Carty, Dip Stick Of The Week?
Finally! We have an answer as to why such a popular car has poor sales figures!
If you’re like me, you’re sure if one out of every 50 people who told you they liked the Volt bought one, it’d be a worlds all time best seller. Just where are all the buyers? Every liberal blogger in the universe says it’s the hottest thing since sliced bread! Sharon even quotes some loon that the volt may be one of the greatest advances of mankind, right in there with the wheel Sharon?
Sharon Sike Carty apparently has the answer to low sales. She thinks Conservatives have scared Liberals away from the car? They can’t think for themselves, and Conservatives control their car buying decisions? Her article below opens in a new window, read what she says, sound like an auto reporter to you? This is a new age, and I have to read and reread these articles. what I have come to realize is the modern reporter who covers topics like autos more often than not does no more than quote other people, they have to.. they have so little first hand knowledge of the technology.
Http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chevy-volt-electric-car-backlash_n_1392742.html#postComment
Sharon’s child Like photo image she attaches to her credentials makes you wonder just how long she’s been out of the crib? Just what does she know about cam profiles, and if we handed her a Duntov 3030, would she know where to ‘stick’ it? An Auto Journalist? sure.. as long as you prefix it with the Huff.
A recent tweet from Sharon:
Sharon Silke Carty
Are you one of those mean conservatives than has told your liberal friends they can’t buy a Chevy Volt? Please, let up on them a bit.. let them know it’s OK with you if they buy one….
But Sharon.. do remember, if Conservatives can dictate to Liberals what car to buy or not buy…… can’t they also tell you who to vote for?
As for Lee Sphincterman, how lucky is he to live in a free country, and able to buy the car he wants.. but come on, this is not a new idea. Fact is back in 1898 a very exceptional 23 year old engineer built a hybrid car that could travel nearly 40 miles on a charge, about the same distance as the Volt!
1898: The Austrian Dr. Ferdinand Porsche, at age 23, built his first car, the Lohner Electric Chaise. It was the world’s first front-wheel-drive. Porsche’s second car was a hybrid, using an internal combustion engine to spin a generator that provided power to electric motors located in the wheel hubs. On battery alone, the car could travel nearly 40 miles.
Do a review of the all time bench mark sales disaster… “The Edsel“.. if Government Motors sold as many Volts, they’d be dancing in the streets!
GB
Like anything else, the one party will consider and try almost anything before deregulation to meet their goals for us. The Japan went from nobodies to the premiere auto makers not by selling the expensive cars they mostly offer now. They did it selling good cheap efficient cars. There has always been a market for them and always will. But the one party always see a problem as a lever for another of their goals. Just letting the world sell us cheap efficient small cars would only solve one problem and be a wasted opportunity for them.
Having been born into the car business, I understand that it is very important to build what people want AND can afford to buy. Toyota did a lot of research to understand who wanted a hybrid, why they wanted it, how much they could afford to pay and more. But don’t we know, Toyota didn’t become such a great company by gambling or leaving things to chance. The Prius can evolve as the technology becomes cheap enough for people to afford. They did their homework, they ARE selling what can be sold today, and you better know they will have a more advanced version ready as soon as the buying public can afford it..
It’s all so easy to gamble when you’re using someone elses money, and when you’ve been handsomely rewarded for failure in the past. But in order to reward such failure, the type of behavior we need to survive and grow as a nation was punished. That will become more obvious in the months to come. This is way too much for the Liberal mind to comprehend, so don’t waste your time explaining how inflation is no more than a direct withdraw from union and private pension funds alike. Where will Pension Funds find the money to remain solvent? I doubt they will unless we change course now. But the other half of the question.. is just how will pensioners handle the news that their pension checks will buy less than half what they expected.
We need note Sharon’s attitude, but we need not blame Her, she is after all a product of her environment, and possibly still struggling to learn why that filler cap under the hood has 710 embossed into it? Keep voting for that free lunch Sharon 🙂
All we know is this business like most… we have expenses and income, it seems that here in Seattle, many if not most Cabs are Prius. How the rebate plays into it, I just don’t know. There for a while, some folks in Florida were getting golf carts for $7500, and and getting a $7500.00 rebates, great deal, especially if you are retired and spend the day on the golf course! Imagine, your government giving such a gift 🙂
The one driver I talked to was a well spoken Mr. Singh,…. He told me, (to paraphrase) “We drive them because they are a great match for our needs.”
THANK YOU SHARON!
you have finally provided the answer i have been seeking for so long now! that being how do my democrat friends vote for obama’s second term?
Sharon you have provided me the answer to that question and also the answer on how to defeat obama all in one tidy little package.
what is that answer?
the left cannot think for themselves! and must be told what to do, when to do it, what and when to eat, and who and what to vote for!
what is the second answer, how do we defeat obama?
we simply sit down with our liberal friends and tell them not to vote for obama!
wow, who would have thunk it?
better get romney on the phone, now we know how easy it is to turn this country around, the lefties are so easily manipulated according to Sharon. so lets get with it!
bob g
Reuters.com – Insight: GM’s Volt: The ugly math of low sales, high costs
http://www.reuters.com/article/email/idUSBRE88904J20120910
Good post.. Parks sounds like the typical gambler, confident they’ll win by placing the whole bet on RED next time. Hey, the pain is all ours….
Y’know, if I was in the market for a car, at $200/month, I think I’d at least kick the tires of a Volt meself. If GM and the Obama Regime are cavalier enough about basic economics to offer for lease their expensive car for that much, then why not take advantage of their largesse? Well, other than the ethical reason not to. But aside from that, it’s cheaper than a car payment.
Pithy quote: “Once you give up integrity, the rest is easy.” – J.R. Ewing
But I have less than 50 kilomiles on my 2008 Prius and have no reason to be looking over the fence toward greener pastures, so I’ll stay with my ‘Yota (46 mpg/425 miles per tank, no problems and fun to drive).
“Oh what a feeling!”
q.
Quinn,
If you read my comment, I’d say you are fairly typical of Prius owners. Toyota learned that the people interested in such a car have a few things in common, one is a sense of value, and an understanding of their own personal budget constraints.
And here you mention $200 a month 🙂 Toyota knew your numbers, they didn’t have to ask you 🙂
One of the driving forces behind the development of DIY skills is a sense of value, so naturally our group overlaps into the group Toyota built the Prius for. Yes, they built the car for a group of likely buyers, and they researched them well BEFORE moving from the research effort to exploring the costs to ‘tool up’ a production effort.
Back to the Chevy Volt… that $200 a month figure you mention is about what the American public will carry as debt (on each car) sold for having borrowed the money to give to GM to gamble with. Does Sharon know the difference between printing and earning money?
GM’s current problem is a rather old problem. Their leadership has failed to manage the business for years on end.
Both Democrats and Republicans must have discovered GM’s old play book, and they’re now attempting to run the entire country the way GM ran their company!
A good Auto Reporter/Journalist knows the basics of the car business.. including the fact that you actually need to build something people want to buy.
And as a reward for having read this far.. Here’s a great idea for a new reality show. We simply invite members of the new media to a live game show and ask them basic questions about the topics they report on. No doubt it’d be a hoot! Maybe we call it the $64 Question?
Thank you all for your comments
GB
GB
Right. For me, it was simply a numbers game. Cost of fuel at 50 mpg over 100,000 miles for a new 2008 Prius vs. cost to put another 100,000 miles on my old Xterra at 20 mpg. Difference was 30 mpg @ $4/gallon (projected average) was $13, 333.33. Less, if gas is cheaper, more if gas becomes more expensive. At the time I looked at my Xterra with 70,000 miles on it, and I had no doubt it would go another 100,000 miles. But I reasoned that if I purchased a new Prius at $22,000 the $13,333.33 difference in fuel cost over the next 100,000 miles would mean the new car would really cost me only about $8,600. So it wasn’t a difficult decision to make.
Now no matter how expensive gas becomes I have no right to grouse. But I sort of enjoy, in a smug way, the looks I get when I pull in to a gas station while someone’s already filling their gas-guzzler, then leave before they’re finished pumping.
And the green factor? That’s nice, but it didn’t influence my decision. It was simply a numbers game.
q.
There you go Quinn… you are a gifted DIYer AND you fit perfectly into the group Toyota’s research confirmed were able buyers. As I’ve mentioned, Engineers often hate these guys, but they normally owe their jobs to the Marketeers. And now for a bit of news….. You can easily get 68MPG with your Prius! No fooling, no adjustments need be made under the hood! You only need apply some Washington DC logic.. buy the Imperial gallon!
As for building what people say they want. I personally know a several people who say they’d buy a full scale working replica of the Starship Enterprise if you build it, yes they’re smoked up.. but that’ll be legal soon.. Seems to me the Enterprise is another project that Tesla Motors might consider..
Thanks for the kind words, George. Now that I think of it, I got $4,500 for trade-in allowance for the X, so the total cost was 22,000 – 13,333 – 4,500 = $4100, excluding taxes, etc. for a new car.
So, like I say, it was not a difficult decision. And it’s a popular Toyota model made in Japan, coming from a company with a history of good quality, and though the hybrid technology was still sort of novel, they’ve been making them since 1997, (2.5 million now, worldwide) and no apparent issues with the need to replace the expensive battery, so I was reassured that my decision was reasonable. And recently I’ve seen them in taxi service in several places, among them, Seattle. Any car that can hold up in taxi service is worth looking at.
q.
There are no Taxi Cars other than the Prius that I can find around seattle.
Another fact.. there are enough wrecked Prius Cars now that a person can source from the junk yard IF the dealer wants to stick you…
I’ve never ridden in a Prius but the taxi use is interesting. Don’t these start off on mostly under electric power? Do these make ideal taxis not only for mpg but because they put less stress on the engine during starts and stops?
Just stumbled across this as I recently got a listeroid and this was the first site I found with good info on it. I also happen to own a 2012 Volt, and live off-grid…but am neither a greenie (except by accident) nor a liberal (who aren’t liberal, or progressive, just statists like the conservatives who aren’t conservative in the dictionary sense either).
I love this thing. If you go to gm-volt.com (not a gm site), it’s all engineers who own these and who appreciate the technology – it’s awesome. I regularly get far more range than the spec, it’s fast as can be on twisty mountain roads, and I easily keep up with its power demands via my solar system. It’s like driving for the cost of tires and insurance! And it’s fun to drive – just to make hot-rodders (of which I’m one) sick, I traded in a custom 2010 Camaro SS manual for it, and never looked back. This is more fun to drive, although it won’t do 90 mph rolling burnouts like the Camaro. So far, no issues other than a sticky charge port door, quickly fixed with a little moly dry lube and that’s it. It’s a “bet the company car” so at least mine – everything is as perfect as they could make it. Much better than the usual quality from GM. Oh, and one of my old employees had a Prius, then later got a ride in the Volt. It’s not the same world, he was very upset and now wants to switch. This is a luxo-sport, not a buzzy little eco car. Warning – don’t drive one if you can’t afford to take it home.
Doug, glad to have your post! I am sure some will wonder what your monthly car payments are and for how long? how much your paid for the solar PV and stuff to charge the Volt, we’d pro rate over the miles we drove.. so little is near free… bicycle power close to it I guess:-) We know the Prius and volt are worlds apart, but Toyota is making money off the Prius.
That Camaro, a rolling 90mph burnout…you’re not exaggerating a little are you ? 🙂