GM stockholders beware: here's a quote from a GM official: "GM had the technology to do hybrids back when Toyota was launching the first Prius, but we opted not to ask the board to approve a product program that'd be destined to lose hundreds of millions of dollars . . . We made that mistake once. We won't make it again." It was a mistake NOT to lose money?
According to Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. article in the Wall Street Journal, GM is planning on building the Volt despite the technical challenges and costs: America's biggest near-dead car company called in reporters this month to boast – boast! – about its willingness to lose money on its forthcoming electric car. That includes betting the farm on whether batteries can be developed with the necessary power-to-weight ratio and life expectancy to give the car its needed usability. "Whatever it takes to do, we will do" to deliver the plug-in Volt by a 2010 deadline, project leader Frank Weber told journalists.
GM says it has a battery package in hand, and will have to squeeze 10 years of testing into two to make its schedule. Damn the costs and risks. The biggest of the shrinking three has made no secret of its Potemkin motivations. Vice Chairman Bob Lutz (who recently called global warming a "crock") has been his usual candid self, saying GM intends to beat Toyota at its own game of selling bogus green symbolism to Washington and Hollywood. The motivation (other tha ...
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