The Cost of Building a Model Car

The Volt is a $250 to $500 million enterprise, sometimes more than that depending on the car it can even be a billion. The sheer number of moving parts that have to work together and have to arrive at the end of the assembly line at the same moment is mind boggling. Engineers are the staff is in the hundreds and that's escalating as they get closer to production. They're testing the car systems in what they call engineering development vehicles where you take the shell of an existing car as Chevy Malibu as it happens and put the systems for this new car in it. It becomes a giant industrial project which the EV1 for example never was.