Detroit News reported that General Motors is hoping to attract disaffected Volkswagen AG diesel customers with a new turbo-diesel version of its 2018 Chevrolet Equinox crossover and diesel versions of its Chevrolet Cruze and new Cruze Hatchback.
The Detroit automaker’s bet on diesel comes, though, as sales have slowed in the U.S. due to Volkswagen’s costly exhaust emissions cheating scandal, now one year old.
“Clearly, what’s happened at VW creates an opportunity for us,” GM North America President Alan Batey told reporters recently in Detroit. “So we’ll do everything we can to seize the opportunity.”
Registrations of diesel cars and light trucks in the U.S. through the first seven months of 2016 totaled 246,256 – just 2.4 percent of the market, according to IHS Markit. That’s 40,116 less from the same period in 2015.
To me, it becomes obvious that nobody in GM knows how to handle statistics. Diesel in the US is 2.4 percent of the market, or in other words 97.6 percent are not diesel.
U.S. diesel sales are down more than 37 percent through September this year compared to the same months in 2015, according to Hybridcars.com. It says the Ram 1500 EcoDiesel pickup is the No. 1 diesel in the U.S. through September with an estimated 39,997 sold; that’s followed closely by the Ford Transit diesel van.
Despite that sales plunge, the number of available diesel models in the U.S. is expected to grow. The Diesel Technology Forum, an industry organization, says 49 diesel-powered cars, SUVs, truck and vans are available today; that will grow to 61 by the end of 2017, it believes. Falling popularity, falling sales and an increasingly congested marketplace.
So here is GM falling into the trap it did a few years back, building cars that the public doesn’t want! And then have to engage in price-cutting wars to get them off the showroom floors.
Studying history and statistics should be compulsory for GM management.
