Early in the week, GM's Hamtramck, Mich., assembly plant rolled out the first pre-production Volt, which is scheduled for its official launch Nov. 11. A few days later, General Motors announced that sales of its four brands were up 43 percent in March, compared with the same month a year earlier.
For the Volt, the pre-production assembly process is used to validate the system that will be called upon to churn out mass-produced cars at rates that could eventually run into the thousands per week. The pre-production cars are not sold at dealerships but are used for testing and other purposes.
"We have a very experienced workforce at this plant, and through all of their preparation and training workers here have been given the privilege to take GM into the future with this car," said Teri Quigley, Hamtramck plant manager, in a news release issued by the company.
The Volt is a plug-in extended-range vehicle. It will offer about 40 miles of driving in electric-only mode, but also has a 1.4-liter gas engine that will start up automatically when the battery pack is depleted. The engine will charge the battery pack – it won't power the wheels – to permit the car to go another 300 miles or so. At that point, it will need either refueling or recharging.
In the days before the start of the New York International Auto Show 2010, which opened Friday, most media members who test-drove the Volt in New York published very favorable comments. The most common refrain was that the car worked very well, with its gas engine starting and operating almost unnoticed when the battery ran down.
The biggest complaint seemed to be that the car's styling is not flashy or distinctive, like that of the easily recognizable Toyota Prius. But General Motors is betting that the Volt buyer will prefer a technologically advanced sedan that looks and drives almost exactly like a conventional car. It is aimed at a demographic that may sometimes forget to plug the car in but will be able to use it anyway.
In the Los Angeles area, the metropolitan region where the greatest number of Volts are likely to be sold or leased, the cars' drivers must be able to commute reliably in heavy daily traffic at low cost using electricity and flawlessly complete occasional 250-mile drives to Las Vegas and 370-mile trips to the San Francisco Bay Area.
GM's Hamtramck plant, in a city that is almost completely encircled by Detroit, is said to have a production capacity of about 200,000 cars a year, far greater than the initial reported plans for Volt production volume. Although Chevrolet also may use the plant to assemble the Malibu sedan, the Volt, if well received, may siphon off some potential buyers of that model.
If the Volt should catch on quickly, GM appears to have considerable assembly capacity in reserve. Pricing has not yet been announced, but the car is expected to command a relatively modest premium over the Nissan Leaf, an all-electric car with a range of about 100 miles. The Leaf's suggested retail price is $32,780 before a $7,500 federal tax credit and any state incentives are applied.
The Volt will have a 16-kilowatt-hour battery pack, smaller than the Leaf's 24-kwh battery. It's expected that a Volt will fully recharge from a standard outlet in about eight hours, meaning many buyers will not need to install special higher-voltage charging equipment or rewire their garages.
