GM’s Volt sales rise in June

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Washington —General Motors Co. said it sold 1,760 plug-in hybrid Chevrolet Volt vehicles in June, double what it sold in June 2011.

In the first half of 2012, GM sold 8,817 Volts, more than triple the 2,745 it sold in the same period last year. It already has topped Volt sales for all of 2011, which were about 7,600.

Volt sales have been boosted by California granting solo drivers of the extended-range electric vehicle access to carpool lanes.

June sales were up over the 1,680 Volts sold in May.

GM has been sharply outselling its Japanese rival, the all-electric Nissan Leaf, by more than three-to-one.

GM came under criticism for saying it would sell 10,000 plug-in hybrid Volts in 2011; it ended up selling about 7,600. The company abandoned its 2012 U.S. sales forecast of 45,000, saying it would instead match supply to meet demand.

GM has been forced to idle the Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly Plant for two stretches this year because of low demand.

Meanwhile, the Leaf saw sales fall 55 percent in May to 510. Nissan hasn’t yet reported June model-by-model sales.

For the first five months, Nissan has sold 2,613. The Japanese automaker has repeatedly insisted it will sell 20,000 Leafs in the U.S. in 2012.

GM’s Volt has now outsold the Leaf by 4,400 this year.

In April, Nissan said an executive misspoke when he suggested the company was not likely to double sales of its all-electric Leaf in 2012.

The Japanese automaker sold 9,679 all-electric Leafs in 2011.

Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn said at the New York auto show that the company would double sales of the Leaf in 2012 to about 20,000. “We’re not worried about it,” Ghosn said. “I feel very good about this objective.”

Ghosn said he expected Nissan to sell about 600 to 700 Leafs a month as long as the vehicle is exported from Japan to the U.S. Nissan plans to launch U.S.