Saving the Volt

Make no mistake.  GM's Chevy Volt, is one of the greatest car innovations of our lifetime.  It can single handedly reduce a huge dependence on foreign oils, while keeping money in the consumers pocket (assuming electricity costs don't drastically go up).  Everyone should be driving a car with the powertrain found within the Volt.

The Problem
But there's one problem, which has led to the temporary shutdown in production: cost.  The cost of the car comes nowhere close to the rest of the vehicle market in its class.  People want them, we should have them, but the cost for the tech is out of the majorities hands.  ...And there's no place to put a gun rack. 

The Solution
GM needs to take a page from the most successful company of this century: Apple.   Innovation and technology is expensive.  But the manufacturing does not have to be.

 All Apple products are manufactured off-shore, away from pesky Unions, worker rights, and reasonable wages.  And the greatest thing of all, the Apple consumer could care less.  The manufacturing of the Volt needs to move off-shore to survive.  Innovation can only survive when the manufacturing process is done for dirt cheap.

Another page that can be taken from Apple, is to sell a service, not a product.  When you buy an iPhone, iPod, Apple computer, you've just bound yourself to a collective that is heavily monitored by Apple.  Your bound to their Cloud/servers, where Apple can legally mine your personal data and profit with advertising.  Your purchasing iStore apps, music, movies all which add money to Apple's coffers per purchase.  Your going to find its easier to user Apples proprietary wireless nodes to beam stuff to your TV, house, car, spouse, etc.  GM needs to sell a service, that people don't know they need, until you give it to them.   The consumer spends a ridiculous amount of time in a vehicle each day, yet I continue to listen to the radio, simply because my options are limited.  GM needs to open and regulate applications to our vehicle, create data clouds, stream adds to billboards based on the individual driving by it (dear god I just said that) and perhaps profit from its innovation.  Only then, can we all own something as revolutionary as the Volt.