My wife and I just got our primary car back from its 75,000-mile tune up. It’s a 2002 Mazda Protégé, a great car that’s given us no trouble, gets around 30 miles a gallon on the highway and accelerates with real zing from a stop or when merging onto a highway. We did need to get a gasket replaced this time, which, along with the service, ran us over $400.
We bought the Protégé when we lived in Hoboken, New Jersey, and if you have ever tried to find parking there you know the distinct advantage owning a small car brings. But now we own a house and aren’t city dwellers anymore, so smallness isn’t a major requirement. And facing potentially more repairs on the Protégé, along with the fact that we have a one-year-old who travels with lots of accoutrements, got me thinking about a new car.
So with the Detroit auto show starting this week and running through January 25, I’ve been paying attention to what might be coming down the line. No surprise, there are lots of electric and hybrid concept cars on display, including the Chevy Volt. And yes, the Volt is still scheduled to go into production–at the end of 2010, about 23 months from now. That’s a long ways off, especially when you realize that a full two years have passed already since the car was first announced.
We may wait for a Volt to replace the Protégé before buying a car, but probably not. Rumors are Mazda will come out with its own electric vehicle in mid-2010, while Toyota promises it will design and produce an electric car before a Volt hits a showroom. So do Chrysler and the electric vehicle start-ups like Tesla, with its pricey sports car already enjoying a wait list for buyers. If the Volt is the car that will save General Motors, the company sure is taking its sweet time about building it.
The question in my mind is this: “Does GM really want to build an electric car?” After all, the company did build an electric car, the EV1, from 1996 to 1999 and controversially pulled the cars from the road in 2003. Regardless of how you feel about the EV1, it seems to me that there should have been enough technology and institutional memory to be able to get an electric car out the door sooner than four years from its ballyhooed announcement.
The truth is there’s little glory in Detroit for advocating efficient and small cars. Subcompacts have been viewed as loss leaders, while SUVs and muscle cars have been the favored children. I remember in 2000, when gasoline was near $1, Detroit executives mocking Toyota for pouring resources into developing the Prius. Gasoline prices, they said full of confidence, will stay low for the foreseeable future–size and power are all that matter.
Now that gas prices are under $2, it seems some in the Motor City are again convincing themselves oil will be low forever. The very well respected Bob Lutz, GM Vice Chairman, told the Washington Post on Monday that the government is forcing GM to “be at war with the customer … Because the customer, given the gas prices, is going to want one thing. And we’re going to be forced by regulation to produce something entirely different.”
I assume then that the pedal isn’t quite to the metal in getting the Volt out the door anytime soon, even with the government’s hand out to the automaker. But there is a 2010 Camaro that will hit showrooms this fall, an updated edition of the gas-guzzling muscle car.
No idea where you’ve got your information about Mazda coming out with their own EV in 2010 because they have in fact just recently made a public statement to say the exact opposite that they have NO EV plans at all.
Next you’re talking about Toyota bringing out an EV before the Volt arrives… make that 2 years AFTER the Volt and it’s an IQ city car with less space than your Mazda.
I honestly had to double-check the date this was written because you’re so behind the times. GM announced at the Detroit show a week ago they are building an EV batteries manufacturing plant in the US themselves with engineering assistance from LG Chem and have committed over $1 Billion to the Volt program so far, doesn’t sound like a half heated effort to me… Ford have the Fusion hybrid in showrooms in a couple of months and announced a battery EV will be in showrooms 2011.
I’d say you need to get some RSS feeds to catch up before you go writing ignorant rubbish about ‘short memories’ If this is a demonstartion of your information gathering skills I’m sure no-one would be very impressed.