Say what? Rep. Dingell claims Chevy Volt is "selling like hotcakes"

There isn't a much bigger Congressional champion than Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), but if a recent story in the Detroit News is correct, then we'd like to know where he's getting his information.

Following Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's claim that the Chevrolet Volt is an "idea whose time has not come," Dingell apparently issued a press release that said, in part:

Romney is the only fellow in the United States who appears to think that the Volt is an idea whose time has not come. Clearly it has not come to him. The Volt is selling like hotcakes.

Defend the Volt if you want – and it is worth defending on many fronts – but it's hard to compare its sales numbers to piping hot flapjacks. Writer Dan Calabrese lashes out at Dingell for being either ignorant of the Volt's true sales numbers or for putting out propaganda (this is kind of ironic, since Calabrese himself "under reports" the true Volt sales numbers by a few hundred).

We asked Dingell's office for a copy of the statement to see if it's actually true or not, but have not heard back yet. (We will update this post if they respond.) But, for now, we'll
have to assume that it's true, and point out that Dingell also attacked Romney for wanting to "surrender the advanced vehicle market to foreign manufacturers."

As we said when the Volt was listed as one of the big flops of 2011, it's simply too early to tell what the status is for the Volt. It's not selling 100,000 a year and it's not a disaster. Give the technology time, and it'll suss itself out.



Source: Autoblog Green