There apparently seems to be a little unrest brewing over there at Obama Motors (OM) with some Chevrolet dealers now choosing to turn down Volts that Obama Motors wants to ship to them. This little scenario could prove to be a potential stumbling block as OM looks to accelerate sales of their plug-in, fire prone, hybrid. Take for example what has happened in the New York City market. Just last month, OM allocated 104 Volts to 14 different dealerships in the area, at least according to a person supposedly familiar with the matter. Dealers only took 31 of them, the lowest take rate for any Chevy model in that market last month. At the same time, that group of dealers ordered more than 90 percent of the other vehicles they were eligible to take, the source also said. So what does that tell you?
Then there is Clovis, out there in the land of the fruits, the nuts and the flakes referred to as California, a place where you would think that these things would be selling like proverbial hotcakes. Well, Brett Hedrick, dealer principal at Hedrick's Chevrolet, sold 10 Volts all of last year. But in December and January he turned down all six Volts allocated to him under something referred to as OM's "turn-and-earn" system, which, I guess, distributes vehicles based on past sales volumes and inventory levels. OM's "thinking we need six more Volts is just crazy," Hedrick says. "We've never sold more than two in a month." Hedrick says he usually takes just about every vehicle that GM allocates to him. Well, Barry ain't gonna let the fact that nobody wants these things stop him from shoving them down our throats.
Meanwhile, OM spokesman Rob Peterson confirmed the fact that "dealer ordering is down" for the Volt. He claims that demand is down because many dealers have been waiting for resolution of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's investigation into the risk of fires in the car's battery pack. Last year three packs caught fire in the days or weeks following government test crashes. This month OM announced a voluntary repair aimed at protecting the battery pack. And last week NHTSA said it has closed its investigation, concluding that the battery pack poses no significant fire risk. "There's a lot of misinformation that has swirled over the past month," Peterson said. "Dealers are kind of waiting for things to settle down." There's misinformation alright, all of it coming from OM and the government.
Hedrick and other dealers say that their OM overseers aren't really pressuring them to take more Volts. "They haven't jammed us," he says. "I think they'll just give them to somebody else." Who, exactly, does Mr. Hedrick think is stupid enough to take more of these firetraps? I doubt he cares very much, as long as it isn't him. Those who are identified as "industry insiders" are supposed to be closely watching sales of the Volt and Nissan's Leaf as barometers of market demand for electric vehicles. Several other automakers are set to launch EVs this year. At the Detroit auto show this month, OM executives said they wouldn't chase a previous Volt production target set for 2012, 60,000 units, three-quarters of which would be for U.S. sales, and vowed simply to build as many as customers want. Ah, that would be zero.
OM sold 7,671 Volts in the United States in 2011, short of its 10,000-unit target. It launched the car in seven key markets starting in late 2010, but didn't begin a national rollout until this past autumn. While there on the sidelines of the Detroit show, OM North America President Mark Reuss did his best to whistle smoke up somebody’s skirt saying, "We haven't satisfied demand." Oh really? He claims that OM will be better able to gauge Volt demand by sometime in the second quarter. Many dealers say they no longer have customers waiting in the wings. One East Coast Chevy dealer said he agreed to take all five of the Volts that GM allocated to him this month, even though he has seen a "huge drop off" in customer interest. "I probably should have taken only one," he said. Duh, ya think?
The entire concept of these stupid "green" cars should serve as the perfect example of how we, as a country, are expending way too much time, money and effort on all of this green nonsense. The focus of our effort to make us more energy independent should be on the drilling for more oil and natural gas. This bogus "green" technology that Barry insists on forcing upon us, very obviously has some pretty significant bugs that still need to be worked out. Look, I'm not advocating that we completely abandon the effort to move forward on renewable energy, only that a little common sense be applied here. Green technology should be part of an overall program not the entire program of how we are to go about weaning ourselves off of the oil we continue to get from countries who hate us and wish to blow us up. Drill here, Drill now, Pay less.
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