GM General Motors Company

By Mike Colias 

The Chevrolet Volt is headed to the scrap heap, but during its decade on the market, the electric vehicle reflected the strengths and weaknesses of General Motors Co. and auto making in Detroit.

The plug-in electric vehicle won praise from auto critics who heralded the car as an engineering marvel when it was introduced in 2010. The acclaim eased some of the pain from GM's bankruptcy at the time and showed that Detroit could still develop an enviable vehicle.

The Volt, though, was also a big money loser for GM. It cost a lot to build and wasn't a big seller because of its high price and customer skepticism about American-made cars. With a number of electric vehicles in the pipeline using similar technology, the auto maker said last month that it would end production of the Volt by March and idle the Detroit factory where it is built as part of a broader restructuring.

Still, in its short time, the car developed a small but loyal following. "It's the best car GM has made in decades," said Volt owner Sean Hadley, a 45-year-old attorney from New Jersey. He recently traded in his 2013 model for a 2017 version, and has persuaded two co-workers to buy Volts.

The Volt can travel about 50 miles in electric mode on a single charge. But it also has a backup gas-powered generator that kicks in once the charge is depleted to run the electric motor, allowing the vehicle to travel another few hundred miles -- a range similar to a typical gasoline-engine car.

The design offered buyers a novel solution to so-called range anxiety, the fear of the battery running out of juice before reaching the destination.

GM showed a prototype of the Volt at the Detroit auto show in January 2007. Engineers hurried the car through development, eager to prove GM could compete on environmentally friendly cars with Japanese rivals like Toyota Motor Corp., said Bob Lutz, a retired former GM product chief who championed the Volt's development.

"Toyota was seen as the most technologically advanced car company on the planet, and we were viewed as that bad old American car company that wouldn't risk anything on new technology," Mr. Lutz said. "We just had to break that cycle. And the Volt did it."

Mr. Lutz also said an electric roadster developed by then-startup Tesla Inc. around that time emboldened him to push for an electric car based on lithium-ion battery technology.

The Volt's creation became a symbol of GM's emergence from bankruptcy, a fate precipitated by its heavy reliance on gas-guzzling trucks and sport-utility vehicles amid soaring gas prices. The car went on to win awards from car critics, and President Barack Obama was so intrigued by the car that he took it for a spin on the White House grounds, breaking the Secret Service's ban on driving for presidents.

Wall Street Journal columnist Dan Neil wrote in his October 2010 review of the Volt: "A bunch of Midwestern engineers in bad haircuts and cheap wristwatches just out-engineered every other car company on the planet."

At the same time, the Volt became a symbol of the Obama administration's push for electric cars and a lightning rod for critics of GM's government bailout. A $7,500 tax credit implemented under Mr. Obama helped make the car more affordable -- it has a sticker price of roughly $35,000 -- but that credit will start to phase out in coming weeks, when GM is expected to hit a federal cap of 200,000 sales.

In November 2010, Washington Post columnist George Will wrote of the Volt: "People will have to be bribed, with other people's money, to buy this." President Trump, upset by GM's recent cost-cutting moves, recently threatened to pull the tax credit for all electric vehicles.

Even with the tax credit, the Volt struggled to appeal a broader base of consumers beyond environmentalists and tech-savvy buyers. U.S. sales peaked in 2016 at a paltry 25,000 vehicles, about one-fifth the number of Toyota Prius hybrid cars sold that year. This year, GM is on pace to sell about 20,000 Volts, flat compared with last year.

The Volt was also a money loser for the Detroit car maker because it was expensive to make with a high cost battery pack and the need for both an electric motor and gasoline engine. For a time, GM was losing $8,000 to $10,000 on every Volt it sold, according to people familiar with the matter.

GM's decision to drop the Volt has jolted passionate owners, many of whom take pride in how infrequently they need to fill up their gas tank. It also stirs memories of the auto maker's first failed electric car effort, the EV1, which developed a cult following in the 1990s during the model's three-year run and was the subject of the 2006 Michael Moore documentary, "Who Killed The Electric Car?"

GM Chief Executive Mary Barra has said the company believes in an all-electric future and has several other battery-powered vehicles coming to the U.S., including an SUV likely in the next few years.

GM executives have said much of the technology that went into the Volt, such as electric-motor design and battery cell chemistry, is being applied to forthcoming electrics. The auto maker plans 20 new models by 2023, most of which will be earmarked for China, which has strict green-car rules.

Volt owner Chris Hauck isn't interested in waiting. He plans to trade in his current model for a newer Volt this spring before the nameplate disappears from showrooms.

The 77-year-old retired electric-utility executive, who lives in western Colorado, estimated his family has used only 50 gallons of gas to travel a combined 25,000 miles between his current Volt and an earlier one.

"We hate to buy gas," he said.

Write to Mike Colias at Mike.Colias@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

December 09, 2018 07:14 ET (12:14 GMT)

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