General Motor’s efforts to sustain the brand of Chevrolet Volt in the market include an offer to buy back plug-in hybrid Chevy Volts from owners who are concerned about the risk of battery fire. Earlier this week GM offered about 6,000 loaners to US Chevy Volts owners but only 33 of them have asked for loaners so far.
It all began when National Highway and Safety Administration (NHTSA) started a safety defect investigation of Chevy Volts in regard to the post-crash-test battery fire cases. Three crash-tests performed earlier this year have shown that days or weeks after the initial damage the battery catches fire.
In spite of the fact that there have been no reports of battery fire after a real car accident, now General Motors attempts to reassure the owners of Chevy Volts that the vehicles are completely safe to drive promising to comply with any changes to its battery pack recommended by federal regulators. Anyway, the owners of Chevy Volts seem to be quite loyal to the company as far as no one has yet returned a vehicle.
It’s interesting that plug-in hybrid Chevy Volts appears to be one of the best GM products and the company has sold 1,139 vehicles only in November bringing the year’s total to 6,142. However, the company will probably fail to achieve its target of selling 10,000 Chevy Volts this year and has around a four month’s supply of Volts in inventory, which is considered high.
Meantime, its biggest rival Nissan Leaf is still outselling Volt this year with 8,720 sales and has no cases of battery fire during or after crash-tests.
