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28 Comments on “Volt Birth Watch 94: Ed Welburn Defends Volt’s Design...”
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I prefer the production Volt to the concept, which actually looked like a concept-design exercise instead of an actual working car.
Online I’ve seen many comments saying the production Volt looks like an Acura, an Acura before Acura beat all their cars with an ugly stick. That’s a compliment if I’ve ever heard one.
Speaking of Acura, when will TTAC comment on what they did to the TL?
Re: the interior design “Inspired by technology” = “iPod ripoff.”
Oh, and the “evolution” of the design? Please. This has nothing to do with the concept. Hence the awkwardness of all references to it.
“It signifies an aerodynamic statement?” Please, someone shoot me now.
i think it looks fine also. The concept was silly, unrealist, which is fine for a concept.
Gm should just ignore the chattering criticism anyway, long before anyone gets one the styling will be accepted. And the short attention span crowd that is freaked out about it will have moved on to something else before it arrives anyway.
Gotta’ say that GM doing damage control on a car that won’t even see pilot production for two years is a new record.
Bunter
I don’t think any Acura era was ever so much of a mess from the side.
Clinton was in the White House the last time Acura had a nice front end. But I don’t see any Acura here. This is pure GM ugly, with a farcical contemporary-Chevy grille. Now we know which project the Aztek designers were assigned to.
You know, the back end isn’t terrible, but the front and sides need serious help.
Online I’ve seen many comments saying the production Volt looks like an Acura, an Acura before Acura beat all their cars with an ugly stick. That’s a compliment if I’ve ever heard one.
That’s a good point. The production concept really does look like a prior-generation TL, which is not a bad thing.
I think people–especially GM fans–were expecting an electic Camaro, and GM didn’t help matters by whoring out the concept like it was a real car. Normal automobile people probably weren’t surprised by this, but the GM faithful certainly were disenchanted.
Re: the interior design “Inspired by technology” = “iPod ripoff.”
I’ve been worried about the iPod-inspired interior. The iPod has one control with two functions: spin and click. It works because it’s big and easy to use, and the context in which you use the control never changes. It lacks tactile feedback*, but it’s still one control, so it doesn’t matter.
The console of the Volt has a lot of buttons, many of which offer no tactile feedback at all. This is not a good design decision in something that will be operated eyes-off at 50km/h or higher. I fully do not expect this to reach production.
* yeah, the first-gen iPod had a physical scroll wheel. That wheel wore out after a while, hence the touch-wheel on later models.
If they* are having to defend the design before it even hits the streets, doesn’t that tell them something?
This car’s design is getting flat-out panned on the internets.
(*First Lutz, now Welburn)
psarhjinian:
Bingo. Add the impossible-to-keep-clean materials, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. It makes sense that the Volt is taking a page from the Apple design book. Overpriced, underdelivering products gotta stick together!
Ok, something occurred to me while watching this – what does the Volt use to heat the car when it is cold outside?
Most vehicles use the coolant from the car’s ICE to heat the cabin – does this mean the ICE in the Volt will have to run to heat the car? Electric heaters are terribly inefficient.
I’m going with the yay-sayers on the Volt’s looks. It’s not mind-bendingly gorgeous, but I think it’s pretty sharp–far easier on the eyes than the competition. I can understand the disappointment of those who were in love with the concept car’s design, but how unusual is it for a production model to differ significantly from a show car?
@Edward Niedermeyer :
Overpriced, underdelivering products gotta stick together!
And insanely profitable. Saying the Volt is the iPod of the auto industry isn’t exactly a condemnation.
Overpriced, underdelivering products gotta stick together!
I wouldn’t call the iPod underdelivering. It’s–by a longshot–the most usable MP3 player and the paucity of features and smartness of design actually works in it’s favour. People tend to like devices that do one thing really, really well.
The Volt, though…
psarhjinian :
I wouldn’t call the iPod underdelivering.
I wouldn’t either. GM would be blessed to have even a tiny fraction of the fanatical devotion Apple inspires in their customers.
What were the odds that Acura would sell the TL’s front-end blueprints to GM?
No Apple bashing please, they are highly profitable and produce products that people actually want to buy. Now GM is doing neither one thing, nor the other.
And one more thing …. GM will never actually produce the interior like it is right now. We are still looking at a concept car, so it is supposed to have some sort of lametta.
I wouldn’t either. GM would be blessed to have even a tiny fraction of the fanatical devotion Apple inspires in their customers.
GM had that. The problem is that the whittled it away through mediocre products, poor support and no good reason to buy their stuff over the competition.
Apple, amusingly, did the same thing. If you can recall the “Performa” era under Gil Amelio, Apple was selling lots of products (the Powerbook 5300 I owned comes to mind immediately) that weren’t at all well-designed and offered no compelling advantage over a HP or Dell. Oh, and they gutted support at the time. Apple was usually prefixed with “beleagured computer-maker” when it was mentioned at all.
Apple changed for the better when their leadership did: instead of an empty suit, they’re now led by a socioopathic perfectionist and his team of subordinate perfectionists. You can be assured that nothing leaves Apple’s design studios without Steve Job’s personal signature of approval. I just can’t see Rick Wagoner or his underlings doing the same thing.
The problem that GM is facing is shown by how much the upcoming Honda hybrid looks like the Prius. Part of the Prius’ success was due to its distinctive shape – not that it’s particularly good looking but because it’s instantly identifiable. That how good design helps in the marketplace with any new technology – think iPods. The shape of the Prius, as the Honda hybrid shows, is pretty much constrained by aero realities. There’s a reason why most commercial airliners look very similar, as do fighter aircraft.
So GM Design has to make an aero car that doesn’t look like a Prius, distinctive enough so that its design reflects its groundbreaking drivetrain, git the hardpoints of the base platform, and include some brand identification cues as well, all while hopefully ending up with something not as ugly as an Aztek or as awkward as a Sebring. That’s a tall order.
So far I’d give them a B, maybe a B+. It’s inoffensive, but nothing too exciting. The rear end is pretty good but until I see the production Volt in the flesh it’s hard to say for sure. The Jaguar XF looks much better in person than it does in photos so maybe the Volt will too.
Meanwhile, before Li-ion batteries for cars start serious production, maybe the cheapest transportation would be to buy a used midsize SUV like a Ford Explorer with a V6,have it retrofitted for dual operation with CNG, and put in a Phill home refueling station. SUVs are cheap, you can find lots of heavily depreciated low mileage examples these days. They have enough room in the back to still have some usable space after installing the CNG tank(s).
Conversion to CNG, including the tank, runs $4000-$5000. The Phill station is $3400. Natural gas costs between $0.50 and $2.00 per gallon of gas equivalent, depending on where in the US you are (it’s real cheap in Utah).
So many banks are so upside down on out of lease and repo’d SUVs and pickups that I’m sure you can save the $8000 that it will cost to convert to CNG. Then your out of the pocket expenses are cut in half or reduced even more and you can still run it on gasoline when you’re out of range of a CNG station.
I’ll cop to the bashing charge. The girlfriend has had nothing but trouble with her MacBook. It looks neat and chic and all, but the quality is just atrocious. Call me unhip and joyless, but I see no reason to pay a considerable premium for a product that breaks more and is harder/more expensive to repair than (say) a Dell laptop. Then again, I’d take a Fit over a Prius for similar reasons. Doesn’t mean hybrids and MacBooks don’t sell well… they’re just not for me.
I thought people like Macs because, “they just work.” surprise, surprise.
The girlfriend has had nothing but trouble with her MacBook
Most commodity computers (and phones) suck nowadays. It’s more the execution than the design: all of these roll off the same four or five Taiwanese assembly lines, and I have to say that Apple’s stuff has been above-par in this respect. Not saying much, I know, but until you witness a fifteen percent dead out-of-the-box , you’d be forgiven for thinking things were better. I’ve gone through several hardware deployment cycles (thousands of laptops and PDAs) and I’m happy with five-percent DOA OOB.
This is the dark side of cost accounting in manufacturing. If twit with a clipboard can save a few cents (and when you’re rolling off millions of products, pennies do matter) they’ll do it. At least with computers, no one dies.
This car’s design is getting flat-out panned on the internets.
But let’s not forget that the internet is populated by Lamborghini-poster-on-the walls teenagers, or adults who revert to that behavior when posting, and yet drive Camrys in real life.
It’s not a very exciting design, but it’s not bad at all either. People just thought that somehow, the volt would look like a crazy sportscar. GM’s real mistake was to show that concept with a low roof and long hood, thus stroking our fantasies.
So this is a production concept, right? It looks better then the first-gen prius, and much better then the concept volt. It’s not distinctive enough though. I think people that buy one of these will want everyone to know what they’re driving.
Remember Toyota’s Volta concept? Now that was a sexy car.
This thing is just a collection of stolen design ideas. They started with a Malibu, added the profile of a Prius and the ass of an Insight. It was a very lazy and uninspired move by GM.
But its better than the concept I feel. Buying the concept car would have been like dating an absolutly gorgeous woman only to find out shes horrible in bed later. The concept looked fast but was slow. Thats worse than being boring.
And if GM thinks that Toyota and Honda won’t have something better than the Volt by 2010 simply by tweaking their current hybrids, they are fooling themselves.
But worst of all. This thing looks like a GM.
What do you think they could call the re-badged Volts they are sure to sell as Pontiacs, Saturns and the “Luxury entry level Hybrid” Cadillac?
Most commodity computers (and phones) suck nowadays. It’s more the execution than the design: all of these roll off the same four or five Taiwanese assembly lines, and I have to say that Apple’s stuff has been above-par in this respect.
Which is exactly why I shop value and ruggedness in a laptop. In the case of the MacBook though, the design doesn’t do anything to protect the LCD screen. The eternally failing disk drive might be a cost-cutting victim though. Either way, when my “small business” model Dell fails or breaks (and it’s surprisingly sturdy), the cost to replace it completely will be similar to that of a new LCD screen for the MacBook. No thanks, Apple.
Back to the Volt though, the strong internet backlash is just deserts for poorly-executed hype. Flashing the concept around saying “this will be the car you’ve been waiting for” is not the smart way to do something like this. But they just had to jump the gun. They built a “Volt Nation” around numbers and promises that they didn’t know they could achieve, and they’re surprised by a cool reaction? The price comments by Lutz et al created the first waves of discontent in Volt Nation, and add the $40k pricetag to this snoozer and you’ve got an American Revolution (TM).
Live by the hype, die by the hype.
Welburn has that quirky smile that people have when they are forced to push something they don’t really belive in. It’s not that he is lying, but he knows he’s bullshitting, and hopes for god that nobody will figure it out. The smile makes him look like the mouse that just swallowed a cat.
The car’s overall shape isn’t so bad, it’s the usual gimmicky GM embellishments all over the place that make it look lousy. Wipe off all the makeup and you might have something. It doesn’t matter though, this car won’t have a chance with the Prius and Insight around. Too little, too late… in typical GM fashion.
I don’t think it looks half bad. There’s some Acadia (imo, one of the best looking GMs out there) in there. The rear end looks a bit Bangle’d and very awkward.
They didn’t talk about those silly-looking window bezels, though. I suppose they serve to increase the visual height of the greenhouse, while allowing high doorsills inside, to impart sportiness.
The iInterior looks fairly gimmicky. I don’t know how close to production this car is but I wouldn’t be surprised of it was revised again. The thing I’d be worried about is all that glossy plastic getting scratched up and dusty very easily.
quasimondo :
September 17th, 2008 at 2:15 pm
I thought people like Macs because, “they just work.” surprise, surprise.
60% of the time, they work 100% of the time. My sister and I own a macbook and macbook pro, respectively. So far so good.
Wow a production car that doesn’t look like a concept! That has never happened before. Pipe dream design meets reality and reality always wins.
This thing could look almost as bad as an Aztek and it will sell just fine even at $40k. GM will sell every one they can make in the first 2 years. I’ll gladly put money on it if I was a betting man, which I am.