Daily Auto News GM Offers Volt Team $100 Million to Speed Up
Daily Auto News
General Motors has a lot riding on the success of the 2011 Chevy Volt. But the rest of the auto industry is catching up to the next-generation technology that powers the car – and the Volt isn’t even here yet. If the mostly-electric car is to truly transform GM’s public image from that of the gas-guzzling Hummer lineup to that of a pioneering, environmentally-conscious automaker, it needs to get here fast.
So GM is trying to speed things up.
The New York Times reports, “At a meeting last month, directors offered to put another $100 million into the Chevrolet Volt if the company could get the battery-powered sedan into production sooner than its current start date in November, according to people with knowledge of the board’s move.”
The Volt, we should explain, is an “Extended-Range Electric Vehicle.” Engineers claim the car can drive at full speed for up to 40 miles on electric power alone before a small gasoline engine kicks in to recharge its batteries – meaning that many Volt owners could drive through an average day without using any gasoline. The technology sounded impossibly advanced when GM first explained the idea in 2005. But today, with the Nissan Leaf electric car on its way to dealerships within the year, a plug-in Toyota Prius in development and other advanced green cars in the news, the Volt looks increasingly average.
Chevrolet dealers have grown weary of the Volt hype. Steve Cook, owner of Michigan’s Cook Chevrolet Buick, told the Wall Street Journal, “If I were to tell you how most dealers feel in all this, it’s that we’re at a point where we wish they would focus on selling the cars they have today to today’s customers. We’re tired of talking about Volts in 2011.”
GM hopes to speed the car into the hands of test drivers to combat the Volt fatigue. The idea, Autoblog explains, “is to spend the $100 million not to get the cars ready for sale in October or earlier – GM is happy with their long-announced November deadline – but to build more cars earlier than scheduled in order to let customers test drive them before full manufacturing starts.”
If you’re in the market for a new car, check out the U.S. News awards for this year’s best cars as well as this month’s best car deals.
Related with this news Japan Auto Store's other car news
