Its been months since the first Chevrolet Volt rolled off the assembly line, but has the high-profile vehicle lived up to its heavy pre-sale hype?
If one is going purely by sales figures, not really. General Motors said that they wanted to sell 10,000 Volts by the end of 2011. Thus far, only 3,500 have been sold, with 300 of those coming in August. Despite the relatively low sales, GM spokesman Rob Peterson told CNNMoney that the brand was not worried.
"I don't see any problem with reaching our goal," GM Spokesman Rob Peterson told the news source.
To do that, GM will need to sell approximately 1,700 Volts per month - something it hasn't come close to doing yet. But Peterson claims that there are reasons to be optimistic. Thus far, the Volt has only been available in limited markets, but Chevy is expanding soon. In addition, the company has not produced as many models as possible, and just recently shut down their plant in order to make upgrades to produce more Volts.
According to Peterson, the brand has sold all of the Volts that it has produced thus far, so it is simply a matter of producing more models and offering the car in more markets, rather than an issue related to demand.