In case you missed the news over the weekend Chevy is shutting down production of the Volt for five weeks. Why, because the car just isn't selling.
This really reminded me of the RCA Laserdisks of the early '80s.
RCA had expected to sell 200,000 players by the beginning of 1982, but only half had been sold, and throughout 1982 and '83, sales did not improve much.
In the end Laserdisks gave way to video cassette, and RCA lost an estimated $600 million on the project.
Will the Volt be that project for GM? Right now the going price for a Volt is $40,000 with a government tax credit of $7,500. Compare that to a Chevy Cruze which is a bit bigger, and gets 40 miles per gallon, at half the price of a Volt.
Here is a full CNN Money article about the comparison
This article points out that it took a while for the Prius to catch on, will Chevy wait that long?
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