GE “Forcing” Employees Into Chevy Volts

Some clarification on the article, GM is still planning on producing 60,000 Volts, but that is worldwide, 45,000 Volts for the US and the rest for Europe and China. That’s been the plan for a while now, the only difference is that GM said it would reduce production if it needed too.

In any case, we also need to mention that the Volt is not the only Electric vehicle GE will be purchasing, it’s just the first. I believe GE is planning on purchasing something like 25,000 electric vehicles, in which 12,000 will be Volts and the rest will probably Leafs, Ford Focus Electric and some other ones.

It’s the old adage – Grab them by the balls and their hearts will follow.

Unplug GE and bolt the volt! Neither company is good for the United States.

Are they still going to get the $7500.00 tax rebate from the taxpayer. If they do that is not bad having the taxpayer pay for a private company to drive around in cars nobody wants

GE has morphed from the once mighty respectable company it once was into a “tool” for the Commie-democrats.

A government subsidized democrat political donation funnel of taxpayer money.

Funny how no one has thought to mention the $120 million dollar taxpayer subsidy ($10,000 per car) GE, the company that pays no taxes will receive for thre Volt purchase. Money that will have to be borrowed and be added to the national debt of course. But, who’s counting? Sounds kind of reVOLTing to me.

Immelt must like the taste of shoe polish, the way he licks Obama’s boots.

Is anyone else aware of the fact that ge will be eligible for The government subsidy on every volt it buys?

Keep the electric cars numbers up by forcing your employees to drive them AND get a kick hack from the government you paid nothing too in the first place?

Stunning really.

In my city, my electricity rate depends on how many kilowatt hours used. The rate is based on a rate of 1 person. The more I use, the higher rate I pay. I have five in my home and to charge a Volt puts my rate at a ridiculous rate. I can add a solar panel to offset the power, but it costs around $10,000. It also coast around $10,000 to add another 100amp circuit for a faster Volt charging unit plus the cost of GE’s charger.
Gasoline is the cheapest form of power for automobiles, any other form of power is less efficient and cost more. Drill baby Drill, until our engineers discover a new power source. Buy a cheat Chevy Cruze or if you want a reliable car, buy a Toyota Yaris.

This would be hilarious if not so sad. The car ought to be renamed “The Obama”. A government subsidized vehicle made by a government subsidized auto manufacturer being “bought” by a government favored and tax-subsidized company whose Chairman (Immelt) was appointed by Obama as Head of his White House Economic Advisory Panel and Jobs Czar. Did I mention GE also has received billions for……wait for it…….Federal Energy-Related Subsidies which increased under Obama…a whopping 108%. Think Solyndra..etc. All of this charade falls at the feet of you and me and our wages that we earn and that Obama….wants to take more from you in higher taxes.

The Volt is the biggest POS. FU GE

Rising electrical prices?!?!? Stop asking questions and going not details. All that matters is that the plan sounds good and that the intellectuals in DC have deemed it so. DC will reorganize society into a utopian dream. Just not yours.

Volts are basically coal powered cars. Isn’t GE concerned about the greenhouse gasses? What hypocrites!

GE’s immelt needs a slap and an antitrust suit filed against him.
Chevy Volt? A car for idiots! Obama? Indict impeach, imprison and repeat often for the rest of this corrupt anti American thugogracy. The only profitable part of the American Automotive industry is the same part (SUV’s and Trucks) that our treasonous divider in chief has been trying to crush. Hey dem’s, you like how after Obama killed American Oil exploration and drilling in the Gulf? And how he killed Keystone Pipeline? And now how he’s playing pansy to the ayatollas and mullahs in Iran while they threaten to close the Straits of Hormuz and push oil up over $100 a barrel???
Obama…Worst President Ever! So how you like dem apples, boy?!?!

Please let me clarify a few things since I am an employee of GE in a field sales role. First of all a company car is not a luxury, as an employee you are expected to put between 3 and 4 thousand miles a month on it. That’s a lot of windshield time. Second it’s not free, we pay a monthly expense plus a mileage charge for personal use.

The biggest problem w/ GE forcing us into these cars is our territories are huge. I personally cover northern California, Washington State, Oregon, and Idaho. The volt goes like 20 miles on the charge and the gas tank is only 9 gallons. It’s just not a practical alternative to the Chevy Impala we normally receive. Oh and no trunk space.

And finally – I hear the Volt has a habit of burning down owners homes!!!

Sincerely,

Probably going to have to look for work after posting….

Am I missing something? There is no “forcing” going on here, besides the so-called author sharing HIS view without doing his DD on company supplied vehicles.
1- A company wants to cut expenses, 2- That same company probably got a deal on said cars, 3- The employees DON’T have to take the FREE COMPANY PAID car. Not every company gives you the option of what vehicle you drive… you get “this car” or no car.
Ohhhh Mr. Author guy… Google FORCES their hybrid driving employees to park in the better spots while everyone else gets to choose. Write about that.

who wants to drive that garbage? is that the car that catches on fire? what a joke. NO THANK YOU. Are we turning into Japan where the corporations are giving employees cars, homes, etc? I prefer to OWN my stuff and pay for it myself which is why I’m a proud business owner and not a welfare recipient. Not saying that employees are welfare recipients, but ones who beg for cars are.

Crony Capitalism Phase II. The taxpayers and pre-bankruptcy GM shareholders are the losers in all of this. Obama’s minons have got it all sketched out — it’s a line up of one scratching the other’s back in a big government-insider circle jerk. If the technology was ready for prime time, and more importantly affordable, the Volts would be selling without imposed mandates for their use. Govenment manipulation and bedfellows at their finest.

12000 Volts at $7,500 tax credit is $90,000,000.

Right. Is this the failed OhBummer Volt we’re talking about here — the brainchild of the Child Dictator?

Source: Gas 2.0 (http://s.tt/15LON)

I remember when GW Bush was president, liberals were continually bellyaching that Bush was “going to take away all our freedoms,” (this was in regard to the Patriot Act.) Under Bush, I never saw anyone forced to do anything. Just laws to help find terrorists. Under Obama…I see act after act in the name of “green energy” and his health plans that are more like “big brother” than anything I’ve ever seen. It is sickening. And it makes me angry that Bush took so much crap from everyone, when he never forced anyone into anything. But liberals… I guess they feel they can tell people to do whatever they want in the name of the religion of “green.”

The Prius has been out since 1997 and now most other manufacturers have a hybrid, and GE didn’t feel the need to “offer” them on their employees. It’s only when GE, Government motors, and Obama colluded that GE is “asked” to prop up the Volt at a huge cost. It’s not they are offering the Volt, it’s that they are only offering the Volt, irrespective of the needs of the employee, or the right to compete by the other manufacturers. And won’t save money, because the employees won’t plug them in and the employees use them for long distance travel – they aren’t given a car just to commute.

Oh, I’ll bet GE also received the $10,000 of our tax money that is being given as an incentive to purchase the piece of C R A P car called the Volt! Immelt is like the disgusting stuff found on the bottom of shoes. He’ll never amount to anything like the past CEO of GE, Jack Welch.

Maybe they will explode.

This is not the car people think it is… here is what I have been told. The car charges for 12 hours and gets 40 miles on a charge. If you load the car (max capacity is four adults) there is a depreciable loss of range, the same applies if you run the GPS and the heater. The car has to “sleep” at night in the same place to hook up to a bulky proprietary charger, this in a large European city where real estate is prime. Additionally, on wet roads and cobblestone the car fish tails. My source, a professional chauffeur whose is genuinely proud of his job and the institution he works for, adds that none of the other chauffeurs like the car and do every thing to avoid using the $37K Volt. The recently proposed increase in USG subsidy from $7.5K to $10, that the Volt business model is not doing well. If GM, a USG subsidized company, is going to subsidize the Volt to it employees, dare I ask who pays?

Ok so now GE gets back 7500 bucks for each of the 12,000 cars that they will buy at a fleet discount price or maybe 10,000 if Obama has his way so that makes it a pretty sweet deal for someone. Now GE will sell the charging sytems for at least half of those 12,000 and make a little money on that plus it gets the advertizing for free about it’s charging stations.

After working for a power company and watching all the crazy things that GE and the government were doing to my former employer I am not surprised by this move. We all will be paying the price for this craziness giving tax credits to GE for each car plus all the subsidies so GM could build these electric generator cars.

For a coal powered car is does surprisingly poorly, bigger carbon foot print – government subsidies is why GE bought them – well got them for free from taxpayers.

So when there is a black out for any length of time, then GE cant even get any where to fix what is broken, good planning. lol

I guess GE found something to do with all the money they had left over from not paying taxes.

GM made a deal with the devil, the UAW and Obama.

In many ways GE is the devil, screwing the American people in the name of whatever crisis structure it can use to conjure control and profit at the hands of government.

If these two companies represent the future of American “capitalism” then, indeed, the glory has departed and the USA is nearing the end of its economic might.

What a joke. This is pathetic. Why don’t you make something that people want instead of forcing them to do anything? Typical leftist mentality. There is NO NO NO NO market for this green crap. Only the weak minded believe in any sorty of climate problem. In a way it’s pretty funny, like everything else the left proposes; it’s amazingly unpopular yet they force it onto people.

CORRUPT UNIONS, CORRUPT POLITICIANS, CORRUPT CORPORATIONS. = A COUNTRY DOOMED TO DESTRUCTION …. THE OBAMANTION , THE GLOBALIST , THE ELITE = THE ENEMY OF FREEDOM AND THE FREE AMERICAN . RISE UP PEOPLE THE END IS NEAR AND WE WILL ONLY HAVE ONE CHANCE TO RECLAIM OUR NATION

…and ask all the dead German and Scottish birds!

Every time GM sells a volt, the national debt increases by $7500. Let’s hear it for clean energy since the volt is powered by burning coal.

I wonder if the GE employees will be forced to sign an agreement never to comment about their experience with these vehicles? They would make a nice focus group after a year or so, if they could speak freely. But they will probably be subject to a gag order.

As long as obama is in the White House then get use to reading stories like this one. “Forcing” people to do something is what communist do best…

This has nothing to do with General Electric per se. It has everything to do with countering the charge that General Motors can’t sell Volts to private parties. Since GE is a private party (albeit a shill for Herr Messiah), this will give cover to Obama when Romney tries to remind America that the Volt is a flop – a big Government turd, splattered on the windshield of the American Taxpayer – who’s paying for all this crap in the first place.

Jeff Immelt needs to be fired. He has driven GE into the ground – it has lost more than half of its value since he took the helm. While pocketing huge raises (rather than “bonuses”) he has continually cut the dividend to shareholders and decreased the value of the stock! This is just one more stupid ploy that will cost shareholders. Enough.

Wait til those employees get an extra $40,000 added to their income as compensated income and they need to pay taxes on that income. That free car ain’t so free. Another wolf in sheeps clothing.

Let’ see. The government bails out the UAW. The UAW contributes heavely to the election of Obama. Obama appoints the head of GE into a high level government positionn. GE only busy GM Chevy Volts. Makes sense to me. Political Hacks 1, Voters 0.

Green? My evil gas burner gets on average 32 to 34 miles a gallon. When I park my car, it’s green. As for the Volt, after testing one for a week, the driver got on average 18 miles on the not so green battery before the evil gas engine kicked in. When he parked it, it was no longer green, he had to charge it for 12 hours. It all depends on what the word “green” means.

GE employees pay 30 dollars a weeks for their fleet vehicles. They aren’t free though less than what the typical car payment would be.

The Volt car has the equivalent of just under a gallon of gasoline’s worth of energy in its batteries. That’s why it won’t go even 40 miles on a charge, which then takes 8 hours to recharge. Would you buy a car with a 3 1/2 quart gas tank, that then took 8 hours to refuel? Not me, and not most Americans, now or ever.

“Only field engineers are excepted from having to drive a company Volt.” I guess spell check did not catch this error. I believe the author meant exempted not excepted. I guess with a title that is misleading I couldn’t expect a well written article. The problem is not that a company want’s to make it’s fleet “greener” its that both companies are in bed with the politicians. A better question to ask is how much of the cost of these vehicles is the American Taxpayer footing?

“GM hopped to sell as many as 60,000 Volts . . .” Really? How does anyone sell cars by hopping? I suppose they are hopping mad now because they had to reduce their estimate.

So, taxpayers will be paying $10k for each car GE buys? What a deal!! (sarcasm)

Just a thought. Many high profile tunnels and bridges have a BAN on all elec. vehicles. Check with your homeowners insurance as some will not cover fire losses if you garage an elec. vehicle, others will charge a high premium. Just a thought…

The Volt has mechanical issues like no other car since the Pinto – in the long run this will cost GE more

As a Field Engineer for a competitor company, I couldn’t help but notice that GE has exempted field engineers from this. There is a good reason why. AS an FE, you HAVEto get to a site in a crisis. You HAVE to drive a DEPENDABLE car. Q.E.D.

Nothing like a company in bed with the Obama administration forcing a piece of Government Motors garbage onto the marketplace, using taxpayer dollars to boot. What a horrendous scam.

Unfortunately people who get company cars get them because they use them for business purposes like sales and customer relations. If they can get to them I doubt it will help either one to be impressed to be squeezed into these pieces of junk.

Hopefully none of those employess have to live anyway or go anywhere that’s really cold.
Bcs your precious Volt will not work very well (can’t go very far on a charge in extreme cold etc.) in such conditions.
Let’s also not forget safety.
Sorry-but a Volt versus a larger sedan? Pickup? SUV? Guess who wins?
And let’s not talk about the environmental hazard (& crazy expense) that those batteries are.
And let’s also not talk about the fact that those batteries don’t last near as long as they tell you they will (10 years?).
And let’s also not talk about how it’s ‘cheaper’ via the taxpayer to buy another Volt than it is to replace those batteries.

For all of you armchair critics of the VOLT, ‘you know not of what you speak.’ Go test drive a VOLT like I did last February, or a least speak to someoe who drives one. I have 11,000 niles on mine – have used 39 gallons of gas. Full recharge (at a cost of $1.38) gives me 36 miles of range, all I need for a day’s driving (works out to an equivalent 86 mpg) . The car is an engineering marvel. Finally after 40 years, a US manufacturer has out-engineered European and Asian companies. America should be celebrating the achievement, not demeaning it. VOLT’s performance: the car accelerates with awesome silent power, turns like it’s on rails, has sleek exterior sports car lines and look and a comfortable interior with the best digital displays and computer graphics I have ever seen in a car. Compring this car to a Chevy CRUZ is a joke. I am a business owner (Republican at that) with no connection to GM. My decision to buy a VOLT had to do with economics, not politics. It is the best, most fun car I have ever owned. (PS – I would gladly pay $10,000 for a replacemnet battery at the end of the 8-year battry unconditional warranty if I had to to keep the car rolling.for another 8 years)

Do a cradle-to-grave environmental impact analysis of any “green” hybrid. The manufacturing and disposal process for the batteries alone make a hybrid much worse than a standard internal combustion vehicle. Understand also that over the life of a hybrid, you will have to replace those EXPENSIVE batteries at least once causing yet more impact. Why is America ignoring the highly efficient, low-sulfur diesel sedans that are available in Europe? They get 50+ miles per gallon. Is that not good enough?

Those who drive a hybrid under the delusion of “saving the environment” are simply fools with more money than good sense.

I worked for GE in the olden days when it was General Electric, not Government Electric; when it acted like a business and not a part of a wheel-and-deal presidential administration, and when it still treated its employees like people, under the remnants of Bulwarism. That was before Neutron Jack Welch, and now Jeffrey Immelt. I’m sure glad I don’t work there now.

Government Motors and Governmnet Enterprise are merely following our Leaders style of rule by edict.

I would NOT own anything GM.
They stole money from honest bond-holders and gave away the company to the unions. Obama and Immelt are despicable subhuman thieves. eFF them both and anything they are involved in.

The Volt is a Gas Powered Vehicle with a 40 mile electric reserve. Get it right.. Quit making it something it’s not..
I, like the majority of Americans, hate to have their intelligence insulted by all these tree hugging liberal elites that think they know what’s good for all of us. If it wasn’t for Dear Leader running interference for his cronies, this thing would have been the 21st century AMC Pacer.

This article isn’t about energy or plug in cars so much as it’s about corruption and Marxist utopia. Eric Immelt and Obama are practically lovers. With all the money Immelt gave to Obama’s campaign in 2008 and all the tax breaks Obama gave G.E., this is obviously nothing but a political pay back. Gas prices are rising much faster than overall inflation, and overall inflation is rising faster because of gas prices. Obama’s high gas prices are right on schedule, just as he promised before he was elected. Next will be electricity prices, just as he promised – see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqHL404zhcU. While Obama continues to transfer our national wealth into pixie dust and unicorns, the rest of us will be glad to vote his commie *ss out this November.

All this talk of “clean energy” from electric cars is BS .
A battery driven car still needs to get its energy from some source.
That source is a coal driven or nuclear power plant.
The battery doesn’t produce energy it simply stores it for later use.
“Energy can not be created or destroyed.” It’s transferred.
Gas -> Heat ->Motion (kinetic)
There is no “renewable” energy.

And I suppose GE will also get the $10,000/vehicle bonus that barry promised as of last week ?
Also, does GE still refuse to hire US citizens in engineering positions, in favor of H1B’s ?

Ah more corny capitalism in play, a la Obama-style.

The vehicle is so good it can’t sell itself- even when propped upf, and only costs up to 250,000 to produce in taxpyaer subsidies. Order today and we’ll throw in a heated rear trunk lid to keep your hands warm when you’re pushing it on those cold days.

I’m doing everything I can to avoid purchasing anything having to do with GE. They have sucked up to Barack Obama way too much, when they could have bucked him, and could have been a solution to the problem of socialist ideology.

Its obvious many previous commenters are GM or GE employees, or Democrats. What about the enormous waste of taxpayer money to prop up this silly house of cards. Electric Hybrids are not cost effective. VW/Audi is about to change the game with their version called KERS, for Kinetic Energy Recovery System. A mechanical flywheel instead of expensive dirty dangerous chemical batteries. Simple and elegant. And should be very cost effective.

It has started, Obama now starts telling us what to drive. Will his liberal supporters get waivers? I doubt it.

You can “FORCE” me to drive a Volt any time you want. Talk about kicking a gift horse in the mouth!

Cost to operate a Chevy Volt

Eric Bolling (Fox Business Channel’s Follow the Money) test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors.

For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine.
Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery. So, the range including the 9 gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles. It will take you 4 1/2 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. In a typical road trip your average speed (including charging time) would be 20 mph.

According to General Motors, the Volt battery hold 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery.
The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned so I looked up what I pay for electricity.
I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh.
16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery.
$18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery.

Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline-only engine that gets 32 mpg.
$3.19 per gallon divided by 32 mpg = $0.10 per mile.

The gasoline powered car cost about $15,000 while the Volt costs $46,000.

GE, GM and anybody else that purchases one of these tin-cans with a battery pack has fallen for the biggest dupe in history. Its a trojan horse in Volt clothing. It gets snuck into your garage at night and in the morning you find your wallet under attack.

BTW–the company ‘memo’ likely was sent out because they dont know what to do with all the Volts sitting on the lots. These things are selling like chocolate covered dung beetles.

Hitler did much the same thing vis-a-vis Volkswagen:

http://www.bytwerk.com/gpa/vw.htm

I’m not saying anything by it. I’m just saying.

GE, the biggest beneficiary of Obama’s central planning.

Nobody wants a volt except for political tools who are not free thinkers. As an engineer, I KNOW that Electric car technology IS NOT feasible…you cant teach politicians this basic fact…they are dead stump stupid. Simply put if you plan on those long drives, make plans with electric cars to make them EVEN longer, as when you run out of Juice a mere humdred or so miles down the road you MUST PULL over for at least another hour to recharge…oh yeah…so a normal gasoline powered 5 hour road trip from say NYC to NH will take about 9 hours …and not because of traffic.

This FACT in turn will double the cost of shipping goods commercially if the technology ever gets rammed down the commercial sectors throats. By definition people who vote for these idiots who push this sort of false energy solution are that themselves…idiots.

I am so disgusted with Obama and his union cohorts such as the UAW and SEIU that I will never buy another US branded vehicle made by the UAW. Nor will I buy anything else made by US union labor if I can help it. Unions may have had a purpose in the beginning, but now they are mostly about redistribution of wealth and moving this country closer and closer to collectivism.

It’s a company provided car, why wouldn’t the company have a right to choose the vehicle? Quit complaining and drive your own car if you don’t like or go work for someone else. GM forced many drivers of their company cars to drive Aztecs and no one complained about that.

Since GM sold less than 700 Volts in January, they probably won’t sell 10,000 this year. Nobody wants to buy JUNK!

Yup… somebody had to buy these overpriced White Elephants. If GE and a few other large Obama cronies didn’t buy a bunch they would have sold about 500 of these fire startiing turds. What bothers me the most is the $7500 taxpayer funded “rebate” or “bribe” included for normal people to buy one of these things. Imagine if it wasn’t there. they would have sold 10 of these things. At $35K they are still way overpriced.

In the Obama world, style trumps substance and facts don’t matter. They don’t matter because the MSM is utterly in the tank for Obama…. taking its marching orders from the George Sorros’ Media Matters…Never mind the facts… just declare victory and move on to the next lie. Wind, solar and battery will never be a viable replacement for fossil fuel energy. Hydrogen and nuclear yes..but not solar and wind…never we have a inept Marxist in the WH people… get used to it… our country is dying as his Labor Department lies about the unemployment numbers and he ignores the crushing debt.

Socialist engineering of society to support the state. Down with fascism.

It’s all about shortening your leash, limiting your individual movement, making owning a car so much of a hassel that you opt for “Public Transportation” becoming even more dependent on government. It’s the big picture. Freedom of mobility is one thing that makes this country so great. And it’s all a on going LIE. This country isn’t out of Oil. Carter just turned off the valves and started the Dept of Energy We could start by turning the pumps back on that were shut down in the 80′s.

I’d love to buy my own Volt. Unfortunately, the pay and “benefits” are so bad at GE that (as an MBA with nine years here) all I can afford is my seventeen-year-old econobox.

cheap hydrogen from plain water technology announced by the scientists at the Los Alamos Laboratory in April 2011:

http://www.lanl.gov/news/relea…

Or how catalysts have been found that drastically decreases the cost of creating hydrogen fuel from water announced by the scientists at the Berkeley National Laboratory in May 2011:

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10…

Pay no attention to modern science – learn to obey your new america rulers.

I got the following e-mail from a friend about the VOLT.
Eric Bolling test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors.
For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before
the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine.
Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery.
So, the range including the 9 gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is
approximately 270 miles. It will take you 4 1/2 hours to drive 270 miles at 60
mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of
14.5 hours. In a typical road trip your average speed (including charging time)
would be 20 mph.
According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It
takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery.

The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned so I looked
up what I pay for electricity.

I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh.

16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery.

$18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using
the battery.

Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine only that gets 32 mpg.

$3.19 per gallon divided by 32 mpg = $0.10 per mile.

The gasoline powered car costs about $15,000 while the Volt costs $46,000.

So Obama wants us to pay 3 times as much for a car that costs more that 7 time
as much to run and takes 3 times as long to drive across country.

REALy ! How brilliant

OMG the wolds coming to an end GE is replacing there COMPANY cars with Volts Republicans please save us all LOL, I think this is great news infact I wish my company car a Volt honest to God people need to find a new hobby.

some of you guys are really out to lunch on all of this

first, Solar. I agree that ALL costs should be included with solar. But what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. How about including all costs for using gasoline? Emissions are higher with gasoline, even when you internalize the emissions from the power plants. In addition, what % of our military exists simply to protect the oil industry? Even if you only say 1%, that $ number must be included in your analysis. And it NEVER is, because the folks who own OilCo stock ()all of us) just can’t handle the truth. (of course, oil is still required even for the greenest of autos, as they all require lots of plastic parts, which are from oil)

and you guys who think the GM bondholders would have done fine in a GM bankruptcy are just high. Leave the dope smoking to the hippies. A viable GM is better for the U.S. of A. than a bankrupt GM and all of its suppliers. We don’t live in your utopia. We live in reality. Which sucks, frequently.

and you guys who go on and on about the risk of the batteries, just get over it. You don’t know what you are talking about. Please do some REAL research and stop just parroting what you read on nonsense websites.

and you guys who talk about the car “bricking” – step away from the crack pipe before posting. The Volt has a GASOLINE engine in it. As long as there is gasoline in the tank, the car is gonna run. DUH. The car doesn’t STOP when the battery is empty. Again, RESEARCH is good for your brain!!

These sorts of issues are comnplex enough, without having to wade through you “Obama is a Marxist” dopes. Why can’t you guys just stick to FACTS and not get your panties all twisted becuase of politics. Really love the elitist anti-public-school crap, however. Nice touch. But I thought folks like you didn’t like “elites.” Very confusing to talk to hypocrites….

GM sold 600 volts last month, an American made lemon! Now GE is going to buy 12,000 of them

CLUE something maybe wrong here!

CEO Jeffrey Immelt is a prime adviser to the Obama Regime.
Five will get you ten that Obama will tout the minor increase in Volt sales in his campaign. All the while, gas prices will continue to increase.

looks like dictatorship is spreading out from the whitehouse!!!!

A Chevy Volt is not actually economical. If you look at what the purchase price of $47,000 applied to a used truck and a new Volt, it’s obvious.

$17,000 financed for used Kia Sorento + 171,420 miles of transportation. ($30,000 for gasoline at $3.50/gallon and 20mpg.)

$47000 financed for a new Volt
a) add $3000 in interest on the extra $30,000 you borrowed up front.
b) add electric bill
c) add gasoline bill

I could buy the used car and drive it for 171 thousand miles for what it would cost to buy a Volt and walk.

For now, I’ll give President Obama’s good buddy Mr. Immelt a pass on this one. If he chooses to make this endeavor a reputable – key word, reputable – experiment, we can learn and advance the Volt’s technology for the good of all.

i wouldn’t drive one if they were free. they cost .75 per mile as opposed to .20 a mile for a gasoline vehicle.

Bet if Obozo had bonds in GM he wouldn’t have allowed the bankruptcy laws to be overturned to help his buddies, but that is just another joke, our clown in chief has played on the American people, who no longer seem to be laughing so much.

As to GM being profitable, I saw that the stock value is less than the IPO, I have heard that they got favorable tax treatment, and that they did to labor what other companies do, they cut the benefits to make the company look better.

Smoke and mirrors a stock in trade for Obozo, our clown in chief, who promised us the most transparent administration. Another joke, from this clown.

Wow Loen….you sure got schooled didn’t you? I just wonder if you are utterly ignorant of the facts, have the attention span and memory of a gnat or just utterly and shamelessly dishonest?

Not in a million years would I drive the Fuhrers Voltswagon.

Get a job at a Coca Cola bottling plant and get caught drinking Pepsi and see what happens.

Sure Give me a Volt, my house is fully insured and I’d like a new one. CAR-B-QUE!!!

It’s GE’s perogative to throw their money at bad investments.

Well I had enough reasons not to buy a chevy Volt, but now I have another one. Anytime a company forces employees to do anything that supports their political ambitions, its wrong and should be stopped. Even if its free.

I am sure GE will get paid a tax credit to buy each car. Tax credit x 12,000 cars = $$$$
They already pay zero taxes now and im sure they will even get a tax check back from his best friend Obama.

Look at chinas electric cars polluting worse than gas so stop the ”green energy” frauds. We pay $250k for every volt sold and see $50k batteries in Tesla that turn to ”bricks” if the charge runs out. Compare the Nissan leaf and stop the fraud. How can a car replace a minivan or others with this small sedan that has no headroom with a small trunk. Screw GE and tax that rich company conspiring with Obama and sending gasoline through the roof for their crooked plans. Yes Obama and gang are Huey Long Socialists with the same old Share Our Wealth plan where Everbodys a King just like before. We have a a ”King” without any clothes as the menace he and his Social Democrats friends truly are. In Huey’s plan from the 30′s it was $1M per person and $5 M a family even back then. To get a car, one would ne allowed to steal from the rich and doubt it’s going to sell many Volts. It’s a bad deal so now GE forces America to buy their crap.

I work at GE, I would love to have a company provided Volt!
I see a lot of people ranting and raving about this, but you know what, we can do with our profits whatever we please.

A friend of mine who also works at GE has one of these, and it’s a sweet deal. He gets a free car, and he travels back and from his house to the office without spending a cent on foreign oil. The car is nice, comfortable, has a great iPhone app to manage it and its super silent.

A lot of you are just jealous, we’re hiring BTW so I recommend that instead of hating you brush up your resumes and work at a kick ass innovative company like GE as we do.