43
« on: November 27, 2018, 09:16:26 AM »
You guys are absolutely correct. The market will determine winners and losers. I was pretty interested in the Volt when it debuted back in 2008. It appeared at the time, as if GM was going to make a marketable car. Then, they and the others developing hybrids learned the stone-cold facts of battery efficiency, and energy density of batteries. It must have been a sinking feeling in the meeting where the engineers told management that batteries would only get the Volt to go 25 miles down the road before switching to gas engine. And - to charge the Volt would be similar cost in SoCal electric rates to filling the gas tank with 25 miles of equivalent fuel.
lolz... I'm sure that turd in the punchbowl was ignored.
I bought a Saturn Vue hybrid mini-van a few years ago. I bought it because it got great gas mileage, and where I was driving, it qualified me to drive in the HOV lanes without a passenger. This was a big deal then, because I was driving in an area of very dense traffic, and using the HOV lane was quite nice. I got pulled over 3 times in the HOV lane and threatened with citation, but I was very careful to keep the state's list of qualified cars with that model listed, so the cops had to let me go. sigh,,,, I laughed, they cried, it was all good.
The downside was the 'hybrid' part of the mini-van was more or less useless. It had a marginal battery pack, but some nice design features like regen braking to charge the batt, and engine shut-down on stopping, and some coasting situations. The mini-van was very well designed, and Saturn did a decent job of incorporating the 'hybrid' parts of the car to the useful features like AC and lighting.
Sadly, right after they offered the deal, Saturn was part of the reason that GM was losing billions so the entire line was killed off in 2010. Once I no longer had to drive much in that area, I sold the deal to a guy who commuted like I was, and my ad said it qualified for the HOV driving lanes without a pax. I sold it for more than I paid for it, and was happy to see it go. Since it was a 2010 model, and the feds made the hybrid part of the car require a 10 year, 100k mile warranty, I don't know how, but the company has to still stand behind it with warranty support until 2020, or over 100k miles. I sold it at 72k miles, wondering who would repair the car under warranty now that Saturn was Tango Uniform. The sticker in the door jam said 'Produced by GM for Saturn motor cars USA'. Oh well.