Joined
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9 Posts
Is it just me, or does that lowish mileage 2015 Volt that looked like a decent buy yesterday at $15K suddenly look about $3K too high???
Up until today I was seriously considering buying a used Volt. Now that GM has bailed on the current model and any future development that puts all the existing cars under an ominous shadow. Manufacturers generally provide pretty good support on older variants of models they currently sell, in large part I think because they hope some of those owners will eventually upgrade to a new car. Since that ship has now sailed, GM has a lot less motivation for providing the support that would keep those older Volts on the road. GM never did commit to a battery replacement price, and I'm thinking that as of today whatever they were going to charge (let's say in 2025) has now gone up, who knows how much. Assuming that they do not bail entirely on supplying replacement batteries for Gen 1 once the last of them have passed their warranty dates. (Also assuming that they survive the next economic downturn/gas price spike, after having gone over to a sales base consisting to the greatest extent possible of large gas guzzlers.) While there are third party batteries for NiMH packs I am a lot less sanguine about that possibility for big lithium ion packs, especially when the number of cars in question is not all that large. In short, that used Volt now looks like a more expensive prospect over the long term than it did 24 hours ago, so I would have to figure that into the purchase price.
In another thread somebody mentioned that GM doesn't make Corvairs any more and some of those are still on the roads. I don't think that is a very good analogy for the current situation, because having owned one, that was a much much simpler car. If push came to shove a good machine shop could make a replacement for most Corvair parts. That isn't at all the case for the complicated power electronics in the Volt.
Up until today I was seriously considering buying a used Volt. Now that GM has bailed on the current model and any future development that puts all the existing cars under an ominous shadow. Manufacturers generally provide pretty good support on older variants of models they currently sell, in large part I think because they hope some of those owners will eventually upgrade to a new car. Since that ship has now sailed, GM has a lot less motivation for providing the support that would keep those older Volts on the road. GM never did commit to a battery replacement price, and I'm thinking that as of today whatever they were going to charge (let's say in 2025) has now gone up, who knows how much. Assuming that they do not bail entirely on supplying replacement batteries for Gen 1 once the last of them have passed their warranty dates. (Also assuming that they survive the next economic downturn/gas price spike, after having gone over to a sales base consisting to the greatest extent possible of large gas guzzlers.) While there are third party batteries for NiMH packs I am a lot less sanguine about that possibility for big lithium ion packs, especially when the number of cars in question is not all that large. In short, that used Volt now looks like a more expensive prospect over the long term than it did 24 hours ago, so I would have to figure that into the purchase price.
In another thread somebody mentioned that GM doesn't make Corvairs any more and some of those are still on the roads. I don't think that is a very good analogy for the current situation, because having owned one, that was a much much simpler car. If push came to shove a good machine shop could make a replacement for most Corvair parts. That isn't at all the case for the complicated power electronics in the Volt.
