Responsible Production & Consumption

Learning From Our Owners

Jun 23, 2011 5:15 PM ET
Campaign: GM Greener Vehicles

Learning From Our Owners

Thursday, 23 June 2011 08:19 Cristi Landy, Chevrolet Volt Marketing Director

When we launched the Volt at the end of 2010, we started in seven launch markets - California, Texas, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Washington DC. By starting in these markets, we could ensure a better customer experience for our Volt owners and pave the way for electrification of the automotive industry. Along the way, we’ve been constantly gathering feedback with our owners, learning what they like about their cars and how we can make them better.

As we continue to roll out the 2012 Chevrolet Volt to all 50 states by the end of this year, we wanted to take a step back and look at the more than 2,500 Volt drivers that are on the road right now. Here’s what we’ve learned about our first owners:

  • 66 percent are completely satisfied with their vehicles – for comparison, the average for compact cars is around 45 percent. 86 percent of Volt buyers replaced a vehicle not made by General Motors. In fact, Jeffrey Kaffee, our first retail customer, turned in a Toyota Prius when he took delivery of his Volt.

  • Our owners are early tech adopters – the kind of people that want to be the first to have the latest technology. They’re willing to try new products and the read about technology advancements nearly every day. They’re also the people who others ask for advice about cars or electronics.

  • Our owners choose the Volt is because it reduces dependency on foreign oil, it is made in America (assembled at our Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant from parts from around the world), it has a range-extender to eliminate the worry of being stranded by a dead battery and it is technologically innovative.

  • Our owners have driven more than two million miles so far, withabout two-thirds of those miles being driven on electricity alone. They’re also going about 900 miles before needed to refuel with gasoline. Studies show that 78 percent of people commute less than 40 miles per day – which is what we expected and that’s why we designed the Volt to go 25-50 miles on electricity from the lithium-ion battery and then hundreds of additional miles using electricity from our gasoline-powered generator. You can do most, if not all, of your driving without using gas, but if you’d like to take a longer trip, you can do that without any issues.

We’ve also compiled our owners’ suggestions for how to make the Volt better and we’re working on different ways to address them. For more from our owners, check out videos from two of our Volt owners below. On behalf of the entire team, thank you to everybody that has purchased the Volt or has showed interest in the vehicles.

GM14835