Willard Mittens "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" Romney on the Chevy Volt.
“I’m not sure America was ready for the Chevy Volt. I mean, I hope it does well, I don’t want to disparage any product coming out of Detroit. But I think instead of having politicians tell us what kind of cars we ought to make, we ought to let the people who are trying to understand the market make that decision.”
He said this when the Volt plant temporarily shut down.
In Decermber he said the Volt was "an idea whose time has not come."
Yeah, that's a good platform for Republicans: No. We. Can't!
But now, it's seems the Volt plant is open again - early. Oops.
Buoyed by record monthly sales of its Chevy Volt hybrid electric plug-in car in March, General Motors will resume production of the Volt at the Detroit Hamtramck plant one week early, the United Auto Workers told TPM on Tuesday night.
“They’re adding a week of production back in,” said Don LaForest, the chairman of the UAW’s bargaining committee at the Detroit Hamtramck plant, where the Volt is manufactured, in a phone interview.
The truth is that the Volt isn't an idea whose time has come, it's an idea whose time been here for quite a while.
Limbaugh attacked the Volt as being some kind of Obama Regime Subsidized Death Trap.
So Obama's making it clear: They're running against America. They're running against American traditions, institutions, trying to defile them as corrupt, and Newt gives 'em a problem 'cause they can't tie Newt to Wall Street. Well, you know, the Chevy Volt has got all kinds of problems. First, nobody wants to buy any. The regime, GM owned by the regime, what did they project, 10,000 sales and they've sold about 1100 of 'em, something like that. I forget the number, and they're all bought with other people's money, every purchase is subsidized.
Now they've got battery problems. The cars are supposedly catching fire because the batteries. GM has... I am not comfortable reporting this. (interruption) No, they're rethinking the buyback. If you just stick with me on this, everything you think you know has changed about this.
Fox Has continued this line and distorted the facts as shown by Media Matters
O'Reilly And Dobbs Suggest Volts Spontaneously "Catch Fire." On The O'Reilly Factor, Lou Dobbs said the Volt "doesn't work" because "it doesn't go fast and go far on electricity. What happens is it catches fire ... This is considered a negative when we're trying to move an automobile." O'Reilly then repeatedly said that the Volts "catch fire" without mentioning that the fire only happened during a crash test. [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 1/6/12]
Fox's Cavuto: Electric Car Owners Are "Killing People With Batteries That Blow Up." On Neil Cavuto's Fox Business show, he said the Volt is "a plug-in that blows up. The battery heats up. It's killing people. It's maiming them. Children are afraid. Animals avoid it. Puppies don't want to go anywhere near it." Cavuto later criticized electric car owners for "killing people with batteries that blow up." [Fox Business, Cavuto, 12/8/11, via Nexis]
Puppies don't want to go near it? The fact is that no one has been hurt by a Volt Battery Fire. This is what happened.
During an NCAP [New Car Assessment Program] oblique side pole impact test conducted by NHTSA in May 2011, the pole struck and deformed the sill plate under the driver's door at a location where there is a structural member. The lateral member displaced inward, pierced the HV battery enclosure and battery, and caused a battery coolant leak. Thereafter, the Agency conducted a rollover test (the rollover test consists of four 90-degree rotate-and-hold movements about the vehicle's longitudinal axis). In that test, the HV battery and electronics were exposed to coolant that leaked as a result of the crash. The vehicle fire that occurred three weeks later and the additional testing NHTSA conducted are discussed in a report titled "2011 Chevrolet Volt Battery Fire Incident Report" a copy of which is available in the public file.
So if you're Volt gets struck from the side and the battery is pierced causing a leak, then it rolls over and spills it's battery coolant, you
might have a fire three weeks later if you don't bother to
clean it up.
But that was then, this is now - where Chevy has fixed this problem.
The agency [NHTSA] said that modifications intended to reinforce the Volt's 435-pound lithium-ion battery pack that General Motors announced on Jan. 5 should "reduce the potential" of the pack catching fire in the days or weeks following a crash.
Got that?
And Despite What Newt Gingrich says...
You can put a gun rack in a Volt. Fits just fine.
On top of all that massive pile of fail, you have this... the reason the plant was re-opened one week early is because of record sales.
General Motors, the world’s largest car manufacturer, announced yesterday that over 40 percent of their sales in March came from fuel efficient vehicles that get at least 30 miles per gallon. That figure is dramatically higher than just four years ago, when only 16 percent of GM’s sales were attributable to fuel efficient vehicles.
Although the Conservatives would like to yet again
Blame Obama for this tragic turn of events, y'know - an American Car Company actually
Selling Fuel Efficient Cars - in truth some of the blame belongs to George W. Bush.
The Chevy Volt was first introduced as a concept vehicle in January 2007, fully two years before President Obama took office. And the substantial tax incentives for purchasing high efficiency and plug-in vehicles like the Volt were passed under President George W. Bush. Former President and Romney campaign surrogate George H. W. Bush just this past week bought a Volt for his son Neil
One of the Bushies - the family that made themselves on Texas Oil - drives a Volt!?? Oh, SNAP!
So again I ask, Why do Republicans Hate American Car Companies?
Vyan