When I lasted visited the Chevy Volt, January 2012 sales were 603 units (against a 46,000 target for annual sales).
Since then, the company has taken bold action: $199/month leases!
So it's around $5k to lease a Volt, which has a base retail price of $40,000, for two years. This has help to vault sales up to 2800 in August, making 13,500 sold for the year to date. If you include prorated development costs, each Volt is costing Chevy around $75,000!
Know how many Prius Toyota has sold so far this year? Over 160,000.
You may wonder what GM has to say about all this. Well here's Doug Parks, VP of "global product programs":
"It wasn't conceived as a way to make tons of money,"
Maybe Obama could borrow George Bush's banner and hang it on the factory wall?
What's that, the factory is closing next week for a month?
How about $99 / month leases?
Hat tip to the mighty Mark Perry.
Monday, September 10, 2012
Sunday, September 09, 2012
12 great hours
Big fun, people. Last night Mrs. A and I saw Bob Mould play the 930 club. Tremendous show full of great songs and great energy. He played the old Sugar album "Copper Blue" straight through, then several excellent songs from his new album "Silver Age". Even played from the Husker Du catalog.
(sorry for the poor picture. a stock iPhone 4 is a crap camera).
Then this morning we took a hike in that strange and glorious place that is Rock Creek Park:
Now it's nap, work, and watching the US Open women's final.
If Mr. Mould is coming to your town, you should definitely check it out.
(sorry for the poor picture. a stock iPhone 4 is a crap camera).
Then this morning we took a hike in that strange and glorious place that is Rock Creek Park:
Now it's nap, work, and watching the US Open women's final.
If Mr. Mould is coming to your town, you should definitely check it out.
Should Democracy Decide Everything?
My first video at LearnLiberty. They did a good job with it, very nice. But it was the last video we filmed, and I was really tired (it was a 10 hour day!). Reading a bit mechanically....ick! Still, they did a really good job with the graphics, and making me look better than I am.
Saturday, September 08, 2012
Mungo move over, let Angus take over
Mungo may have run for Governor of NC, but this morning I realized that I, Angus, want to be President of the USA!
It hit me this morning when I saw this (more info here):
The President can put art from the National Gallery in his/her house!
So I could live for 8 years (people you KNOW I'm getting re-elected) in a House full of Richters, Hodgkins, Keifers, and more.
I can be surrounded by Rothkos! Pollocks! Johns!
I can have that huge, awesome Max Ernst statue in my rec room. I can have Brancusis on my coffee tables. Marino Marinis on my patio (q: what's horseback and overly happy? a: the rider in a Marini sculpture).
All this could be IN MY HOUSE! (hey it's a better reason for running than Romney's!)
PS: I'd lean on the Hirshhorn to lend me some Bacons!!
It hit me this morning when I saw this (more info here):
The President can put art from the National Gallery in his/her house!
So I could live for 8 years (people you KNOW I'm getting re-elected) in a House full of Richters, Hodgkins, Keifers, and more.
I can be surrounded by Rothkos! Pollocks! Johns!
I can have that huge, awesome Max Ernst statue in my rec room. I can have Brancusis on my coffee tables. Marino Marinis on my patio (q: what's horseback and overly happy? a: the rider in a Marini sculpture).
All this could be IN MY HOUSE! (hey it's a better reason for running than Romney's!)
PS: I'd lean on the Hirshhorn to lend me some Bacons!!
Friday, September 07, 2012
QOTD: vampire squid edition
"Goldman Sachs makes for an attractive monster, but the bigger vampire squid may be the American Medical Association, which has colluded in blocking universal coverage and driving up health costs since World War II."
More good stuff here.
More good stuff here.
Department of bold predictions: Krugman Edition
Look at Paul, way out on a skinny branch:
"The next four years are likely to be much better than the last four years — unless misguided policies create another mess."
LOL. Ya think?
The last 4 years have been absolutely horrible. Perhaps the worst in the post-war era, certainly since the early 80s. The economy can't stink forever, household de-leveraging won't last forever, so this is kind of a no-brainer.
And yet note the lack of any quantitative dimension. "Much better", not "average 3.5% growth", or "have unemployment hit 5.5%".
And also note the convenient escape clause "unless....".
Perfect PK move. Setting himself up for a big "I told you so", with a very flexible goalpost and a get out of jail free card if things really don't work out.
"The next four years are likely to be much better than the last four years — unless misguided policies create another mess."
LOL. Ya think?
The last 4 years have been absolutely horrible. Perhaps the worst in the post-war era, certainly since the early 80s. The economy can't stink forever, household de-leveraging won't last forever, so this is kind of a no-brainer.
And yet note the lack of any quantitative dimension. "Much better", not "average 3.5% growth", or "have unemployment hit 5.5%".
And also note the convenient escape clause "unless....".
Perfect PK move. Setting himself up for a big "I told you so", with a very flexible goalpost and a get out of jail free card if things really don't work out.
Thursday, September 06, 2012
Fed announcements as "cheap talk"
As any semi-loyal KPC reader knows, I find the "just do your job" critique of the Fed baffling. In our current institutional framework, the Fed cannot credibly commit to future actions that will conflict with their period by period utility function.
That is to say (more or less accurately), the Fed cannot credibly promise to tolerate higher inflation than it prefers after the economy recovers because, when the economy recovers the Fed will still not like inflation and there is nothing to prevent them from not tolerating it. Knowing this, people will not believe the initial announcement.
So, why does the Fed make announcements about the future at all? Could they ever "work".
I believe the relevant economic theory here is the literature on "cheap talk" in games. A readable approach can be found in Ferrell & Rabin.
For cheap talk to be effective, Ferrell & Rabin argue that it must be self-signalling meaning that the sender only wants to send the message if it is true (or if it is at least correlated with the truth). They also argue that it must be self-committing, meaning if the receiver believes the message, the sender has incentives to fulfill it.
I think that the messages people want the Fed to send are not self-committing, so that such "cheap talk" won't work.
However, there is a famous paper by Jeremy Stein on cheap talk and the Fed that argues that the Fed can make imprecise announcements which will have some effect on expectations. I haven't fully figured that paper out yet.
That is to say (more or less accurately), the Fed cannot credibly promise to tolerate higher inflation than it prefers after the economy recovers because, when the economy recovers the Fed will still not like inflation and there is nothing to prevent them from not tolerating it. Knowing this, people will not believe the initial announcement.
So, why does the Fed make announcements about the future at all? Could they ever "work".
I believe the relevant economic theory here is the literature on "cheap talk" in games. A readable approach can be found in Ferrell & Rabin.
For cheap talk to be effective, Ferrell & Rabin argue that it must be self-signalling meaning that the sender only wants to send the message if it is true (or if it is at least correlated with the truth). They also argue that it must be self-committing, meaning if the receiver believes the message, the sender has incentives to fulfill it.
I think that the messages people want the Fed to send are not self-committing, so that such "cheap talk" won't work.
However, there is a famous paper by Jeremy Stein on cheap talk and the Fed that argues that the Fed can make imprecise announcements which will have some effect on expectations. I haven't fully figured that paper out yet.
Performance Art: Housesitting Edition
It's 2:30 am in our short-term rental. A loud electronic chirp wakes us up. Again. and Again.
Must be the smoke alarm in the hall outside the bedroom. Get up and sure enough, that's where it's coming from.
Get a chair, pull off the cover. Take out the battery. Curse. Go back to bed. And? A loud electronic chirp.
WTF?
Go hunting around the house for another battery. Find some, but they're labeled "best before 8/08".
Put one in anyway. Curse. Go back to bed. And? A loud electronic chirp. WTF? Maybe it's wired into the house's electrical system.
Get flashlight. Head to basement. Thank goodness the circuits are all labeled in the junction box. Turn off all the upstairs circuits. Curse. Go back to bed. And? Loud electronic chirp.
Mrs. Angus makes me go back downstairs to "see if the switches have turned themselves back on" Now after 3:00 am. Thankfully, the laws of physics still apply and circuit breakers are still off. I turn them back on anyway because that clearly isn't the issue.
As I'm climbing back up the stairs, fantasizing about throwing myself off the roof and getting some sleep at the hospital, I see a small disk-shaped object on top of the books on the bottom row of a bookcase in the hallway where the smoke alarm is located.
It's a Carbon Monoxide monitor. I pick it up and it emits....a loud electronic chirp. I rip off its cover, shake out its batteries and crawl back into bed.
One more such victory and we are lost.
Must be the smoke alarm in the hall outside the bedroom. Get up and sure enough, that's where it's coming from.
Get a chair, pull off the cover. Take out the battery. Curse. Go back to bed. And? A loud electronic chirp.
WTF?
Go hunting around the house for another battery. Find some, but they're labeled "best before 8/08".
Put one in anyway. Curse. Go back to bed. And? A loud electronic chirp. WTF? Maybe it's wired into the house's electrical system.
Get flashlight. Head to basement. Thank goodness the circuits are all labeled in the junction box. Turn off all the upstairs circuits. Curse. Go back to bed. And? Loud electronic chirp.
Mrs. Angus makes me go back downstairs to "see if the switches have turned themselves back on" Now after 3:00 am. Thankfully, the laws of physics still apply and circuit breakers are still off. I turn them back on anyway because that clearly isn't the issue.
As I'm climbing back up the stairs, fantasizing about throwing myself off the roof and getting some sleep at the hospital, I see a small disk-shaped object on top of the books on the bottom row of a bookcase in the hallway where the smoke alarm is located.
It's a Carbon Monoxide monitor. I pick it up and it emits....a loud electronic chirp. I rip off its cover, shake out its batteries and crawl back into bed.
One more such victory and we are lost.
Wednesday, September 05, 2012
I'm so bored with the USA!
Oh anonymous Weibo user, I see what you did there. Pretty good read.
Here's a teaser:
(14) Americans are wimps. 95% of drivers don’t even dare to run red lights…although 99% of American adults have a car, their driving method is very strange: There are many cars on the road, but you can’t hear any horns, the streets are so quiet it’s as if they’re not streets, there’s none of the energy of a major province-level Chinese city.
Here's a teaser:
(14) Americans are wimps. 95% of drivers don’t even dare to run red lights…although 99% of American adults have a car, their driving method is very strange: There are many cars on the road, but you can’t hear any horns, the streets are so quiet it’s as if they’re not streets, there’s none of the energy of a major province-level Chinese city.
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