3 Digital Cars Cost $2,600,000,000???

Going green is great but why is saving our oil so expensive?

Why do automakers claim it cost $1,000,000,000
to put digital vehicles into showrooms???

Is it the R&D, testing, regulation, insurance, etc?

Or is it overkill before getting to the showroom?

The first mainstream digital vehicle hit American roads
over 10 years ago but consumers didn't buy enough 70MPG...

Honda discontinued the digital Insight after several hundred million and five years of efforts. Toyota spent over a billion on the Prius and lost money for years until the technology went through generations of cost reductions. GM spent a billion on their infamous EV-1 and another billion on The Hybrid Development Center that led to hybrids like the Escalade.

In the heat of the Great Recession,
after borrowing over $15,000,000,000
from American tax payers,
GM has requested more money!!!

This time around, GM, the automaker born from Ford's 2nd business,
asked American tax payers to lend another $2,600,000,000 so that
Chevrolet could develop three version of the infamous Volt
that should get 100+ MPG.

Do you think a billion per new vehicle
is a feasible business model for the
new era of digital automaking???

Would you loan a digital automaker
$1,000,000,000
to develop a digtal automobile?

Based on the industry standard of
a few thousand in profits per vehicle
how many of those digital widgets
would your investee have to sell
to pay salaries run the factories
and pay you back?

There has to be a cheaper way
to get a digital vehicle on the road...

GM's Digital Flagship Gets European Makeover

The same leader is developing the Chevy Volt and Opel Ampera as GM's Flagship to lead the digital automotive revolution in power-train technology. These amazing and complicated cars are expensive. GM's 1st Digital Bet on the EV-1 cost an estimated billion ($1,000,000,000.00) or more to develop and the Volt doesn't look that far behind with the Ampera makeover costs. How many cars will we have to buy to help GM break even on this digital double-down?

Volt Ahead

Raw Response to
Chevy Volt Redefines EV
at Wired's Autopia at
http://blog.wired.com/cars/2007/01/chevy_volt_coul.html

Great concept!!!

Hats off to one of the most efficient cars we've seen in a 100 years. The design is very similar to Porsche's World's First Hybrid built before 1900 estimated at 83% efficient.

The radical turbine electric car helped Ferdinand Porsche set world land speed records, win an award at the World's Fair as well as the Semmering Uphill, jump starting a long career in racing.

Why did he build it? Because his boss wanted a more powerful longer range electric (before grids were around).

How does the Volt compare to the EV-1, Tesla and Prius in terms of efficiency.

First of all, over 700,000,000 vehicles on Earth are burning 8 or 9 of every 10 gallons of fuel we pay for before turning our wheels...

So in terms of efficiency, the VOLT is probably twice or three times as good as most. But the Tesla and EV-1 are able to use almost 9 of every 10 units of electricity. Unfortunately, grids are less efficient than fuel value chains (well to truck, truck to tanker, tanker to port, port to port, tanker to truck, truck to refinery, refinery to truck, truck to station).

The Tesla Roadster is rated at almost 90% and California has a pretty clean grid. The grid is why the Prius can leverage it's 37% efficiency against 80-90% gasoline for a high well to wheel. The plug-in Prius is getting 94 mpg in testing.

How efficient is the VOLT? I don't know, the Prius and Tesla are the only automakers to release efficiency studies.

If the VOLT is over 37%, there's a window of opportunity to advertise the world's most efficient vehicle before electrics run over hybrids.

Conventionals (15%) are yesterday, hybrids (35%) are today, plug-ins (50% est) are next and electrics (90%) are tomorrow...

Posted by: John Acheson | Jan 22, 2007 11:52:11 PM