As Volt Sales Disappoint, GE Drives Further into the Electric Car Market

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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It is hard to understand why General Motors (NYSE: GM) would continue to punish itself by moving further into the electric car market. Sales of its Chevy Volt have been a few hundred per month. It lauded the Volt as the car of the future. Unfortunately, consumers do not see it that way. The industry sales leader is the Nissan Leaf, but even it has done poorly.

GM announced it will build a new electric minicar — the Chevy Spark EV. It also will sell a gasoline-powered version of the car — a sign that GM has doubts about the appeal of the electric version.

GM misjudged the green car market with the Volt. Those drivers who wanted to drive “green” bought the Toyota (NYSE: TM) Prius hybrid in great numbers. Its electric engine is supplemented with gas power. That gives it a driving range the Volt does not have.

GM also did not anticipate the success of clean diesel cars, which have taken another large part of the green market. The cars, many made by Volkswagen, get nearly 50 miles to a gallon. That puts such diesel cars in a solid position to compete with electric vehicles. The other competition in the market comes from a new line of superefficient gas-powered engines. The Ford (NYSE: F) EcoBoost engine runs cars that can get as much as 40 MPG.

GM took the wrong road when it moved into electric cars — the road less traveled.

Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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