The issue of the Chevy Volt’s fire risk and the following NHTSA investigation that ended last week after GM modified its hybrid and the federal agency cleared the car, seems to be spreading beyond the automotive realm.
According to Bloomberg News, a report released by the House Oversight and Government Committee Report led by California Republican Representative Darrell Issa poses the question whether the six-month delay in making the fire-risk issue public has anything to do with the government’s 32 percent stake in General Motors.
“This unnatural relationship has blurred the lines between the public and private sector as President Obama touts the survival of General Motors as one of the top accomplishments of his administration”, read the report. “On a political level, this relationship raises serious questions about whether or not the administration is too heavily invested in the success of GM to be an effective regulator.”
GM CEO Dan Akerson, who testified before a House subcommittee led by another Republican Representative, Jim Jordan of Ohio, objected to the use of Chevrolet’s plug-in hybrid as cause of political debate between the Democrats and Republicans.
“Although we loaded the Volt with state-of-the-art safety features, unfortunately there is one thing we did not engineer”, Akerson told the subcommittee. “We did not engineer it to be a political punching bag. And that, sadly, is what the Volt has become.”
Coincidentally, the hearing took place after the President’s State of the Union speech the previous night. Obama said that he saved the U.S. automotive industry, and that “today, General Motors is back on top as the world’s number one automaker.”
At the same hearing, NHTSA’s David Strickland explained the five-month delay in initiating the formal investigation. The first event took place last June and the issue was revealed by Bloomberg in November, but Strickland said that there was no imminent safety risk, hence the delay.
“Not only would I drive it, I would drive my mother, my wife and my baby sister along in the ride”, Strickland responded to Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich when the latter asked him if the Volt is safe.
Besides, said Strickland, the crash-tested car caught fire three weeks after the test: “As one of our customers put it, if they couldn’t cut him out of the vehicle in two or three weeks, he had bigger problems to worry about.”
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