General Motors has announced that it is increasing first-year production of the Chevrolet Volt by 50 per cent.
Only days after order books for the range-extender hybrid opened, GM said that “strong public interest” had persuaded it to raise the US production capacity for the car from 30,000 units in 2012 to 45,000.
Read the full story on the Chevrolet Volt going on sale
The announcement was timed to coincide with a visit by US president Barack Obama to the Volt’s production facility in Detroit. GM chairman and CEO Ed Whitacre said, “We are proud to host the president of the United States at this plant, where the future of the American automobile industry is being built today by the men and women of General Motors.”
Key to the Volt’s production figures will be its battery supply chain. GM’s cell supplier, LG Chem/Compact Power, recently started work on a 650,000sq ft factory in Holland, Michigan.
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Re: Chevy Volt production increased
Mr Trilby, I agree with you completely. There are far too many zealots about with their crackpot ideas and insane conspiracy theories.
Re: Chevy Volt production increased
Governments are always slow to react to popular view if they react at all. Witness the howls of protest Obama received for allegedly responding lethargically to the massive oil catastophe in the Gulf. And big business, fearing a tax hike, or any sort of constraint on their accumulation of wealth, will ensure doubt is spread in the mind of citizens by any means at their disposal. Witness the tobacco giants buying doctors and medical scientists to dissemble about habit inducing chemicals in their cigarettes, and a link between smoking and lung cancer. Today, "white" asbestos is gathered and used in greater quantities than before though proven to be just as dangerous as blue asbestos. But somehow the asbestos companies manage to convince governments it is safe. By the same token, hanging for some crimes is very popular in the UK but the government steadfastly resists reintroducing it. Instead it has patrol cars issued with guns, and an unknown number of undercover hit men for anybody considered a threat to the state.
My thesis is, as we neither own nor run the supposed democracy we think we have, the idea that environmentalists have governments by the short and curly is, frankly, ludicrous.
I see the Volt as a Johnny Come Lately vehicle, but a clever one. And I regard GM's attempt at making a profit by producing the car as enlightened self-interest.
Re: Chevy Volt production increased
Why single out climate change as the only justification for the Volt? Energy independence and rising fuel costs are also strong reasons for economical cars like the Volt. I do find it mildly amusing how cars such as the Volt seem to draw out equally fundamentalist bashers who appear to be far more enraged by the existence of the Volt than environmentalists are by the Hummer.