[manntis]

July/August 2008 Atlantic Monthly

With the Chevy Volt, General Motors—battered, struggling for profitability, fed up with being eclipsed by Toyota and the Prius—is out to reinvent the automobile, and itself.

by Jonathan Rauch

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/general-motors

 

[Jason M. Hendler]

I've read this before, and I believe it has been posted here before, but could not find it in a search - perhaps it was a major article that Lyle posted.

 

[manntis]

Sorry if it's a repost. I didn't find it in a search

 

[kubel]

Very good article. First time I read it.

“If it fails,” Harris says of the Volt, “we want people to know exactly why it failed. It wasn’t lack of commitment or passion on our part; we hit a hard point we couldn’t get around.”

Sort of makes me wonder whether or not the point of the whole Volt transparency thing was not to boost public awareness, but to act as PR insurance should the GM EV project crash (or should that "a" be a "u") and burn (again).

“We’re counting on home runs every single time, and quite frankly, we’re hitting doubles right now,” Turner said, as I watched diodes on the battery’s control circuits flash green. It seemed, he added wearily, that there were not enough hours in the day.