Discussion on:

The Chevy Volt: falling short on profit?

After all, you have to account for the losses incurred by bondholders in its development costs before the bankruptcy, and the cost to US taxpayers in subsidizing about 1/4th the cost of the thing in tax credits.

But this is the kind of silliness you get when there's no transparency and the government is involved.

As one who spent 30 years in manufacturing, I'd sure love to see the numbers that show a "cost" of $89K per vehicle. Hog Wash!!!

I often argued against facets of "Generally Accepted Accounting Practices" and still believe that cost accounting fallacies cause us to make wrong product and manufacturing technology decisions. Sometimes you have to trust your peoples' intuition - especially as it involves new technology - product or manufacturing.

ok so you made a car that cost more than you can sell it for. I believe it is time for GM to look back on their history and see what happened when they made some losers in the past and what management did to get back into the market. You are fighting hard times and to be competitive you got to make a product the average man can afford. You got to find a way for him to want or see a need for the in his life. Don't play to the wealthy play to the low middle class and up. The wealthy would rather buy a Telsa which is more expensive but better engineered that the Volt.

This is an instance of he said/she said. What are the assumptions of the analysts that the Reuters reporters quoted & how do they compare with those of Mr. Lutz? And then there's those who look for every opportunity to politicize an issue, inc. 1 person here.

They arrived at this by taking the development cost of the Volt and dividing it by the number that have been sold so far, then adding in the actual cost of building each unit. That's ridiculous, they're not going to stop making them today. They will probably make other models based on the same technology, too.

They have yet to recoup the r&d costs, is all this calculation tells you. They're not losing money on each one they sell - each sale brings them closer to the day when the development costs have been recovered and the model becomes profitable.