GM prices Volt at $41,000, will tout EV as a 'real car' <a real expensive car!> (2025 Update)

Does it come with a kickstand, CE?

I was hoping for $41,000 it would fly.

The lease is more affordable - $350 a month. Seems like GM is over valuing the residual in order to come up with an affordable lease. I can't imagine they will sell many at $41,000 especially after the tax credit is off (I think it goes away after the first 60,000 credits are granted). For that kind of money I'd much rather have the Lincoln MKZ Hybrid (only $37K and eligible for the same tax credit).

Ed

How many Aptera electric cars will that money buy?

Or, those little cars that run on compressed air? Fartswagens??

Vote on the CNN poll today...Is $41,000 a fair price for the Volt..

Too rich for my blood, but there will a rush to buy/lease them, as there was with the EV1 leasing at $300 to +$500.. And that was 2-seater and you needed a charging station installed. The Volt looks to be better, but if they don't get the price down pretty quick it will fail. And of course it has to perform as expected and not be trouble-prone. It'll be interesting to watch how it all turns out. Depending on your daily miles driven and your electric rates, it could be a nice solution for some - with the money. But that steep price must come down to make it less a "boutique" car. Probably a Caddy brand is more appropriate than the bowtie at that price. I see the drag coefficient is .28 and I'd like to see one in person to see how it looks. Photos look ok. The EV1 was .19-21 but I never saw one. Aerodynamic and pretty don't necessarily go hand in hand.

--Vic

As po as I am, $41,000 is highly expensive for anything. Heh, I am not rich like y'all are. cuhulin

I remember when nicer new cars approached half the cost of a house you could buy in a decent neighborhood where I live, and new luxury cars almost cover the cost of a house. Really out of whack. Late '70's, early 80's I think. Then the houses squealed off the line and left the cars behind.

--Vic

Yes, it is when you look at what you actually get.

The Volt is not a simple electric car with hopelessly limited range and long charging times that will leave you stranded unless you carefully plan your trips like other electric cars will do, it has integrated gasoline engine backup. Unlike the hybrids which need to run the gas engine the bulk of the time, with the electric only serving to recapture some braking energy and improve overall efficiency, the Volt can indeed operate fully electric, never starting the gas engine as long as your trips and recharge opportunities are within it's limits.

The key is that you don't have to abandon that spur of the moment idea to go eat at that new restaurant across town because you don't have enough charge left to get there and get home and the restaurant doesn't have an outlet for you to charge from. You can make those deviations from your normal plan with the confidence that you will not be stranded.

With a pure EV, you simply do not have the option to stop by a fuel station and fuel up in a few minutes. When you get low you have to find somewhere to charge and you have to wait a *long* time to get any significant charge. The only way around this problem of pure EVs is to standardize EV battery packs so a "fuel" station can do an automated swap of the battery pack for a charged one and send you on your way in a few minutes rather like the LP cylinder exchange most people are familiar with.

Evaluating what you get for the money, I wouldnt buy one of these.

.....drives a 1988 Mitsubishi pick-up to work. With a reman engine under the hood..

Rich, smich. I don't care how good that damn Volt is, 41 grand is just TOO MUCH.

H.

Think, if I bought a F150 with a good A/C and winter heat for $31,000, the $10,000 savings I get 80,000 miles of fuel and no wild electric bill. Better resale too. Highway range is 450 to 550 miles depending on the tank size.

Someday, used electric cars for sale.New batteries? How much money for that? cuhulin

The problem is that the Volt isn't competing against simple electric cars with limited range or with standard hybrids. The Volt is competing against conventional internal combustion engine vehicles.

For $41k I can get an E-class Mercedes. Why should I buy the Volt instead? If the Volt is more economical to operate, how many miles do I need to put on it before it becomes a cost-savings over, say, a low-end C-class Mercedes?

Now, mind you, I expect that much of that $41k price has to do with amortizing engineering costs and tooling and that it will drop considerably once people start buying the cars, so it may not be all that fair a comparison.

--scott

No, your evaluating your perceived value for the money, not what you get for the money. Whether the car is worth the $41,000 to you to be able to say you drive an electric car, vs. $20,000 or so for an otherwise comparable small car is your value judgment. If you buy one you will indeed get $41,000 worth of electric motors, batteries, gas engine, generator, controls, etc.

Those parts are not "worth" $41,000, I guess. If you bought them on the open market in one off quantities you might well pay more than that, but if you tried to part one out, you would get substantially less. You would pay less than that if you bought in large quantities, as GM must do.

I do not perceive $41,000 in value for this thing, correct.

Three reasons to buy a Volt:

1. You ego directs you to be trendy and green and needs to show off an electric car.
2. You have a source of low rate charging power, be it solar panels, wind generator, off peak grid rates, or free charging at work, and your normal weekly routine mostly fits within the Volt's EV range.
3. You've got the extra $ and are interested in tinkering with the new technology without going all out and building an EV from a kit.

This will get some people, and probably be the biggest of these three selling points.

This needs to be a bigger deal than it is now to make a big difference in sales. I think free charging at work, though, would be a really big incentive.

The problem is that there is already a large installed base of prius owners engaged in retrofit and modification work... most of the folks who were going to tinker with the systems are already tinkering.

In terms of actual savings, it could be interesting. You figure you buy a car that gets 30 mpg, you drive it 150,000 miles, you have used 5,000 gallons of gas over the lifetime of the car. At $3/gal, that's about $15,000 for gas.

So, even if the electricity were free, a $26,000 C-Class and the Volt would have about the same TCO after 150,000 miles, assuming no maintenance costs on either one, just the original cost plus fuel.

--scott

I think ultimately we'll need to build some new nuke plants to produce enough electricity to allow us to provide free charging power most everywhere to make it feasible to replace a lot of cars with EVs.

Except that the Prius hybrid system is drastically different from the Volt system.

Yes, and many of us wouldn't be buying a Mercedes at any price. I'd also hope to get more than 150k miles out of my car.