After a year that can only be described as “stupid,” the Chevy Volt is gearing up to make 2013 even stupider still.
I know, I know.
You find it hard to believe that a mostly-owned subsidiary of the United States government and the Obama administration- like GM is- could get any stupider than say Fannie Mae, or Federal Reserve Bank.
Yes, that’s tough competition, but in the “idiocy” category GM seems to be the ruling champion.
Not only have they lost substantial amounts of taxpayer dollars, they have managed to do it while generating record profits even though they still have an unfunded pension liability of over $100 billion. The pension liability is more than twice as large as the company’s current valuation on the stock market.
GM has now all but admitted that in it’s current iteration, the Chevy Volt- the car on which the company says it pinned all its hopes and dreams- is dead.
That could be a sign of progress, but alas, no.
Because as a result they have introduced a Cadillac version of the Volt power plant just to make the stupidity a bit pricier.
As of now it’s unclear if spontaneous engine compartment fires will be included in the Cadillac luxury version just as they were in the original Chevy Volt or if rich liberals will have to pay more for that option.
What is clear is sales are struggling, with the Volt reaching only 38 percent of its sales goal for 2012, despite incentives that make the Volt a loss leader amongst “green cars.” And if you thought sales were bad in the USA, they were even worse in Europe and Asia.
According to Greencarreports.com, “[j]ust 1,336 Volts found buyers outside the States during the portions of the year the car was on sale--against 23,461 in the U.S. Of those, 1,225 of them were sold in Canada. China and Europe together accounted for only 111 Volts.”
Remember: This was the European car journalists’ “Car of the Year” for 2012, which just goes to show you that Europeans feel about the same regarding their journalists and the Chevy Volt as Americans do about their journalists and the Chevy Volt.
So now GM’s plan is to make the Volt more expensive, because the Obama administration understands that richer liberals are just stupider with their money. Rich liberals went out and voted a tax increase for themselves after all, campaigned for it, embraced it; argued, in fact, that the biggest problem in all of the world is that the government doesn’t have enough of our money.
What better way to reward them then to figure out another way to fleece them out of more money that they don’t value?
But this time the fleecing will come with Onstar Navigation, leather seats and a dual DVD players. Maybe shortly they can come out with an Escalade version?
Like most government enterprises, however, GM has decided that it doesn’t want to completely ignore bilking the middle-class.
That why they have announced that the next version of the Chevy Volt is going to far cheaper.
“Instead of shoehorning the electric powerplant into a conventional GM compact-car platform,” reports USAToday, “the next Volt will be purpose-built. That will allow the ability to better package the batteries and other specialized components, says Mark Reuss, president of GM North America. He spoke Wednesday night at Automotive News' World Congress here in Detroit.”
The result will be a car that’s more affordable for working class dudes like you and me.
I’m not exactly sure why they wouldn’t have made the car “purpose-built” in the first place to make it as affordable as possible.
But perhaps like the tax increase that was supposed to be aimed just at the rich, had we known they were going conjure up one “affordable” for all of us, no one would have voted for them.
Because no one was just itching for the payroll tax hike.
And I’m guessing that most everyone would agree that buying a $30,000 car that gets 35 miles between all-night, plug-in charges is just stupid.
Even for middle class liberals.