Audi of America President Claims Volt is a Car for Idiots
Submitted 9/3/2009
The forthcoming Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid has a lot of promise when you look at the specs: 230 mpg and 40 miles on electricity alone. But there’s one more spec that could be a total deal breaker, the $40,000 price tag. This is precisely why Johan de Nysschen, president of Audi of America, dismisses the Volt, calling it a “car for idiots.” De Nysschen, a huge diesel supporter, isn’t convinced that overpriced electric cars are the immediate answer to global warming.
De Nysschen recently spoke with MSN Autos, and spoke quite bluntly about the Volt. He feels that you’d have to be pretty incompetent to “pay $40,000, or a $15,000 premium, for a car that competes with a Toyota Corolla.” He continues, “So there are not enough idiots who will buy it.” He also noted that the Volt is not a luxury car, so the massive costs of the new green technology won’t be excused because the car doesn’t feature prestige or performance to make up for it.
De Nysschen did agree that hybrids are built on solid concepts and have an advantage over diesels in stop-and-go driving. But he feels electric vehicles are far from being consumer-ready and are still just about making a statement. He claims, “They’re for the intellectual elite who want to show what enlightened souls they are.”
He went on to explain his frustrations with the federal policy. Being a majority owner of GM, the US Federal Government has created policies and subsidies for electric cars, going as far as trying to convince the public that electric cars are the only answer to global warming. He continues to say, diesel technology could immediately reduce emissions, yet the US government has ignored this and spent billions on EV research and development. He has a point, in Europe, modern diesels power over half the cars on the road. These cars emit 25 percent less carbon dioxide than the gasoline equivalents, while consuming 25-35 percent less fuel. American consumers still think of diesels as loud and dirty truck engines, and de Nysschen hopes the upcoming Audi diesels will show Americans that this is far from the truth.
De Nysschen argues that the problem with using electrical vehicles in the US is that roughly half of the electricity comes from burning dirty coal. Therefore, mass production of electric vehicles would initially increase net carbon dioxide emissions. Until the nation cleans up its power grid, he argues, EVs won’t make environmental sense.
So Audi of America’s president ended with the claim that the Volt will fall flat. He continues to say that the Federal Government, now fully invested in GM, will have no choice but to subsidize the Volt. No matter what happens with the Volt, de Nysschen plans to continue to lobby Washington to push what he believes is a better immediate alternative to EV, the clean diesel. We except much rebuttal from the EV crowd, starting with one of their biggest complaints: clean hybrids may be a good start, but they do little to solve our dependence on foreign oil.
