GRA
Well-known member
In this case, GM (Dan Akerson) set high expectations, that they could get the price of the car down another $7-10k. I think they need(ed) to get the MSRP down to no more than $32k, but to overcome the psychological barrier and turn it into a really mass market car they need to get it down to no more than $30k. Maybe some more de-contenting is in the future, although I really wouldn't want to go with much less than what the LT's standard equipment plus the Comfort package has, as far as maximum utility goes. I expect this will boost sales demand and prices for the remaining 2015s, so another possibility is that GM would announce a 2nd gen. price cut after 6-12 months. The gotta-have-it-now customers will have paid full freight by then, and GM will need to entice the more practical, cost-conscious buyers after that.evnow said:That is the problem with companies like GM - they set low expectations. Atleast that is one thing we can't accuse Tesla of.minispeed said:The leaf and volt gen 2 both have different expectations for their companies. Chev has always said they needed to save money on making the car that it needs to turn a profit. We see that with essentially a carry over battery design where most of the extra range is from opening up usable capacity. We also see that GM will start using the voltec drivetrain as a non PHEV in the Malibu hybrid and then going into new territory with the bolt. GM said back in 2012 I think they needed to take $10k out of the cost of the car. They then cut the price $5K so assuming they did this and dropped the price a bit there should be $4k or so in profit now.
If plugins are to really take hold in the market, there need to be quantum improvements in generations - not marginal.
Of course the biggest problem with Volt is that it is the wrong form factor - even after seeing the runaway success of Outlander, why is no one coming up with a PHEV SUV ? (no, I'm not talking about SUVs in the Tesla price range).
Re the (AWD) PHEV SUV, we're on the same wavelength there.