General Motors can’t catch a break with its green car plans. As hybrids steadily gained market share in the first half of this decade, the company stayed out of the game. As late as 2003, Bob Lutz, the company’s product chief, said that hybrids don’t make “economic or environmental sense.” When GM finally stepped forward, it did so with all of the passion of a CPA—producing unconvincing low-cost Saturn pseudo-hybrids or hulking gas-electric systems best suited for undesirable full-size SUVs. These efforts were all numbers and no guts.
Finally, GM executives threw all caution to the wind and conceived the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid—an inspiring vision of what a vehicle could be at the beginning of the post-petroleum age. Unfortunately, GM might have missed the mark again—this time completing tossing out the business planning that it over-applied in the past. It appears that the brave and brilliant design of the Chevrolet Volt might require a price tag of roughly double the cost of its primary hybrid competition, the Toyota Prius and Honda Civic Hybrid—and at the same time become a big money-loser for the company.
The details of the Volt’s genesis are told in the current issue of The Atlantic. The article, entitled “"Electro-Shock Therapy,” explains that panic set in at GM throughout 2005 and 2006 as the company suffered annual losses in the billions and a deteriorating public image—especially regarding the environment. An unnamed executive told Atlantic writer Jonathan Rauch, “Everyone’s thinking the same thing: We’ve got to turn this thing around. We’ve got to get our mojo back on advanced technology.” The executive said, “The PR guys want something more sexy and dramatic, a singular point for our message.”
Steve Harris, GM’s top PR executive, had been looking with envy at the positive PR that Toyota garnered with its smash-hit hybrid, the Prius, and thought, “That could have been us.” Less than a year later, at the 2007 Detroit Auto Show, the company unveiled the Chevy Volt, a vehicle designed to resurrect GM’s image and to deliver an attractive, affordable, and petroleum-free ride for most of America’s daily driving. The Volt was an instant media sensation.
In the 20 months since its unveiling—a period of time in which the cost of a gasoline rose as rapidly as GM’s bottom line fell—the promise of the Volt expanded from heroic to messianic proportions. In fact, on Friday, Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain told a crowd of 500 GM autoworkers "The eyes of the world are now on the Volt. It's the future of America and the world." McCain sees this single vehicle as a “vital and integral part of our ability to break our dependence on foreign oil."
Finally, GM executives threw all caution to the wind and conceived the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid—an inspiring vision of what a vehicle could be at the beginning of the post-petroleum age. Unfortunately, GM might have missed the mark again—this time completing tossing out the business planning that it over-applied in the past. It appears that the brave and brilliant design of the Chevrolet Volt might require a price tag of roughly double the cost of its primary hybrid competition, the Toyota Prius and Honda Civic Hybrid—and at the same time become a big money-loser for the company.
The details of the Volt’s genesis are told in the current issue of The Atlantic. The article, entitled “"Electro-Shock Therapy,” explains that panic set in at GM throughout 2005 and 2006 as the company suffered annual losses in the billions and a deteriorating public image—especially regarding the environment. An unnamed executive told Atlantic writer Jonathan Rauch, “Everyone’s thinking the same thing: We’ve got to turn this thing around. We’ve got to get our mojo back on advanced technology.” The executive said, “The PR guys want something more sexy and dramatic, a singular point for our message.”
Steve Harris, GM’s top PR executive, had been looking with envy at the positive PR that Toyota garnered with its smash-hit hybrid, the Prius, and thought, “That could have been us.” Less than a year later, at the 2007 Detroit Auto Show, the company unveiled the Chevy Volt, a vehicle designed to resurrect GM’s image and to deliver an attractive, affordable, and petroleum-free ride for most of America’s daily driving. The Volt was an instant media sensation.
In the 20 months since its unveiling—a period of time in which the cost of a gasoline rose as rapidly as GM’s bottom line fell—the promise of the Volt expanded from heroic to messianic proportions. In fact, on Friday, Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain told a crowd of 500 GM autoworkers "The eyes of the world are now on the Volt. It's the future of America and the world." McCain sees this single vehicle as a “vital and integral part of our ability to break our dependence on foreign oil."
