The team said that "We're trying to put more stress on getting this right for the lower-priced vehicles," he told reporters at the company's global battery systems laboratory outside Detroit. GM sells the Volt for about $35,000 before federal tax credits, compared with $71,000 for Tesla's Model S electric car. So far this year, Tesla has sold almost as many of its luxury cars as GM has sold Volts. Parks said GM officials "haven't simplified the message" enough to consumers about the Volt's value. A moderately electric priced car with a 200-mile range would make electric cars more appealing to Americans, solving the two chief complaints about such cars: Anxiety over running out of power and high price, said Tom Libby, lead North American analyst for the polk automotive research firm.
Tesla gets accolades for the Model S, including the highest test score ever recorded by Consumer Reports magazine. And the Palo Alto, Calif., company also is working on a mass-market electric car. CEO Elon Musk has said it will have around a 200 mile range and cost about $ 35,000. It could go on sales as early as the end of 2016, he has said. Gm on Monday showed off a 50,000 square foot addition to the battery lab. The added space, which nearly doubled the lab's size, will let the company test batteries and computer controls much faster than before. Parks said the goal is to develop electric cars twice as fast as the company could in the past. It took GM about four years to develop the volt and bring it to market. Parks said Tesla will look good if it moves down market successfully, but he wasn't jealous of its success so far.