GM stays bullish on Cadillac ELR pricing

Despite a decision of many carmakers to trim the sticker price of their electrified vehicle offerings, General Motors remains bullish of the pricing for its Cadillac ELR plug-in hybrid. When GM unveiled the ELR in January, it executives said they plan to fix a lofty
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Sciros - 8/29/2013 4:03:10 PM

+2 Boost

Heh. Ok here's the thing. A Tesla Model S looks like a car that costs from $75000 to $110000. At least to me. A Chevy Volt looks like it costs $30000. A Caddy ELR looks like it costs $45000-50000. If GM goes nuts and tries to ask $70000+ for it then they'll be making a mistake and will sell fewer units than they'd like. That's my thought on this, anyway. Sure, they want to promote "image" more than anything, well then make a car that looks expensive! The ELR does not look as expensive as a CTS-V that's for sure. And nowhere near a Tesla either.

Most current Volt owners are well to do, as far as I know. So it's not that the ELR will be "unaffordable" it's that it won't be competitive.

For that matter the BMW i3 doesn't look like a $45000 car either so I'll be curious to see how many units it sells. I wager a good bit more than the ELR will.

vdiv - 8/29/2013 4:31:34 PM

+1 Boost

We should not judge books by their covers and we should not judge cars entirely nor even predominantly by their looks.

I think the positioning and pricing of the ELR is easily explained by the lack of motivation on behalf of GM to sell plugins. Sure, we would hear differently, record 3,000+ Volts sold in August, Spark EV sales exceeding someone's expectations, etc, etc.

If GM, being one of the largest car companies in the world, really wants to built plugins, they will not be coming out with the ELR, they will be coming out with an all-electric Model S competitor, with a plugin crossover, and with extended range EV trucks like the VIA Motors Vtrux.

MorePower - 8/29/2013 4:29:19 PM

+1 Boost

That's a whole hell of a lot of "real wood accents, a suede headliner and a storage compartment accessed through an electronic cover" to justify a sticker price of $70k+ for a car that GM can't sell without bribing customers.

TheSteve - 8/29/2013 7:00:46 PM

+2 Boost

Wasn't GM "bullish" on Volt pricing? That is, until GM realized that people aren't buying many of them, and then GM dropped the price.

By the way, does anyone actually say "That the Cadillac of X" anymore, to indicate that something is the best of the best? There's a reason why they don't.