Topic: NewsBusters
Serial General Motors misleader Seton Motley is at it again with even more GM falsehoods in a Sept. 25 NewsBusters post. What does he get wrong this time?
Well, he screws the pooch right in the headline, in which he calls the Chevy Volt a "$89,000 Car." In fact, as he glancingly concedes, the MSRP for the Volt is $41,000. The $89,000 figure is one news services's claim of how much it costs, which ignores the fact that, as GM points out, development costs are spread over the vehicle's lifespan -- meaning that amount per vehicle drops with every Volt sold -- as well as use of the vehicle's techology in other GM products, which spreads those costs even further.
Motley then rants that GM is offering cheap leases on the Volt. But isn't lowering the price exactly what a business does to move a slow-selling product, even if you lose some money in the process? Motley seems to be unaware of that basic economic concept.
Motley follows this up with whining that "We the Taxpayers" are on the hook for depreciation costs when Volts come off lease, bizarrely calculating it against the misleading $89,000 figure and not the MSRP. Motley honed in on one case in which someone got a lease deal of $159 a month, assumes that all the leases are like that but conveniently ignoring the extenuating circumstances under which that lease was obtained, as detailed in the Forbes article he links to but apparently didn't actually read:
To spur Volt sales, GM has been promoting a lease deal of $279 a month and $2,419 due at signing on a two-year, 24,000-mile lease. “The whole idea is we’re creating a market; there is no plug-in market,” said GM spokesman Jim Cain.
But my neighbors apparently stumbled into an even better deal on their Volt. It seems GM is offering dealers extra bonus cash (which they can pass on to Volt buyers) if they exceed their initial Volt sales goals. Dealers who hit their target get an extra $500 payout. If they sell three times their target they get $2,500. Only about 400 of GM’s 2,600 participating Chevrolet dealers (15%) have beaten their Volt sales objectives and are receiving the extra bonus. Just 2.5% sold enough Volts to qualify for the top $2,500 bonus.
My friends used $3,000 in rewards from a GM credit card (5% back on purchases, which can be applied toward the purchase or lease of a GM vehicle) toward their deposit, and then received an unexpected $1,000 discount, no doubt a dealer bonus incentive. It probably also helped that they have a top-tier credit score and were trading in a BMW. Stack it all together and it was one helluva deal.
So the lease deal actually starts at $279 a month, and very few people have the right combination of dealer incentives, creditworthiness and trade-in value to get the super discount.
Finally, Motley does not seem to have figured out that lies and hate make for bad blogging, however much NewsBusters seems to think it does.