[The Vector] Chevy Volt – A Vehicle with Scarcity Value

For all the attention it is receiving, the Chevrolet Volt is not going to change much about the typical vehicle GM sells.

Chevrolet Volt Marketing Director Tony DiSalle said on July 2 that they plan to produce 10,000 Volts by the end of 2011, and an additional 30,000 Volts during  2012 at its Detroit-Hamtramck facility. In Europe, a sister car, the Ampera, is due to go into production roughly 12 months after the Volt.

During 2011 and 2012 GM will produce approximately 7 million vehicles that run on hydrocarbon fuels.

Tony Posawatz, Volt Line Director, had implied in early June to gm-volt.com that Chevrolet saw value in the Volt’s scarcity: “I think we will always want to keep the Volt in a position where demand for the product is slightly greater than supply…We would not want to see the Volt needing to be discounted for whatever reason.”

A more cynical view of GM’s motives in producing such low volumes of the Volt was given by Sam Jaffe, a research manager working on distributed energy strategies at IDC Energy Insights writing in greentechmedia.com in mid-June.

Jaffe believes that the extremely high miles per gallon of each Volt will help GM to continue to sell large numbers of gas guzzlers and still remain within the US Corporate Average Fuel Economy regulations.

“It was GM’s best shot at re-engineering the entire company from the car up. Instead, senior management has taken the golden apple presented by the company’s engineers — and what is by all accounts a spectacular car — and turned it into a way to build more SUVs and con a few thousand eco-conscious buyers out of their money by charging a premium.

Jaffe maintained that if the Volt was priced competitively with the Leaf it would retail at around $33,500. But he predicted that they would price it considerably higher. He was right. The Volt is expected to retail at around $40,000.

But wait a second… Perhaps there is really something to celebrate here. A major US car manufacturer has made a commitment to something approaching volume production of a rather good vehicle that runs largely on electricity. (A portable 120-volt vehicle charge cord that can recharge the Volt in about ten hours using a standard residential outlet comes with every car.  According to a U.S. Department of Transportation survey, the average driver in America commutes less than 40 miles per day, meaning Chevrolet Volt owners may never use gasoline or produce tailpipe emissions in everyday driving.)

And just as importantly, the Volt adds impetus to efforts to develop a national charging infrastructure. Volt dealers will be required to install 240-volt charging stations before they receive their first vehicle. Chevrolet expects to put nationwide service coverage in place during the 12 to 18 month national rollout period.

Perhaps the fall of another barrier to a national charging infrastructure is the real Volt to the system that we should be celebrating.