GM says Chevy Volt sales numbers will rise in May; 10,000 deliveries scheduled for 2011

We’re not going to lie, the intense right-wing attention to our post last week about the still low sales numbers for both the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf (457 comments and counting – thanks, Drudge!) took us a bit by surprise. But given that so many new people read the piece without, perhaps, the context that regular readers are aware of, we wanted to share this quote from General Motor’s Rob Peterson:

The Volt production launch is on schedule to build and sell every one of our 10,000 units this year. Through February, we produced over 1,800 vehicles – 925 of which have been sold at retail. Production volume will gradually increase each month throughout the year. However, over the next few months we will be shipping Volt dealer demo vehicles and vehicles to our coastal launch markets which takes longer than delivering them to nearby states. This situation should be resolved by May, after which the number of Volt’s sold will rise.

There is no demand issue; ask any dealer in a launch market. This is a temporary situation. The Volt launch is on time and on target.

That does clear things up a bit, but it also dispells the rumor we heard earlier that GM might try to make 25,000 Volts this year instead of just 10,000 or 12,000.

[Source: GM]