GM temporarily halts production of Volt By Keith Laing - 03/02/12 03:39 PM ET General Motors has temporarily suspended production of its Volt electric car, the company announced Friday.* GM, which is based in Detroit, announced to employees at one of its facilities that it was halting production of the beleaguered electric car for five weeks and temporarily laying off 1,300 employees. A GM spokesman told The Hill on Friday that production of the Volt would resume April 23. "We needed to maintain proper inventory and make sure that we continued to meet market demand," GM spokesman Chris Lee said in a telephone interview. Lee noted that sales of the Volt were higher in February than they were in January, and added that California recently decided to allow the electric car to qualify for High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes in the state. "We see positive trends, but we needed to make this market adjustment," he said. The Chevy Volt has come under criticism from Republicans in Congress because of reports of its batteries catching on fire during testing. President Obama gave the electric vehicle a vote of confidence in a speech to the United Auto Workers union this week, promising he would buy a Volt "five years from now, when I'm not president anymore."* But Republicans have argued that the Volt was being pushed by the Obama administration for political reasons instead of consumer demand. “Is the commitment to the American public or is the commitment to clean energy, that we are going to get there any way we can?” Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) asked in a hearing in the House in January about the Volt's reported battery fires.** “When the market is ready … it won’t have to be subsidized,” Kelly said.* Chevy has argued the debate about the Volt has become too political.* "We did not develop the Chevy Volt to be a political punching bag," General Motors CEO Daniel Akerson testified before Congress in the same January hearing. "We engineered the Volt to be a technological wonder." Chevy has sought to give a boost to the public image of the Volt, releasing a commercial in January tying the Volt to the effort to reduce dependence on foreign oil.* "This isn’t just the car we wanted to build,” a narrator says in the commercial over footage of Volts being manufactured in Hamtramck, Mich. “This is the car America had to build.”
And zero says he's going to buy one when he leaves office. OK by me, that will ensure a couple hours of work for the US. I hope it's a '13 model.
After Receiving Bailout, GM May Move Volt Production to China - Yahoo! News GM has a deal to move Volt production to (you guessed it) China
Every bit of digging I've done in the past indicates that is completely inaccurate. GM wants to build a completely different EV for the Chinese market. The Chinese have fought with them nonstop because they want the Volt's technology and GM has refused to hand it over. Either way, I'd rather see my next GM be Chinese built than UAW built.
Just what super technology is in the Volt that the Chinese cannot figure out; after they have a Volt? It is competitive analysis; buying the competitor's latest greatest for analysis. Any corporation can reverse engineer their competitors product. China doesn't pay any attention to patents etc.
That was kinda what I thought as well Tikka. But I'm no engineer so I don't know just how complicated or uncomplicated it may or may not be. Personally I don't see how it's some huge revolutionary leap in EV see as it still costs half what a Tesla Model X is expected to cost and it's mass produced. AP, Others Likely Misreported Chinese Chevy Volt 'We Get the Tech or You Can't Produce' Shakedown Last Year | NewsBusters.org
We do it at work with our competitor's product. We disassemble; measure, test and then remeasure. There really isn't anything new; just a reapplication of ideas in an new fashion.
The trade laws are skewed in China's favor - they always insist on getting the technology along with imports from the West, then they copy it and undercut us on the worldmarket. GM has a history of wcrewing the pooch with electric cars- the EV1 they had earlier was well-liked by the few who leased them (GM wouldn't allow customers to BUY them!), but GM killed after just a few years. Any electric vehicles cannot be truly successful til the municipalities install the infrastructure to support them. I can't justify having an expensive car I can only sue for daily commuting and having to charge at home - it has no versatility! If I can'tgo two hudred miles on a charge and be able to quickly charge up on the highway at stations, it ain't gonna take space in my garage!