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> Later, [GM] found some success with the Chevy Volt, a plug-in hybrid that runs on electric power but also has a backup gas engine. The car was too expensive,

> Later, [GM] found some success with the Chevy Volt, a plug-in hybrid that runs on electric power but also has a backup gas engine. The car was too expensive, though... As a happy Volt owner (I've yet to met one who didn't love theirs), I can't help but wonder if "expensive" is code for "lost service revenue because the thing is too dang low maintenance and reliable". ;)

cowmix 7y ago
My 2013 Volt is 107K (85K EV miles) strong. Almost ZERO maintenance costs.
hnModsRDanger 7y ago
As someone in automotive, if anything breaks on your car, it's worst case scenario. In 2019, people don't want their cars to break at all. Even a trivial matter might have you lose a customer.
- MegaButts 7y ago
  Are you a product manager, a marketer, an accountant, an engineer, or what? I've often been surprised to find out how the sausage is made in most businesses where I quickly learned making the best product is rarely a goal (and sometimes this is actually the right decision since you should focus on "good enough" for most applications) and that planned obsolescence is a real thing. In the case of autos, many of the dealerships in the US make most of their money on maintenance. And the dealerships have a lot of influence on what cars sell and what should be sold by their respective motherships.
  - ecpottinger 7y ago
    All I can say, as a person who has been interested in electric cars for some time, when I went to my local GM dealer I was surprised at how much lies he used to try and discourage me from buying a Bolt. Worse, when he started saying there were no local charger available he refuse to do a web search to prove his point since the last time I looked there were plenty available locally. I just walked out, on the other hand I could have bought the car CASH if he had not lied. The dealers are more than 50% of the problem!
    - happycube 7y ago
      That kinda dealer/salesman would've hated you for paying cash as well...
      - MegaButts 7y ago
        Luckily this is very easy to circumvent. Just agree to whatever financing terms they offer, negotiate on the sale price, then pay off the car ASAP. You'll likely save several thousand dollars (depends on the car and new vs used) and, at most, pay a couple hundred dollars in interest. It usually ends up being less than a hundred but obviously each contract is different.
  - hnModsRDanger 7y ago
    There is definitely no planned obsolescence. There are specifications. We don't buy overkill material. At worst, we stop tracking issues of they are too old, like after 5 years of use. Edit, due to HN limits. The person below me doesn't understand engineering and how specs work. You make your product at specific costs and quality. Not everything can be made out of titanium.
    - MegaButts 7y ago
      I'm guessing you're an engineer (please correct me if I'm wrong). And what you're effectively saying is cars aren't designed to last longer than their warranties, and in fact you don't even have data on what happens afterwards. It sounds like you're passively participating in obsolescence, even if it's not intentional. Apart from that, the people actually selling the cars absolutely have a financial incentive for the cars to fail as soon as the warranties are up, which is conveniently when you stop looking at the data.
      - kube-system 7y ago
        Literally every engineering project has to balance cost vs quality. Typically, “planned obsolescence” refers to an intentional defect that is artificially added in order to prematurely cause a failure. However, that doesn’t mean every failure is a result of planned obsolescence — defects can also can be expected under the normal course of a product’s lifetime. Premium product lifetimes are a result of premium materials and construction, which cost a premium price. Choosing the correct materials to balance the expected lifetime along with other performance and price characteristics is good engineering practice, not malice.
btilly 7y ago
No. Expensive is code for, "We lost money selling them, and only bothered because we got tax write-offs." In short, expensive means expensive. They cost a lot to make.
- jseliger 7y ago
  The Volt was also conceived in the late 2000s when gas prices were high. It was partially a hedge against skyrocketing gas prices. Between the first major oil price crisis in the '70s and today, people reliably buy bigger, more polluting cars when oil is cheap and smaller, less polluting cars when oil is expensive. Fracking may have semi-permanently put a cap on the cost of oil, which is horrific from a global warming standpoint but does seem to have altered what cars most people purchase.
  - nradov 7y ago
    The Volt also had the wrong body style based on changing consumer preferences. If GM had put the Voltec drive train in a compact SUV it probably would have sold better.
    - degenerate 7y ago
      I firmly believe this was done on purpose. They knew what they were doing by making it look like a tonka toy. EVs were just a write-off attempt by GM that didn't get the gov backing they wanted, so they made sure production remained low by making the cars hideous.
      - nradov 7y ago
        That seems unlikely considering how much engineering effort GM put into the Volt. It wasn't just a compliance car, at least not at first. If they expected it to fail they would have minimized that investment and half-assed it. When GM started Volt development in about 2006, sedans were still popular and the Toyota Prius was selling relatively well. So I think GM just failed to anticipate the market shift.
Mathnerd314 7y ago
It sounds like the production cost was too high, probably also because of the lithium-ion batteries: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chevy-volt-discontinued-chevrolets-last-volt-rolls-off-the-assembly-line/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chevy-volt-discontinued-chevrol... > "While it was a financial loser, it did what was intended," said retired GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, who shepherded the Volt into production. "We viewed it as a stepping stone to full electrics, which were totally out of reach due to the then-astronomical cost of lithium-ion batteries." > GM needed to stop making it due in part to changing consumer preferences for SUVs, he said. The company also lost money on every Volt, cash that is needed for research on autonomous vehicles and more advanced electric cars, he said.
ilyaeck 7y ago
Yes, one of the nicest cars I ever owned. I am about to reach the end of my 3 year lease and would get another Volt in a heartbeat if that was an option.
kube-system 7y ago
Did they mean expensive to produce, or an expensive price tag (or both)? The Volt was a good car, but it was a $17,000 premium over something like the Prius when it launched. Even with price cuts for later model years, it was still not an easy sell for a buyer focused on economy. I think it would have sold a lot better if they had positioned it as a more upscale vehicle to match the asking price, or at least had given it some other value proposition beyond economy. I've never been able to figure out exactly who the target market for the Volt was.
- maxerickson 7y ago
  Government incentives and fleet standards.

cowmix 7y ago

My 2013 Volt is 107K (85K EV miles) strong. Almost ZERO maintenance costs.

hnModsRDanger 7y ago

As someone in automotive, if anything breaks on your car, it's worst case scenario. In 2019, people don't want their cars to break at all. Even a trivial matter might have you lose a customer.

MegaButts 7y ago
Are you a product manager, a marketer, an accountant, an engineer, or what? I've often been surprised to find out how the sausage is made in most businesses where I quickly learned making the best product is rarely a goal (and sometimes this is actually the right decision since you should focus on "good enough" for most applications) and that planned obsolescence is a real thing. In the case of autos, many of the dealerships in the US make most of their money on maintenance. And the dealerships have a lot of influence on what cars sell and what should be sold by their respective motherships.
- ecpottinger 7y ago
  All I can say, as a person who has been interested in electric cars for some time, when I went to my local GM dealer I was surprised at how much lies he used to try and discourage me from buying a Bolt. Worse, when he started saying there were no local charger available he refuse to do a web search to prove his point since the last time I looked there were plenty available locally. I just walked out, on the other hand I could have bought the car CASH if he had not lied. The dealers are more than 50% of the problem!
  - happycube 7y ago
    That kinda dealer/salesman would've hated you for paying cash as well...
    - MegaButts 7y ago
      Luckily this is very easy to circumvent. Just agree to whatever financing terms they offer, negotiate on the sale price, then pay off the car ASAP. You'll likely save several thousand dollars (depends on the car and new vs used) and, at most, pay a couple hundred dollars in interest. It usually ends up being less than a hundred but obviously each contract is different.
- hnModsRDanger 7y ago
  There is definitely no planned obsolescence. There are specifications. We don't buy overkill material. At worst, we stop tracking issues of they are too old, like after 5 years of use. Edit, due to HN limits. The person below me doesn't understand engineering and how specs work. You make your product at specific costs and quality. Not everything can be made out of titanium.
  - MegaButts 7y ago
    I'm guessing you're an engineer (please correct me if I'm wrong). And what you're effectively saying is cars aren't designed to last longer than their warranties, and in fact you don't even have data on what happens afterwards. It sounds like you're passively participating in obsolescence, even if it's not intentional. Apart from that, the people actually selling the cars absolutely have a financial incentive for the cars to fail as soon as the warranties are up, which is conveniently when you stop looking at the data.
    - kube-system 7y ago
      Literally every engineering project has to balance cost vs quality. Typically, “planned obsolescence” refers to an intentional defect that is artificially added in order to prematurely cause a failure. However, that doesn’t mean every failure is a result of planned obsolescence — defects can also can be expected under the normal course of a product’s lifetime. Premium product lifetimes are a result of premium materials and construction, which cost a premium price. Choosing the correct materials to balance the expected lifetime along with other performance and price characteristics is good engineering practice, not malice.

btilly 7y ago

No. Expensive is code for, "We lost money selling them, and only bothered because we got tax write-offs." In short, expensive means expensive. They cost a lot to make.

jseliger 7y ago
The Volt was also conceived in the late 2000s when gas prices were high. It was partially a hedge against skyrocketing gas prices. Between the first major oil price crisis in the '70s and today, people reliably buy bigger, more polluting cars when oil is cheap and smaller, less polluting cars when oil is expensive. Fracking may have semi-permanently put a cap on the cost of oil, which is horrific from a global warming standpoint but does seem to have altered what cars most people purchase.
- nradov 7y ago
  The Volt also had the wrong body style based on changing consumer preferences. If GM had put the Voltec drive train in a compact SUV it probably would have sold better.
  - degenerate 7y ago
    I firmly believe this was done on purpose. They knew what they were doing by making it look like a tonka toy. EVs were just a write-off attempt by GM that didn't get the gov backing they wanted, so they made sure production remained low by making the cars hideous.
    - nradov 7y ago
      That seems unlikely considering how much engineering effort GM put into the Volt. It wasn't just a compliance car, at least not at first. If they expected it to fail they would have minimized that investment and half-assed it. When GM started Volt development in about 2006, sedans were still popular and the Toyota Prius was selling relatively well. So I think GM just failed to anticipate the market shift.

Mathnerd314 7y ago

It sounds like the production cost was too high, probably also because of the lithium-ion batteries: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chevy-volt-discontinued-chevrolets-last-volt-rolls-off-the-assembly-line/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/chevy-volt-discontinued-chevrol... > "While it was a financial loser, it did what was intended," said retired GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, who shepherded the Volt into production. "We viewed it as a stepping stone to full electrics, which were totally out of reach due to the then-astronomical cost of lithium-ion batteries." > GM needed to stop making it due in part to changing consumer preferences for SUVs, he said. The company also lost money on every Volt, cash that is needed for research on autonomous vehicles and more advanced electric cars, he said.

ilyaeck 7y ago

Yes, one of the nicest cars I ever owned. I am about to reach the end of my 3 year lease and would get another Volt in a heartbeat if that was an option.

kube-system 7y ago

Did they mean expensive to produce, or an expensive price tag (or both)? The Volt was a good car, but it was a $17,000 premium over something like the Prius when it launched. Even with price cuts for later model years, it was still not an easy sell for a buyer focused on economy. I think it would have sold a lot better if they had positioned it as a more upscale vehicle to match the asking price, or at least had given it some other value proposition beyond economy. I've never been able to figure out exactly who the target market for the Volt was.

maxerickson 7y ago
Government incentives and fleet standards.