EV-1, GM had truck profits it should have invested in continuous development that ought to have delivered a successor by the time they snatched the EV-1 off the market. They should have had the 2.0L Ecotec, turbo and non-turbo, on the market earlier and in more cars by now. If EV-1 had been continuously developed as a car line, Volt wouldn’t be still a few years out.
We can lament what GM didn’t do that got them in the fix they’re in right now, but none of that negates the validity of the Volt itself. It is the first deliverable step in a long-term GM vision for revamping the car and removing it from the environmental equation.
It’s OK for Volt to debut more expensive than Prius. Both cheaper and more expensive versions can follow. It should debut as cheaply as possible but there are other ways to field high-mileage cheaper cars in the near term. GM could even license Ford’s parallel hybrid platform for a quick fix. However, while Prius and Volt will overlap in market presence, you can consider Volt the beginning of a future vehicle architecture vector, and Prius perhaps the last iteration of thinking defined by the past. We just need to mate the sound ideas in Autonomy + HyWire + Volt to a GM management team that can see them through.
Phil
Phil Ressler: “I have no visibility into Toyota, so don’t know.”
And why not just stop there? That IS your complete answer.
Phil Ressler: “GM had created the EV-1, and Toyota hadn’t. Range was the chief challenge of the EV-1.”
Hello? The best electric car on the road today is the Toyota Rav4-EV. And, surprise, it goes about 110 or so miles and people are perfectly happy to own it and use it. The EV-1? Gone.
Phil Ressler: “Further, if you connect the dots, e.g. EV-1 to Autonomy to Hy-Wire to Volt, you can see where GM intends to take the electric car.”
Buzzwordsville? Is that where GM is taking the electric car? Remind them to pack a lunch, it’s a long and profitless trip through unhospitable countryside.
Phil Ressler: “Toyota would need to do more work than you describe to convert HSD into serial hybrid. The electric portion of the drivetrain is of assist strength, not really viable as primary motive force.”
Right. They’re clever enough, there at ToMoCo, to build a profitable hybrid when GM’s falling flat on its face but they’re not smart enough to figure out to install a larger electric motor. It would probably never occur to them to borrow a motor or two from a recycled Rav4-EV (capable of 80mph). Or add in a higher-capacity battery when such becomes available.
HSD works because the Prius is not dragging around anything that can’t be used to make the car perform. A big enough battery to make the vehicle a long-range EV is prohibitively expensive and prohibitively large. Toyota can use anything that they can squeeze into it (and the current Prius suggests that they are geniuses at squeezing things into cars).
The GM vehicle (if it ever arrives) is either a large, heavy dead battery being dragged around by a traditional engine inefficiently powering some electric motors through the dead battery or a charged battery dragging around a large, heavy, inert engine.
The proof of this is in the pudding… if it ever arrives, the Volt will have some battery range (compromised by any attempt to go really fast), seating only for 4, a short cruising range, most likely a small trunk and a very large price tag (well, it will really be a toe tag). Performance management will be interesting (drive your 40 miles before heading to the mountains and watch your 1.4L engine try to charge the battery AND push the car uphill – should be amusing to watch).
Any attempt to produce this thing in quantity in the next few years will run into the reality that it’s too expensive for mass market. And for that reason, this will be a car that GM does not need… there’s no profit in it to save GM.
That’s what it’s really all about – building good cars that solve transportation problems for people and making money doing it. That is so not the Volt.
And why not just stop there? That IS your complete answer.
No one else here has any visibility inside Toyota either, so we’re all on the same footing in that respect, including you.
Hello? The best electric car on the road today is the Toyota Rav4-EV. And, surprise, it goes about 110 or so miles and people are perfectly happy to own it and use it.
Speaking of another car that was withdrawn from the market — gone. Big deal. They loaded up a small SUV platform with lots of battery capacity and a motor. The EV-1 was a far more holistic engineering endeavor that yielded a slippery compact car, which seems to have thrilled most who leased it.
Buzzwordsville? Is that where GM is taking the electric car? Remind them to pack a lunch, it’s a long and profitless trip through unhospitable countryside.
Real, demonstrated ideas that connected, chart a more extensible path. GM engineers have evidenced the most advanced vision for revising the private automobile. The business side has to catch up to making it real.
HSD works because the Prius is not dragging around anything that can’t be used to make the car perform.
HSD has each system hauling extra weight, and are combined via inelegant complexity. It is a well-executed compromise, as is Ford’s system, but it’s a design vector with a limited horizon. It has its place, within temporal and situational limits.
The GM vehicle (if it ever arrives) is either a large, heavy dead battery being dragged around by a traditional engine inefficiently powering some electric motors through the dead battery or a charged battery dragging around a large, heavy, inert engine.
The engine is small and lightweight. The battery is both reserve and buffer when it switches from discharge to charge. The design permits eventual substitution of the ICE with potentially lighter-weight charging technology, or elimination of the on-board charger if battery chemistry improves. Or elimination of both in favor of a fuel cell.
Any attempt to produce this thing in quantity in the next few years will run into the reality that it’s too expensive for mass market.
Even if the Volt debuts at $40,000, that still represents a large segment in the US market. Mass production will shrink its unit costs and a better-managed GM (it will be better managed by then, either by conditions of Federal aid, or market forces) push the drivetrain up and down in the line. A new car architecture can find its mass market a little later.
… there’s no profit in it to save GM.
No single car model will save GM. It requires a portfolio of products and practices.
…building good cars that solve transportation problems for people and making money doing it. That is so not the Volt.
The automobile business, relatively slow to innovate beyond the feature level, is about to become an innovation industry. Innovation industries regularly field semi-economic products for adoption by progressives, who spark broader market acceptance shortly after. For the soon-to-be-innovation-driven automobile sector, Volt makes perfect sense. GM just has to be more effective with stop-gaps for nearer-term performance. Granted, Toyota has been stellar at stop-gaps. GM, despite its massive operating dysfunctions has had the more forward-thinking engineering vision.
Phil
Phil Ressler wrote, “Real, demonstrated ideas that connected, chart a more extensible path. GM engineers have evidenced the most advanced vision for revising the private automobile. The business side has to catch up to making it real.”
Yes, GM is seriously out of balance, with engineering spending way too much time on things manufacturing can’t build. The Volt is a prime example.
Further, the Volt is a “marketecture.” Never mind the HyWire, EV1, etc, etc. There is no architectural underpinning with a basis in reality. A few weeks ago, TTAC blogged regarding an article in Atlantic Monthly. That article was highly illuminating… Read the bit about the Delta platform in use and the gaping hole “where the battery goes” and the timetable for chassis testing. GM is cobbling together bits and pieces and hoping they’ll work. They’re emphasizing a strategy and a vision but what they’re doing something entirely tactical.
Among other things, this is why GM has 3 hybrid programs, two of which are failing today and the other is doomed in 2012.
Phil Ressler wrote, “Even if the Volt debuts at $40,000, that still represents a large segment in the US market.”
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day and I believe Bob Lutz actually managed to be on point and accurate, here. “Rich people don’t care about fuel economy.” $40K cars that don’t do a good job as family cars are, in fact, cars for rich people. Sure, by limiting the initial run to 10K, GM will probably “sell out” on the Volt. Whoopee! Success! We sell all we can make! But, if they ramp, they’re doomed.
Look at the Prius. Superb fuel economy, lowest CO2 emissions going, whizz-bang tech and bigger than a Volt, with more useable seats, room and range. I test-drove one in April or so. At that time, Toyota was willing to dicker. It’s only $22K, it offers “green cred”, low operating cost and stunning fuel economy and sales were still subject to slowdowns. At 15K/month production, it was selling well but not outstandingly until gas rocketed through the roof. If the $22K Prius sells decently at $3/gallon and very well at $4/gallon, what fuel price does the Volt require to sell? At $3/gallon, we can argue about whether or not the Prius repays the upfront cost in downstream fuel savings but the idea of Volt payback is a mere dream until gas goes to $6/gallon or more.
The pursuit of energy independence, “green cred,” whatever, runs into limits. The Prius suggests these limits phase in in the very low $20K’s. At $40K, the Volt will be nothing but a curiosity.
And the Volt is going to be squeezed at both ends… It’s likely that Mitsubishi will roll out a BEV with longer electric range at a reasonably competitive price (upper $20K’s). That takes away a significant chunk of the market that is either interested in green vehicles or full oil independence. It’s the city vehicle for people who can also afford to keep a Prius for road trips. Honda is going to roll out… something… that’s another nail in the coffin, whatever it is.
As for the Volt doing better on account of mass production… is that in the two-mode or BAS playbook, too? Apparently not.
Maybe HSD is not a strategic drivetrain. However, HSD is a strategic-enough drivetrain and Toyota’s overarching strategy, to always focus on what works today, is superior to GM’s “leapfrog” strategy. Getting 20 years out of HSD is plenty. While the Volt is getting out of the gate, the Prius will sell another million copies.
If and when the battery or engine or whatever technology comes along to make a BEV/RE-EV or what-have-you a better engineering and cost-effectiveness decision, Toyota will have sufficient experience with eletric powertrains and adaptive manufacturing to get such a vehicle on the road while GM’s standing around with its thumb up its… For all of its noise about the E-Flex “architecture,” when the time comes, GM will struggle to replace that gasoline motor with fuel cells or natural gas turbines or hamster wheels or whatever GM’s Power Source Of The Month Club subscription is offering.
The “innovation” driven industry you describe is a time-to-market industry. GM is not that kind of business. Earlier, you asserted that the GM of the future, either one that skirts bankruptcy or arises from the ashes of it, would be nimble and rapid… but that’s not the GM of today and the GM of today is the GM under discussion.
Phil Ressler wrote, “No single car model will save GM. It requires a portfolio of products and practices.”
Yeah but a single car model can sink it. And what portfolio of products and practices do you imagine GM is going to have in the next 18 months? If GM had the practices, they’d have the portfolio. If GM has to build the practices, then the portfolio follows that – by some years. What’s on the horizon is unimpressive (Cruze) and/or unsaleable (Vue two-mode and, later, two-mode PHEV).
GM is making a huge strategic mistake with the Volt; they’re pouring billions into something that they are not at all ready to make and sell and ignoring a host of smaller projects that could boost their fortunes today.
Yes, GM is seriously out of balance, with engineering spending way too much time on things manufacturing can’t build. The Volt is a prime example.
Further, the Volt is a “marketecture.” Never mind the HyWire, EV1, etc, etc. There is no architectural underpinning with a basis in reality. A few weeks ago, TTAC blogged regarding an article in Atlantic Monthly. That article was highly illuminating… Read the bit about the Delta platform in use and the gaping hole “where the battery goes” and the timetable for chassis testing. GM is cobbling together bits and pieces and hoping they’ll work. They’re emphasizing a strategy and a vision but what they’re doing something entirely tactical.
It’s very clear that GM can manufacture the entire car but for ready selection of the battery configuration. Everything else about the car is well within GM’s manufacturing capability. And like others, they won’t make the batteries, they’ll integrate them.
I read the Atlantic article. I’ve been reading that magazine since 1962. When The Atlantic covers the birth of new engineering, they seldom report nor understand the full context. “The Soul of a New Machine” debuted with an excerpt in The Atlantic. It was a revealing human drama but far from holistic in setting context for the execution of Data General’s project. Same here.
GM had a moving prototype of the Autonomy platform, minus the fuel cell, a few years back. It’s not a manufacturing failure to be orchestrating the integration of technologies on dissimilar maturation paths.
$40K cars that don’t do a good job as family cars are, in fact, cars for rich people. Sure, by limiting the initial run to 10K, GM will probably “sell out” on the Volt. Whoopee! Success! We sell all we can make! But, if they ramp, they’re doomed.
$80,000 cars are for rich people. $40,000 cars are in high school parking lots in some areas where only middle class people live. This varies widely by location, but in a market where the median transaction price has been about $30,000, $40,000 cars, particularly projected a few years out, are hardly strictly for the rich. We’re talking about the practical bottom of BMW’s actual transaction range.
Look at the Prius. Superb fuel economy, lowest CO2 emissions going, whizz-bang tech and bigger than a Volt, with more useable seats, room and range. I test-drove one in April or so. At that time, Toyota was willing to dicker. It’s only $22K, it offers “green cred”, low operating cost and stunning fuel economy and sales were still subject to slowdowns. At 15K/month production, it was selling well but not outstandingly until gas rocketed through the roof. If the $22K Prius sells decently at $3/gallon and very well at $4/gallon, what fuel price does the Volt require to sell? At $3/gallon, we can argue about whether or not the Prius repays the upfront cost in downstream fuel savings but the idea of Volt payback is a mere dream until gas goes to $6/gallon or more.
Until we see the launch version of the Volt, we don’t know whether it’s similar in passenger capacity to Prius or not. Prius front seats are roomy for a small car. OK, that’s two. The rear seat is seriously compromised. As a whole it’s not as roomy and viable as a primary family car as its fans prefer the rest of us believe. Now, that’s OK. It’s a small car. Fine. I’ve driven them. The car is on tip-toes. I’ve seen four oily side up on the highway in California. In one case I happened upon the mishap shortly after it happened. Driver was OK. His comment: “I’ve never felt a car lose control so quickly.” He didn’t seem inclined to buy another one.
Whiz Bang Tech? It’s just a blended electro-mechanical system. Ford was able to do it to. It’s not like the knowledge or ability is exclusive. Others just chose a different course. Toyota sparked an emotional bond. Good for them; that’s what they should try to do. But the Prius’ market acceptance is as much marketing as it is product itself.
By time of the Volt’s launch, the market context will further evolve. First, $6.00 gas might be mainstream in the US or it might be higher. There could be many reasons for this completely divorced from actual oil supply. Or it might be cheaper than it is today. The anthropogenic global warming delusion may gain momentum, making gas prices less of a driver than CO2 emissions. Or we might get a President who uses the bully pulpit to get people to understand what oil imports do to our economy. We don’t know the market context for 2010, 11 or 12. But I don’t see it getting more hostile to the Volt’s advantages, especially if GM follows up with an array of revamped cars leveraging its packaging advantages.
As for the Volt doing better on account of mass production… is that in the two-mode or BAS playbook, too? Apparently not.
BAS was the smallest of stop-gaps. Ignore it. 2Mode is a seriously good system that requires a higher commitment up front to underwrite the gap between what the market will pay and what it will cost, until production efficiencies can make it profitable. Kind of like the early Prius.
Maybe HSD is not a strategic drivetrain. However, HSD is a strategic-enough drivetrain and Toyota’s overarching strategy, to always focus on what works today, is superior to GM’s “leapfrog” strategy. Getting 20 years out of HSD is plenty. While the Volt is getting out of the gate, the Prius will sell another million copies.
Maybe they’ll get 20 years out of HSD, maybe not. But that’s the old way. If the market wants, needs or demands faster progress on making the automobile environmentally inconsequential while advancing the art form, it may respond to a disruption. As the automotive industry evolves into an innovation industry, disruptions will be rewarded more often than in the past. Volt is a disruption, if GM plays it out.
For all of its noise about the E-Flex “architecture,” when the time comes, GM will struggle to replace that gasoline motor with fuel cells or natural gas turbines or hamster wheels or whatever GM’s Power Source Of The Month Club subscription is offering.
I don’t know why you’d assume this. GM has fielded working electric, hybrid, solar-electric, hydrogen and fuel cell vehicles in a variety of real-world test programs. They’re just poor at marketing their publicly-visible projects.
The “innovation” driven industry you describe is a time-to-market industry. GM is not that kind of business. Earlier, you asserted that the GM of the future, either one that skirts bankruptcy or arises from the ashes of it, would be nimble and rapid… but that’s not the GM of today and the GM of today is the GM under discussion.
GM has nimble and rapid teams, and a hallmark program around the Corvette. Present day GM can do the same for Volt.
GM is making a huge strategic mistake with the Volt; they’re pouring billions into something that they are not at all ready to make and sell and ignoring a host of smaller projects that could boost their fortunes today.
Volt is not preventing a better Cobalt or whatever GM car you wish to cite as insufficient. The HHR SS and the Cobalt SS both prove the platform can be executed to a high standard. Malibu is a fully competitive vehicle. CTS is fully competitive. It is not money that is inhibiting quality in their vehicle lines. Volt is a strategic imperative. GM has to proceed as though it has a future, and to have a future it needs a product that realizes a vision for re-establishing relevance in the global market. Cobalt, Cruze, Aveo — all of these can be made better immediately and more so next year and more still the year after. Volt is not the source of the management dysfunctions that hold other vehicle programs back.
Phil
I wrote, “For all of its noise about the E-Flex “architecture,” when the time comes, GM will struggle to replace that gasoline motor with fuel cells or natural gas turbines or hamster wheels or whatever GM’s Power Source Of The Month Club subscription is offering.”
And Ressler wrote, in reply, “I don’t know why you’d assume this. GM has fielded working electric, hybrid, solar-electric, hydrogen and fuel cell vehicles in a variety of real-world test programs.”
GM has fielded working TEST vehicles of various stripes. Few have shown any promise of reasonable-cost manufacturing, which is the real issue for an automobile manufacturer.
And then there’s this…
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From “The Atlantic”
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/general-motors
page 1:
And how, I ask over coffee early one February morning in Detroit, is it going? It is 6 a.m., and Farah, who is 47 and has angular features and prominent black glasses, is rushing to make a 7 a.m. meeting. The car, he says, is 10 weeks behind the original schedule. Any more slippage, and the 2010 deadline will be history. Even if no more time is lost, he will have only eight weeks to test the underbody, the car’s structural base.
Is that enough time? He answers indirectly. In some cars, he says, testing the underbody can take a year.
page 5:
In late March, at the New York auto show, I checked back in with Andrew Farah, the Volt’s chief engineer, and asked for an update. “Still just as bad as before,” he said. When I mentioned that another executive had said the underbody was a well-proven design that didn’t need much testing, he shot me a look of disbelief. “There’s a big gaping hole down the center of this car where the battery goes.”
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That’s the new Delta platform they’re using. To get the Volt going, they took a brand-new platform and chopped a major hole in it and are hoping it works. That’s not adding a new module to an existing architecture. The chance that this can be used for something else? Zero. You may think “The Atlantic” does a bad job of reporting and understanding new manufacturing projects but that writer has had a much better look into the project than you.
Recent reports from GM say that the two-mode hybrid will not go into the brand-new Lambdas. The reason? No room in the chassis. Where’s the planning? Where’s the extensible and flexible platform? GM does not think that way. They can reuse the same ladder frame, it’s true, but that’s the extent of it.
E-Flex is a name, nothing more. There’s no architecture under there at all. There’s no reason to believe that this can be stretched, narrowed, raised, extended or changed to meet new requirements. When the time comes to do something else (new power source or whatever), GM will either have to go from scratch or bastardize the existing parts and build something that’s not as good as it could be. And it will take considerable time to do it.
And then Ressler wrote, “They’re just poor at marketing their publicly-visible projects.”
You’re kidding, right? They’re marketing this thing full-time. Well… I suppose you’re right… they could be doing a bad job of full-time marketing. In fact, I suppose they are… the original price discussion was $25K. We’ve seen $48K bandied about. They appear to be settling on $40K but it’s clear they’re begging for a handout to accompany it. Yep… begging really induces confidence in the program.
Ressler also wrote, “$80,000 cars are for rich people. $40,000 cars are in high school parking lots in some areas where only middle class people live.”
Get real. I live in a fairly wealthy town. BMWs are for people who think they’re upper income in my town. And BMW delivers something important for the $40K; it’s a BMW. A $40K Chevy is DOA. And people who think they’re upper income are not as sensitive to the price of fuel as those who know they’re not upper income. And those people will do a cost/benefit on the Volt and buy… something else.
More Ressler-ification: “By time of the Volt’s launch, the market context will further evolve.”
Yes. Mostly in terms of more competition to it. By the bye, if gas rises to $6/gallon, other costs will increase too. Kiss the $40K Volt good-bye.
And, with respect to GM’s mass production potential, in response to my observations on BAS and the two-mode, Ressler wrote, “BAS was the smallest of stop-gaps. Ignore it. 2Mode is a seriously good system that requires a higher commitment up front to underwrite the gap between what the market will pay and what it will cost, until production efficiencies can make it profitable. Kind of like the early Prius.”
BAS or, to put it generically, start-stop, is the simplest way to get a real improvement in fuel economy at a bargain price. GM completely booted it. The two-mode is a reasonably good idea… get true hybrid guts into the transmission (where they’ll fit), stash the batteries wherever convenient and, voila!, a hybridized vehicle. And GM completely booted that. It’s fiendishly expensive and GM puts it into a vehicle that no one wants. I’ll leave it up to you whether it’s a marketing, engineering or manufacturing failure. Personally, I think it’s a big enough failure to be very inclusive in that regard.
But the fact remains that GM introduced both of these things… the simple and the complex but fairly modular and made a complete hash of them. There’s no mass production benefit here… these things are expensive and sell in miniscule quantities. Why would I expect anything different from the next GM advanced propulsion vehicle?
And Ressler offered, “GM has nimble and rapid teams, and a hallmark program around the Corvette. Present day GM can do the same for Volt.”
OK. GM has ONE nimble and rapid… wait a minute. They have one team which has not managed to screw up a single limited production vehicle. Was it a nimble and rapid team that brought us the SSR? Maybe – but that nimble and rapid team delivered a second limited production vehicle that was a flop. So, not only do we need nimble and rapid teams, we need them working on the right projects.
Show us a group of nimble and rapid teams that are keeping GM ahead of the market curves – or at least closely following them – to keep GM product moving through showrooms and onto the street. It’s like the search for the Loch Flint monster… you’re sure it’s there but I’m pretty sure that’s a fuzzy photo of driftwood. Certainly, nothing in Loch Flint has proven big enough to take a serious bite out of Toyota’s profits.
By the way… I think you have argued that the SSR was not a “flop,” per se. GM discontinued that thing (bad convertible, bad truck, bad tow vehicle, bad dragster) back in 2005 and, the last I checked, they had still sold some as new this year. That’s conclusive evidence of a flop.
And Ressler ran out of steam shortly after, “Volt is not preventing a better Cobalt or whatever GM car you wish to cite as insufficient. The HHR SS and the Cobalt SS both prove the platform can be executed to a high standard. Malibu is a fully competitive vehicle. CTS is fully competitive. It is not money that is inhibiting quality in their vehicle lines. Volt is a strategic imperative.”
Unless GM has money no one knows about, GM is not doing any number of things in order to support the Volt. The HHR and Cobalt SS’s? Please… muscle car thinking on a cheesy FWD chassis is not a “high standard.” Kids build ricers to a higher standard than that. The Malibus is a fully competitive vehicle? Sure… in a third-world country that is otherwise deprived of automobiles. The recent M/T shootout put it eighth in a field of ten.
The Volt is not a strategic imperative. Building better cars, faster, with shorter lead times and much better fuel economy are the strategic imperatives. Survival is a strategic imperative. The Volt – if it arrives – will be a tactical entry. At production levels of 10K/year in 2011 and, maybe, escalating to the dizzying levels of 60K/year as early as 2012, when the Prius is selling perhaps a million per year and Honda is doing who-knows-what, the Volt is a tactic that is too little, too late.
There are any number of projects that GM could take up today to deliver, predictably, in a shorter timeframe which can help GM survive. Start/stop for every model. VCM everywhere (even in a 4!). Better transmissions for all their small cars. Better aerodynamics on every model.
But GM can’t do all that and fund Volt development.
That’s the new Delta platform they’re using. To get the Volt going, they took a brand-new platform and chopped a major hole in it and are hoping it works. That’s not adding a new module to an existing architecture. The chance that this can be used for something else? Zero. You may think “The Atlantic” does a bad job of reporting and understanding new manufacturing projects but that writer has had a much better look into the project than you.
I don’t have any confidence in Atlantic’s writer understanding the product engineering context for what he’s looking at, nor keeping his agenda out of the text. More to the point, the implied inflection, syntax and general tone of his quotes do not sound genuine coming from a chief engineer. So the writer might have a better look into the project than me, but he may not have my inferential and observational skills, lack of agenda, and or contextual experience with manufacturing.
Recent reports from GM say that the two-mode hybrid will not go into the brand-new Lambdas. The reason? No room in the chassis. Where’s the planning? Where’s the extensible and flexible platform? GM does not think that way. They can reuse the same ladder frame, it’s true, but that’s the extent of it.
Irrelevant to this discussion. We already know that management decisions are notoriously uneven throughout GM.
E-Flex is a name, nothing more. There’s no architecture under there at all. There’s no reason to believe that this can be stretched, narrowed, raised, extended or changed to meet new requirements. When the time comes to do something else (new power source or whatever), GM will either have to go from scratch or bastardize the existing parts and build something that’s not as good as it could be. And it will take considerable time to do it.
There are different kinds of architecture. The architecture that counts here is electric drivetrain powered by a serial-hybrid storage/charging scheme. Clearly the rush to field that architecture in a deliverabile vehicle on a compressed schedule has resulted in the physical platform not fully taking advantage of the drive architecture. I might have seen a way to spend the time and resources differently, but it’s OK for the v1.0 car to have some convention in the platform architecture as backbone for the real advance in the drive architecture. If GM reflates its business, it will be easy enough to subsequently field a platform architecture that’s caught up to the drive architecture.
Get real. I live in a fairly wealthy town. BMWs are for people who think they’re upper income in my town. And BMW delivers something important for the $40K; it’s a BMW. A $40K Chevy is DOA. And people who think they’re upper income are not as sensitive to the price of fuel as those who know they’re not upper income. And those people will do a cost/benefit on the Volt and buy… something else.
GM has time to decide under what brand the Volt debuts. The $40K Chevrolet Volt delivered in convincing form simply requires the package and the marketing to be integrated to be a perception-changing proposition. I’d take that marketing challenge, at 10X their initial volume objectives.
BAS or, to put it generically, start-stop, is the simplest way to get a real improvement in fuel economy at a bargain price. GM completely booted it. The two-mode is a reasonably good idea… get true hybrid guts into the transmission (where they’ll fit), stash the batteries wherever convenient and, voila!, a hybridized vehicle. And GM completely booted that. It’s fiendishly expensive and GM puts it into a vehicle that no one wants. I’ll leave it up to you whether it’s a marketing, engineering or manufacturing failure. Personally, I think it’s a big enough failure to be very inclusive in that regard.
As I said, BAS isn’t worth discussing. It’s not a harmful technology, just not an important one. 2Mode is excellent. Certainly has shown no failure of manufacturing, as it works well in the vehicles management chose to deliver it in. It’s not an engineering failure either. There was a marketing decision to use it first where it could do the most good, in vehicles that had plenty of space for the hardware. Having been developed as a heavy-duty system in the first place, it is being scaled down. Logical to debut it in trucks. However, it should have been launched in pickups rather than SUVs, and moved more rapidly into Malibu and other similar end-points to the consumer. Somewhere on the business side, decisions were made that yielded the current situation. 2Mode deserves broader implementation.
But the fact remains that GM introduced both of these things… the simple and the complex but fairly modular and made a complete hash of them. There’s no mass production benefit here… these things are expensive and sell in miniscule quantities. Why would I expect anything different from the next GM advanced propulsion vehicle?
You might not expect it, but you should grant the possibility of success because the Volt team is discrete and has its own mandate.
OK. GM has ONE nimble and rapid… wait a minute. They have one team which has not managed to screw up a single limited production vehicle. Was it a nimble and rapid team that brought us the SSR? Maybe – but that nimble and rapid team delivered a second limited production vehicle that was a flop. So, not only do we need nimble and rapid teams, we need them working on the right projects.
The SSR team *was* nimble. Clearly someone wanted to build it, and the CEO greenlighted the project. It was a cosmetic vehicle however, an exercise in vanity nostalgia. It could have been more successful if it had been offered as a fixed roof hot rod pickup, and of course ASC was a critical partner. The decision to build and field the SSR wasn’t the team’s fault. The project’s disappointing result was traceable right back to the concept stage. It’s management’s job to filter out such things. All companies misjudge. In the grand scheme of things, the SSR is mouse nuts.
And Ressler ran out of steam shortly after…Unless GM has money no one knows about, GM is not doing any number of things in order to support the Volt. The HHR and Cobalt SS’s? Please… muscle car thinking on a cheesy FWD chassis is not a “high standard.” Kids build ricers to a higher standard than that. The Malibus is a fully competitive vehicle? Sure… in a third-world country that is otherwise deprived of automobiles. The recent M/T shootout put it eighth in a field of ten.
My guess is you haven’t driven a Cobalt SS or HHR SS. Have you driven straight HHR? These cars are popular and satisfying to their owners. HHRs are winning repeat owners even without a model change. It’s built on Cobalt’s platform. Making a Cobalt a little better each year is not inhibited by spending on the Volt.
If you don’t think a Malibu is fully competitive in its class, you’re just not being objective about the sorry state of the floppy Camry and the dead-end direction of the added-fat Accord. M/T? Really? The same M/T that you and others trash for lack of credibility here? Is that all you got, a Motor Trend round-up that closely ranked the full field of cars?
Phil
Ressler wrote, “I don’t have any confidence in Atlantic’s writer understanding the product engineering context for what he’s looking at, nor keeping his agenda out of the text. More to the point, the implied inflection, syntax and general tone of his quotes do not sound genuine coming from a chief engineer. So the writer might have a better look into the project than me, but he may not have my inferential and observational skills, lack of agenda, and or contextual experience with manufacturing.”
Let’s just take a moment here… who actually got into GM and talked to the engineers about what’s going on? Was it you or Jonathan Rauch? It was Rauch, wasn’t it?
And while he might not have your inferential and observational skills… well… you seem to think a GM that’s already 0 for 2 is going somewhere with this thing. GM’s 0 for 3 if we count the PNGV. Hmmm…. 0 for 4 if we count the EV-1. Frankly, I’m going to have more faith in Rauch’s skills than yours.
So, we’re going to take Rauch at face value until we actually have some new information from some more authoritative source.
Ressler wrote, [A bad Lambda decision] is “Irrelevant to this discussion. We already know that management decisions are notoriously uneven throughout GM.”
Yet, you seem to think the Volt program has uniquely good decisions. R-i-i-i-g-h-t. Rick Wagoner has land in Florida for you.
Ressler wrote, “There are different kinds of architecture. The architecture that counts here is electric drivetrain powered by a serial-hybrid storage/charging scheme. Clearly the rush to field that architecture in a deliverabile vehicle on a compressed schedule has resulted in the physical platform not fully taking advantage of the drive architecture.”
“The architecture that counts here…” What you describe is just a concept, merely a wisp of an idea… hardly an architecture. There is nothing concrete and reusable in that. The V2 vehicle starts from scratch.
“Clearly the rush to field…” required borrowing something from somehwere else whether it was suitable or not. And it will be no more relevant to the V2 than it is to the V1 and building the V2 from whatever they start with will take just as long and be just as risky as building V1.
Ressler wrote, “As I said, BAS isn’t worth discussing.”
It certainly doesn’t suit you to discuss it… I can see that. However, this is part of GM’s history and track record. And a sorry one it is, too. Meanwhile, Toyota is readying, possibly already shipping, start/stop vehicles in Japan. In fact, BAS is a bad implementation of a really good idea. GM could have done this right but…
Ressler wrote, “2mode is excellent…”
Well, then all that’s holding GM up on that is an inability to build it inexpensively AND an inability to market it properly. No problem.
Why would you think the same outfit that can’t build this economically can build the Volt economically and why would you think the same marketing geniuses that missed the 2mode so badly have any idea how to define a Volt that people will want?
Never mind what you think, GM’s commitment to build a whopping 10K of these in the first year tells you how successful GM expects to be at building them.
Ressler wrote, “The SSR team *was* nimble. … The decision to build and field the SSR wasn’t the team’s fault. … It’s management’s job to filter out such things. All companies misjudge. In the grand scheme of things, the SSR is mouse nuts.”
A few mouse nuts here, a few mouse nuts there, pretty soon you’ve got a whole mouse forest growing from those nuts.
The fact that they built it does not mean any team was nimble. And the thing was certainly surrounded by layers of mistakes. Never mind the misguided concept, the end result was an overweight failure. This “nimble” team missed the mission.
Ressler, “My guess is you haven’t driven a Cobalt SS or HHR SS. Have you driven straight HHR? These cars are popular and satisfying to their owners. HHRs are winning repeat owners even without a model change. It’s built on Cobalt’s platform. Making a Cobalt a little better each year is not inhibited by spending on the Volt.”
I have better things to do with my life than set aside time to drive exceptionally ugly GM vehicles just for the experience of driving an exceptionally ugly GM vehicle. When I’m interested in driving a performance vehicle, there are plenty of better choices available to me than an HHR SS.
“Making a Cobalt a little better each year…” is a death by a thousand cuts. The Cobalt does not need to be a little better each year, it needs to be better than the Corolla today. The Cobalt needs, at minimum, a weight loss program, interior enhancement and a better automatic transmission.
Update: And better aerodynamics. Forgot to mention that.
There are plenty of projects around GM, similar in scope, that would contribute to the bottom line before GM implodes.
Why isn’t GM taking care of these things?
Lutz recently mentioned the Cobalt as “coming into its own.” I may be slightly off in my recollection of precisely what he said, but he clearly indicated he was satisfied with it. No changes forthcoming.
This is the management that’s making all the right moves with the Volt?
Here’s something else that GM could do with the money they’re flushing down the Volt… build a more reliable car and back it with a killer warranty. I went down to the library this evening and I find that, in spite of Lutz’ 2003 assertions to the contrary, GM vehicles still do not have the reliability, durability and longevity of a Toyota. And the market knows this which is why GM resale values blow and sales are slow.
Let’s just take a moment here… who actually got into GM and talked to the engineers about what’s going on? Was it you or Jonathan Rauch? It was Rauch, wasn’t it?
Absolutely irrelevant to my observation.
So, we’re going to take Rauch at face value until we actually have some new information from some more authoritative source.
You mean *you*, not “we.” That’s your choice.
Yet, you seem to think the Volt program has uniquely good decisions. R-i-i-i-g-h-t.
Not a uniquely good decision. One of many. Revamping Malibu was a good decision. Supporting Corvette when it would be easy to curtail it is a good decision. Doubling down on the bet made on CTS was a good decision. Cobalt being vastly better than its predecessor was a good decision. HHR was a good decision, which the market rewarded. Volt is simply among the good decisions juxtaposed with the untenable decisions made at other times.
What you describe is just a concept, merely a wisp of an idea… hardly an architecture. There is nothing concrete and reusable in that. The V2 vehicle starts from scratch.
Sorry, a drivetrain choice is architectural too, not just concepts. Especially when it’s actually being built. ICE-charged, serial hybrid all-electric drivetrain is a motive architecture, and it’s a far more important architecture than is the v1.0 structural platform.
Why would you think the same outfit that can’t build this (2Mode) economically can build the Volt economically and why would you think the same marketing geniuses that missed the 2mode so badly have any idea how to define a Volt that people will want?
Because Volt’s genesis was a later point-of-departure and the resources organized around the Volt have more autonomy. They are also designing a car, not merely a technology. Whether GM marketing is up to the Volt remains to be seen. Marketing is the most limiting capability at GM right now.
The fact that they built it does not mean any team was nimble. And the thing was certainly surrounded by layers of mistakes. Never mind the misguided concept, the end result was an overweight failure. This “nimble” team missed the mission.
Actually, the SSR team nailed the mission. It was just the wrong mission. SSR owners tend to love their cars. However the mission was directed at a symbolic niche — a very slender niche. Had they offered a variant hardtop at much lower cost, that niche would have been scalable enough to become profitable. The mission was incorrectly conceived. The execution to mission was pretty good. Ever drive one, especially after they put the 390 hp small block in it? With a 6 speed stick? Didn’t think so.
The Cobalt does not need to be a little better each year, it needs to be better than the Corolla today.
Cobalt is already better than the Corolla. The current Corolla is a horrid little car, and no performance option exists. I’d buy a Cobalt over a Corolla any time I wanted to buy in that market.
Here’s something else that GM could do with the money they’re flushing down the Volt… build a more reliable car and back it with a killer warranty.
Again, Volt development is not the inhibitor to improving reliability and boosting scope and longevity of the warranty. Of course I haven’t had to worry. My GM vehicles have been paragons of daily reliability.
The basic difference here is that you choose to be cynical and dismiss possibility GM can succeed with a sound idea. I can’t say they *will* execute commensurate to the strategic and innovative value of the Volt, but I do say they *can.* The fact that Volt has come this far, with so much visibility, indicates GM is giving that team rope to do things differently. In time, we’ll know the outcome. Toyota is not a visionary organization. It’s iterative. That’s their corporate culture and it’s appropriate for them. GM is a different organism. An imaginative project like Volt is elemental to it regaining its footing, both from within and externally.
Phil