PHEVs

[ChrisV]

What. The volt had batteries, a motor, and an engine. The Cruze had an engine.

And a transmission and a fuel system. Lut'z point was that outside of the batteries, the car cost the same as a Cruze to make, so with the batteries costing about $16k in 2010, and the rest of the car costing about $15k, the car itself was profitable per unit at the selling price they had then. By the time the 2nd gen came out, the battery only accounted for $4800 of the cost of the car. since the Cruze was profitable at a selling price of $17k, you know that the cost of the car outside the battery couldn't cost more than the Cruze to make (especially since they were effectively the same platform). So the calculation is that based on the hard costs of the car, it was making a profit at it's then selling price of $30k.

The problem is most of the article on the profitability of the Volt were done in late 2011, when Chevy had only sold 6-10k examples and the pundits were amortizing the entire cost of the factory, R&D, tooling, etc. over that short run of cars to come up with a per-car loss of like $40k, which is absurd. Amortization doesn't work that way. The big costs like R&D and the factory have to be amortized out over the entire run of cars made at that factory and use that research.

https://robertscribbler.wordpress.com/2012/10/02/bob-lutz-chevy-volt-on-verge-of-profitability/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/boblutz/2012/09/10/the-real-story-on-gms-volt-costs/?sh=77c95551287d

[r0tor]

Hmmm... Between my employee pricing and lease incentives - I can get a $65k Grand Cherokee for $50k

...cheaper than a comparable V6 version...