Chevy Volt

Update on Chevy Volt Hearing

by Marlo Lewis on February 2, 2012

in Blog, Features

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As noted here last week, the sparks flew at a Jan. 25 House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing titled “The Volt Fire: What Did NHTSA Know and When Did They Know It?” Three witnesses testified: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Administrator David Strickland, General Motors (GM) CEO Daniel Akerson, and John German of the International Council on Clean Transportation. My earlier post was based on newspaper accounts of the hearing. Over the weekend, I watched the archived video of the proceeding and read the testimonies and Committee Staff Report. Here are the key facts and conclusions as I see them:

  • The Volt battery fire occurred on June 2, 2011 in the parking lot of a Wisconsin crash test facility. The car caught fire three weeks after the vehicle had been totaled, on May 12, in a side-pole collision. The fire caused an explosion that destroyed not only the Volt but three other vehicles. The blast hurled one of the Volt’s components (a strut) a distance of nearly 80 feet.
  • The fire was caused by the leaking of coolant into the Volt’s powerful 300-volt battery, which had been punctured by the crash.
  • NHTSA could have avoided the fire had it run down (“drained,” “depowered,” “discharged”) the battery after the crash. This raises obvious questions: Was NHTSA responsible for the fire? Was the agency’s six-month silence partly an attempt to hide regulatory incompetence?
  • The Volt is a safe car; consumers should not fear to drive it. Gasoline-powered vehicles are more likely than battery-powered vehicles to burn after a crash. The post-crash explosion from a damaged gas tank can occur in seconds as opposed to weeks. Electric vehicle batteries are harder to puncture than gas tanks. NHTSA tried and failed to replicate the fire by crashing other Volt test vehicles. To induce another battery fire, NHTSA had to impale the battery with a steel rod and rotate it in coolant with special laboratory equipment.
  • GM is retrofitting Volt batteries to make them stronger and more leak proof, and is updating safety protocols to ensure batteries are depowered after crashes.
  • NHTSA kept silent about the fire for six months, acknowledging it only after Bloomberg News broke the story on November 11, 2011.
  • GOP Committee members produced no smoking gun evidence of collusion to cover up the Volt battery fire, such as an email saying ‘We’ve got to keep this under wraps or it will depress Volt sales, jeopardize EPA’s fuel economy negotiations with automakers, and make President Obama look bad.’
  • Nonetheless, the Obama administration’s heavy investment (financial and political) in GM in general and the Volt in particular creates an undeniable conflict of interest.
  • NHTSA determined the cause of the fire in August 2011, yet waited until November 25 to advise emergency responders, salvage yard managers, and Volt owners how to avoid, and reduce the safety risks associated with, post-crash fires.
  • Administrator Strickland’s protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, it is difficult to explain the agency’s secretiveness apart from political considerations that should not influence NHTSA’s regulatory deliberations.

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Did GM and Feds Collude to Hide Green Car Battery Fires?

by Marlo Lewis on January 26, 2012

in Blog, Features

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At a hearing Wednesday morning, GOP members of the House Oversight Subcommittee on Regulatory Affairs opined that General Motors (GM) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) colluded to withhold information from the public about battery fires in the Chevy Volt, the plug-in hybrid car lavishly subsidized by the Obama administration as part of its bailout of the auto industry, the Washington Post reports.

NHTSA began to investigate the green car’s safety risk in June after a test car caught fire, but waited until November to inform the public. Subcommittee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) called the delay “deeply troubling,” particularly because the Government owns 26.5% of GM shares and an expanding market for electric vehicles is critical to the administration’s plan to raise fuel economy standards to 54.5 mpg.

“Strickland,” says the Post, “insisted there was no connection and said he had not been pressured by anyone from the administration on the investigation.” So why the delay?

Strickland said he would have gone public immediately if there were an imminent safety risk. He said it would have been irresponsible to tell people that something was wrong with the Volt while experts looked into the cause of the fire.

“I hear you. I don’t believe you,” said full Committee Chair Rep. Darrell E. Issa (R-Calif.). Issa has good reason to be skeptical. [click to continue…]

GM to Call Back All 8,000 Volts Sold in Past Two Years

by Marlo Lewis on January 5, 2012

in Features

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This just in. An AP story posted on Fox News reports that GM will ask Volt owners to bring in their vehicles to dealers for fire hazard-related structural modifications. Here’s the AP story in full:

AP Source: GM to call back 8,000 Chevy Volts

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Each Chevy Volt Sold Costs Taxpayers Up to $250K, Mackinac Analyst Estimates

by Marlo Lewis on December 23, 2011

in Blog, Features

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James Hohman of Michigan’s Mackinac Center for Public Policy estimates that state and federal incentives for GM’s plug-in hybrid vehicle, the Chevy Volt, total $3 billion. That works out to between $50,000 and $250,000 in taxpayer support for each of 6,000 Volts sold so far, “depending on how many of the subsidy milestones are realized.”

The per vehicle subsidy cost is bound to decrease as more Volts are sold and as current subsidies expire.

Nonetheless, as GM acknowledges, the typical Volt purchaser earns $170,000 a year, so it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the Volt program is a reverse-Robin Hood wealth tranfer from middle-income households to GM, other big corporations, and high-income auto buyers.

Hohman’s analysis appears below in full. [click to continue…]