Santa Monica, California – Electric vehicle advocacy group Plug In America is urging the U.S. government to make plug-in vehicles such as the Chevrolet Volt more affordable, including waiving California’s stringent warranty requirement. The group was responding to the Auto Task Force report, which said that the Volt may be too expensive to be viable.

California law requires that the Volt and other plug-in hybrids come with a ten-year warranty. Plug In America advisory board member Chealsea Sexton said that to ensure this longer life, automakers are as much as doubling the size of the battery pack, increasing the cost. However, not a single production plug-in electric vehicle sold to date, from the GM EV1 to the Tesla, has had a warranty of more than five years.

“To support early deployment, California should relax the warranty requirement for cars like the Volt to five years, phasing to ten years over time,” said Sexton, who is a former GM employee. “This alone could cut the number of batteries required by as much as half, and reduce the cost of each vehicle by thousands of dollars.”

Sexton said that the warranty reduction would not impose added liability on General Motors or on consumers, as President Obama has said the federal government will guarantee GM and Chrysler warranties if the companies go bankrupt. Dealers can also sell extended warranties, providing additional consumer security and company revenue.

“The minimum Volt warranty we’re asking for has historically been the maximum ever given for any plug-in car,” Sexton said. “We applaud the Obama Administration for its robust support for plug-in vehicle technology. But this discouraging statement about the Volt’s early viability is counter-productive to the President’s own goal of one million plug-in vehicles by 2015. It is unreasonable to expect the Volt and any similar new technology to be immediately profitable when others that similarly started with a price premium, such as the Toyota Prius, became wild successes. Even the first DVD player cost many times more than it does today.”

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