After months of speculation about what price General Motors would slap on its first electric vehicle, the Chevy Volt, we finally have an answer, and it’s an expensive one. The Chevy — oops, we mean Chevrolet — vehicle will debut with a price tag of $41,000.
That puts the Volt squarely in the luxury range of GM vehicles, somewhere between the Cadillac CTS and the Corvette Coupe.
Knocking down the price a bit for buyers is the $7,500 federal tax credit for Volt buyers. Additionally, a number of states are offering their own tax incentives for car buyers who go electric.
A few weeks ago, our test track cousins at Consumer Reports got their hands on a Volt for testing purposes and came up with a “not bad” assessment after some hands-on driving.
But what do you think? Is a $41,000 car (or even a $33,500 one) the right way to introduce electric cars to the mass market? Or is it better to keep this market small until the technology has been developed further?
Chevy prices Volt at $41,000 [ChicagoBreakingNews.com]
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Why do I have a feeling of a repeated of the GM EV1 here? But this time the general public is paying for this gag? The car is way over priced by 10k. I can understand high 30′s for this, but not 41k. I might as well buy a BMW 1 series or something if I am going to spend that much money on a car.
Most electricity is generated by burning coal. Why would you want to pay twice as much for a car that is powered from burning coal?
because burning coal is still much more efficient and produces less pollution than an ICE. If you’re lucky enough to live in areas where they use renewable sources, there’s even less pollution.
I have always had GM cars. Every two years or so. But they just priced me out. And its not an electric car, its a hybrid of sorts. I want 100% electric or 60+ mpg. Both are attainable. Build it and I will buy. But 25G is my cut off for pricing. Guess I will be holding on to current car, ya think?
For that price I’d rather buy two Corollas, over an overpriced government owned car manufacture’s that is just “not bad.”
Actually, it isn’t that bad of a deal. GM claims that the average driver drives less than 40 miles, a day 80% of the time and that the recharge cost is about $1.50/night.
So in a best case scenario, over 5 years and if you drove 40 miles/day you would put about 72,000 electric miles and 18,000 gas miles on the car. With $3 gas and 25mpg for driving with the gas engine, your total cost per mile (excluding sales tax, insurance, maintenance) is $0.43/mile.
A hypothetical gas car that costs $25k, gets 25 mpg and is driven 90,000 miles would cost about $0.40/mile.
I assumed low mileage numbers based on my experiences, as I mostly drive in a city, resulting in poorer mileage. Obivously the comparison depends largely on your driving habits… but I was surprised that the Volt wasn’t a complete rip-off in this scenario.
Yep, that’s about 50% more than what people are going to want to spend on this vehicle. It needs to be priced to compete with the Prius and Insight.
Yes. This ends today’s “simple answers to simple questions.”
Given my past experiences with GM, five cents would be too much to pay for any of their cars.
GM still can’t figure out how to build a car people want to buy. On top of it, I’m glad even more of my tax money is going to subsidize people dumb enough to buy this car.
Is $40G to much for a Volt. Yes
Paid $30g in ’00 for Camaro SS. Still in beautiful shape with 136k miles with 2 overlapping warranties on the drivetrain. Gets 22 mph at 75-95mph and top down.
Im waiting till 8/15 to possibly win a vette and if that fils Im waiting til 2015 to replace 2 cars, not the SS. To me 2015 will be the right time to replace a 2005 Acura and a 2008 Impala. BTW everyone use synthetic oil, Valvoline has a 300,000 warranty and need to sign up with them and Mobil 1 has a 15k warranty per quart of oil. Read everything on those websites especially the fine print.
$41k is definitely too much for me but I’m willing to bet there will be a waiting list to buy one of these.
At ~$30K-$35K, this will be a niche product. Hopefully (for all US taxpayers), Chevy will be able to get more scale in manufacturing these and will be able to cut $10K off the price.
Pfffffffffffffft.
1986.
Honda. CRX.
52 MPG.
1984.
Chevy Sprint.
53 MPG.
If they could do it 25 years ago, they could easily do it today.
Right, they could far exceed those numbers if they were allowed to build cars as light as those with the same low power figures. However, safety regulations essentially force them to build cars that are far heavier. Also since people “can’t” accelerate slowly.
People expect more safety, creature comforts, and acceleration from cars than they did in the 80s. Look at a modern compact — it weighs almost twice what a compact car used to. That’s because of crumple zones, airbags, A/C, sound deadening, etc. Then to get it all from 0 to 60 in less than 20 seconds — which is what people expect — it needs a bigger engine.
If you built a CRX HF now it wouldn’t pass federal safety standards, and it wouldn’t sell. People would complain it was unacceptably noisy and underpowered.
You’re getting a $20,000 car at best for 41,000. Yeah it’s way too much. If law makers want people to adopt electric cars they either have to be SUB $20,000, or gas has to get so expensive that 40,000 for a 40 mile range looks attractive.
This is very frustrating. I try to be environmentally conscientious but then companies put an obscene mark-up on anything that is environmentally “friendlier”.
I am going to be remodeling my kitchen and I was looking into recycled glass counter-tops, they are actually MORE expensive than granite. It’s the same thing here.
I think it’s too much, especially if you have to pay out of pocket for the charging station like the Nissan Leaf. I wouldn’t pay $41k for that, I’d go for a used Prius.
At that price, the VOLT will not get a thunderous applause from me!
I think it’s priced NOT to sell. They can say “we tried” like they did in the 80′s but not really. If they REALLY wanted to innovate they could make one in the 18-20K price range and sell a bajillion of them.
Alright… it’s time for the “you’re either a part of the solution or a part of the problem.”
They are, officially, now … a part of the problem….
Holy Christ are you pretty! Red heads are my kryptonite. Have a good day!
For $41000 I can get a bad ass Infiniti G37 Coupe with all the bells and whistles. So that’s an aggressive YES the Volt costs waaaaaayyyyyy to much.
Your average conservationist types are generally frugal beyond reason. Asking them to part with $41000 is going to be a tough sell for an unproven device.
Is $41,000 Too Much For A Chevy Volt? Yes. It is too much for any domestic vehicle.
This is what is killing the market for electric or semi-electric cars. The 15k markup. That is a lot of gas to make the vehicles even. There have been a few places that compared the “devil” Hummer vehicle to a Pruis and found that on average the H3 was cheaper to run in the long term, then the Pruis.
Quick napkin numbers – $3 gallon – 40mpg vs 10mpg (Pruis/Hummer) .08 vs .3 per mile. Which is about a quarter per mile savings, the cost per mile which is about 60k miles before breaking even or maybe 4 years.
The extra cost does not really come back to the average consumer until many years down the road. I think it will end up being a toss up, pay more now or pay more over the life of the vehicle. Time will tell of course and these numbers only take into account a 15k price premium over a hummer. I did not take the time to actually spec out a hummer, but it could even be worse if you take a small Honda civic or a small Ford, then you have the 15k premium plus the cost differential of the car itself.
I don’t want alternate vehicles to fail, but before they can really go main stream, you need to sell them to the average family of 4 when they go to the Chevrolete lot and look at a Volt and a Chevy Malibu. If both are about the same, no brainer, but Malibu 30k and Volt 40K….What do you think they will pick?
I think this will be a commercial flop. For $22k list, you can get the excellent Toyota Prius; the $19k price penalty of the Volt would more than outweigh any “energy efficiency” superiority claimed; it would just make financial sense. In addition, the $41k price would only be available to the rich, who would probably prefer a Lexus and couldn’t care much about being “economical” in gas; even worse, for those rich that do wish to make a statement about being “green” they should take into account the total environmental, energetic and carbon footprint of MANUFACTURING, COAL POWERED electricity and DISPOSAL OF TOXIC chemicals.
Yes.
I drive a used Prius and that was expensive enough. No way would I pay R41K for an electric car, despite a $7500 tax credit.
Chevy Volt or:
- loaded Acura TL
- base Porsche Boxster
- a pair of Volkswagon Golf TDIs, one for weekends one for weekdays (comparable equivalent MPG)
It’s amazing how quick people are to make assumptions about who will buy this car.
I signed up to lease one. I can cover the 36 months by selling my 2006 Ford Escape Hybrid.
I’m not rich. I’m not trying to wear my green credentials on my car badge.
I love the entire notion of an electric car. It’s an incremental step towards a cleaner future.
The electricity may come predominantly from coal now, but until we separate gas and automobile, it will never even be possible to run our cars on alternative energy sources. Once we’ve got plug-in cars, we can then deal with the power generation problem.
That prices it on par with an Audi A3TDI, or for half the price you can get a Jetta TDI with the same powerplant.
Comparable range, the VW group offerings are far and away superior vehicles with drastically less environmental impact.
Way to go government motors – us chicken littles who proclaimed that you idiots would try pushing ill conceived vehicles that don’t match up with market demand has now been given a veracity even I never expected!
It’s too expensive. I predict Volt will fail. The Nissan Leaf, at $32,500 ($25,000 after tax credit) is priced right. And, here in Oregon, we get an additional $1,500 tax credit. The Volt is another instance of GM’s design by committee failures.
Wow, that’s not even including your now 4 digit monthly electric bill from charging your freaking car.
Another stellar GM decision. (at business meeting) “Uhh…we’ve spent so much on marketing and development that we need to set a price at 41,000.” Who in that room said “wow, that is such an amazing deal!” Wouldn’t you rather buy a 3rd gen proven Prius (i wouldnt buy either) for about half that? No wonder this company is failing!
I wouldn’t buy the Volt at any price. General Motors, like Microsoft, has a habit of releasing products before they are worth buying in the long run. I fully expect GM to have a massive recall of the Volt for some reason – probably related to the battery. My bet is on the Nissan Leaf.