Bummer: GM To Halt Production Of Chevy Firestarter “Temporarily”

Actually, it is kind of a bummer, because 1300 are being laid off, and I’d be surprised if they were all rehired once they restart the lines

(The Hill) General Motors has temporarily suspended production of its Volt electric car, the company announced Friday.

GM, which is based in Detroit, announced to employees at one of its facilities that it was halting production of the beleaguered electric car for five weeks and temporarily laying off 1,300 employees.

A GM spokesman told The Hill on Friday that production of the Volt would resume April 23.

“We needed to maintain proper inventory and make sure that we continued to meet market demand,” GM spokesman Chris Lee said in a telephone interview.

Lee noted that sales of the Volt were higher in February than they were in January, and added that California recently decided to allow the electric car to qualify for High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes in the state.

“We see positive trends, but we needed to make this market adjustment,” he said.

Throughout all the Corporate Speak, what is being said is that they’re selling so few Edsels, er, Volts, that the market is saturated with ones simply sitting around on either a dealer lot or Chevy’s production lot, and, rather than reduce the price and take a serious monetary hit, the production line will be suspended, because the “market demand” is somewhere between Jack Sh*t and None, and JS has almost left the room.

Just about the only thing keeping JS in the room is government and GM purchasing the souped up golf carts, all at taxpayer expense. Oh, and a few of those “Evil Rich” people.

Regardless of puny sales of the Fuego, er, Volt, the production line will restart: GM, Democrats, and Obama cannot afford to have the production halted for longer then 5 weeks in a presidential election year. So, they’ll restart the line, albeit much reduced, and my money is on half the employees being rehired. Hopefully, GM will rehire the rest to work on their lines that sell.

They were looking to sell 45,000 this year………….sorry, laugh break, that’s ridiculous, they’ve sold 1,626 so far this year. So, they play the blame game

“GM blamed the lack of sales in January on “exaggerated” media reports and the federal government’s investigation into Volt batteries catching fire, which officially began in November and ended Jan. 21,” the Ann Arbor (Mich.) News reported.

So, without the media reports, they might have sold 1,700 so far this year? Mini more than doubled sales of the Volt in February alone, and they intentionally keep production low as a niche car. I wonder if the media is at fault (and, hey, you know I love to go after the media, mostly for being biased) for the car barely being able to get to work before it needs a recharge? For people who commute or travel, they would have to rely on the gas engine quite a bit: spending $40,000 on a base model would be absurd, when they could purchase a Civic, Malibu, or Impala (the last two are popular for “fleet” purchase).

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach.

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