This year's Chevy Volt sales have been far below the company's expectations.
So far this year, a little more than 13,000 Chevy Volt electric cars have been sold. That is after a "record" sales month in August, when more than 2,500 units sold. The Pentagon is planning to purchase another 1,500 Volts, but that is taxpayer money on top of the money given to GM in the bailout and money spent to cover the tax breaks to anyone who buys a Volt.
Buying is not the only option these days. Drivers have been getting discounted two-year leases for around $200 a month. That comes out to about $5,000.
Tom Borelli, senior fellow with FreedomWorks, explains that the Volt has not been a winning proposition for General Motors.
"When General Motors decided to do the Chevy Volt, they had to invest something like $1.2 billion for the new plant facility and for the line," he tells OneNewsNow. "That's a huge investment. And the problem is the Chevy Volt has not been selling. The sticker price is about $40,000. So, they need to sell a lot more cars, and the way they've been doing that is to deeply discount the leases."
Regardless, Borelli says any savings at the pump by paying $200 a month for a lease would probably be erased through higher electricity bills from charging the Volt.
"That, obviously, depends on the cost of electricity versus gasoline," he says. "It takes a long time for the cars to be charged, and if you want to lower the amount of time to charge it, you have to install something that costs about $2,000 in your garage."
According to Reuters, GM is losing up to $49,000 on every Volt driven out of the showroom -- with the cost of investment, production and sales to date taken into consideration. Meanwhile, GM stopped production of the Volt this month to control inventory and retool the Detroit factory to build the new Chevrolet Impala. It is the third time this year that GM stopped production of the Volt.
GM originally had hoped to sell 40,000 Volts in 2012.