Rumor: GM To Put Chevy Volt Program On Hold, Cut Engineering Staff Tomorrow — Nobody has substantiated this, but it is possible. Every time the oil prices plummet, as they are doing, all these “alternative” concepts die overnight after someone runs the numbers and realizes that they are going to lose their ass if the project continues.
UPDATE: GM says this story is a ludicrous hoax. And, indeed, nothing happened. (see comments)
Rumors of tomorrow’s “important changes” at GM have approached a fevered pace, but the latest one we’ve heard is coming directly from someone who’s directly related to someone who could be directly affected if the rumor is true. So, it must be true, right? Anyway, we’ve just been told by the family of a Chevy Volt engineering team member that not only is the untouchable Volt program on hold, GM’s even letting some of the engineering team, aka “the chosen people,” go.
Found by Aric Mackey.
Typical. “Oh we’re eco friendly. we’re making a car that has no emissions.” Now that we’ve suckered them to looking at us, let’s give them a ,2000 break on a 40,000 POS avalanche aka Hummer H2 in a different skin. Oh well. Looks like my money will go elsewhere.
# 62 Misanthropic Scott said, “#61 Paddy-O, Yeah. I know we haven’t been back since,”
Thanks for making my point.
BTW, have you figured out what a transformer does yet?
They put stock trading on hold. The stock is next to worthless so I expect people will just dump it. I was at a dealership and a salesman was saying how he was holding all this GM stock and expecting it to climb. He seemed a bit delusional. It looks like GM is holding out until the big change in government comes and the magicians in Washington can make the company perform well and profit again.
“Lucille Morton tried to convince her investment club, which owns 100 Ford shares, that at it’s a good time to load up on Ford.
The club bought 25 shares in April 2006 at $7.65 a share and 75 shares in March 2008 at $5.75 a share. Average: $6.22 a share. So Ford at $2 is cheap. The club didn’t budge.
“It’s a better deal than going to the casino as far as I’m concerned,” said Morton, who turns 81 this month and lives in Pleasant Ridge.” Detroit Free Press
I doubt that they would budge on GM at two bucks.
“Jim Cramer, host of “Mad Money” on CNBC, told me via e-mail last month that Ford and GM bonds were trading at such low levels that the bond market was predicting “almost a 100% chance of bankruptcy.”
“Today, Cramer told me he’d put the odds of a bailout for autos at 100%.
Cramer said on his show that Obama must fix the auto industry on his second day in office.”
All these people who have spent decades in the business can’t fix it and Obama is going to fix it on his second day in office. Yeah right. Maybe it’ll be a stimulus deal and everybody will get a government rebate for buying a new Chevy or the government can do like Oprah and buy a bunch of people new cars to get to work before they lose their jobs. Our whole public transit system is on the verge of collapse. Why? They don’t have the money to run the system, so now the government is going to fix GM with the money it doesn’t have because it went to Iraq or was wasted bailing out AIG after AIG couldn’t save itself from itself. It’s lunacy.
The price of gas depends. The worse the economy the less gas costs to buy.
If it gets better then the price of gas goes up. Of course if the economy stinks then people may want to buy economy cars if they buy anything at all….
Guess wrong and you are bleeped.
Give the 50 billion to Aptera instead! They have a 200mpg car all ready to go right now, none of these half measures, no we decided not to, bullshit. And they have decided to base their decisions on what is best for the future, rather than what the bean counters like assuming a steady state in their always wrong models.
Pfffft. GM has 22 (or more) different “models” of cars in North America alone, dog shit every one. No wonder they’re losing money.
They should develop a couple of models that people actually want to DRIVE now, invest in the future, and when it gets here they’ll be cooking with gas.
In the meantime, buy a Prius.
Here’s an idea. Lower your prices to a point where the market responds.
I agree with #59 it’s a bluff to get the government and/or public to react with a big wad of cash.
END IT QUICKLY
1880 – Most state laws provide for capital punishment, usually by hanging.
Unfortunately, hangmen’s ignorance produced horrific scenes of slow strangling deaths and gruesome decapitations.
1881 – Dr. Albert Southwick, a dentist and former steamboat engineer, sees elderly drunkard touch terminals of electrical generator in Buffalo, New York. He is amazed at how quickly and apparently painlessly the man is killed and describes episode to friend State Senator David McMillan.
1881 – McMillan speaks to Governor David B. Hill. Hill asks state legislature to consider how modern day electricity might replace hanging.
June 4, 1888 – New York Legislature passes Chapter 489 of Laws of New York of 1888 establishing
electrocution as the state’s method of execution. Medico-Legal Society of New York is designated to
recommend how to implement new law.
June 5, 1888 – Inventor Harold P. Brown writes a very compelling editorial letter to the New York Post,
describing the death of a boy who touched a straggling telegraph wire running on AC current. Brown
recommends limiting AC transmissions to 300 volts, which negates economic advantage.
July, 1888 – Brown goes to Edison’s West Orange, New Jersey lab to do research.
Spring, 1889 – Joseph Chappleau, convicted for poisoning neighbor’s cows, is first person sentenced to death under Electrical Execution Law. His sentence is commuted to life imprisonment.
May, 1989 – William Kemmler is sentenced to death.
1889 – 1890 – Westinghouse funds appeals for Kemmler on the grounds that electrocution is cruel and unusual punishment. Edison and Brown are witnesses for the state. The appeal is denied, as are two subsequent appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court.
1890 – Edwin R. Davis, Auburn Prison electrician, designs an electric chair model which closely resembles our modern device, as well as elaborate testing procedures involving large slabs of meat.
August 6, 1890 – Kemmler is executed in the electric chair at Auburn Prison, the first person ever to be executed by electrocution. The first application of current is botched and Kemmler does not die until the current is fired up a second time.
“Strong men fainted and fell like logs on the floor.”
New York Herald
http://www.ccadp.org/electricchair.htm
New technology and a crisis always creates complications that can’t be avoided. Your new Volt breaks down and all the engineers are gone and the mechanics can’t figure out what’s wrong. Hell the dealership is closed, so good luck getting parts for the damn thing.
PR Spin
Ironically, for many years people referred to the process of being electrocuted in the chair as being “Westinghoused”.
Edison’s plan to bring on the demise of Westinghouse failed, and it soon became clear that AC technology was vastly superior to DC technology. Edison finally admitted years later that he had thought so himself all along.
Today you are Mortgagehoused and GM is going to get you into a new payment plan for a high voltage ride on the wild side 2010. Electric utility shutoffs are up 20% around here because people can’t pay the sky high electric bills.
COHOES, N.Y. (AP) – Utility shutoffs are up in all or part of dozens of states thanks to rising prices and a shaky economy.
Michigan, which has been especially hard-hit economically, is seeing a 22 percent increase.
In New York state, utilities are reporting 17 percent more shutoffs than last year, affecting a total of more than 230,000 residential customers through August.
Other states with increased shutoffs include Pennsylvania, Florida and California.
With winter coming on and the economy still sinking, it’s feared
the problem will only get worse.
Give GM and Wall Street billions of dollars after they screwed the whole country? Sick. Bush is busy nation building in Iraq. AIG got billions for insuring the global fraud and the government rewarded them with billions more to keep the fraud going strong. GM is not going strong, it’s going to hell. With a big enough bailout, the entire country can go to hell with GM and go there in a spiffy new Volt!
Detroit) – AutoMonthly – November 7th, 2008
In a stunning concession GM executives today have conceded there is no natural market for the much ballyhooed Volt electric car. The base design of the auto allows for 40 miles per charge and cannot be taken on trips or other family uses. At $40,000 per vehicle, the market is much more likely to opt for hybrids in suburbia and scooters and public transportation in purely urban markets. GM made the announcement after being pressed for details about the yet to be created lithium-ion batteries to power the vehicle. In addition, GM stated that they would not make a profit on the vehicle and its narrow market would be relegated to second or third vehicles in affluent families.
Put a fork in this turd.
GM would do better making golf carts with Volt technology or selling the rights to do so to somebody who makes golf carts. Kids go carts would be fun along with jetskis and electric fishing boats. Cut down on the noise, catch more fish. They could bail themselves out instead of waiting for the strapped federal government to keep them floating. What’s the national debt? They ran out of numbers on the national debt clock, so who can say. Maybe they can build Volt bikes in partnership with Harley Davidson. Put a speaker on it and make it sound like a regular HD.