ClaimsVinod Khosla

“The Chevy Volt, which is a good car, is expected by 2012, to ship 40,000 units.”

Vinod Khosla, investor, interview answer 23 December 2010 Vinod Khosla: Searching for the Radical Solution (Scientific American) archived copy

Prediction Technology

The Chevy Volt is expected to ship 40,000 units by 2012.

Mostly false False in substance, right in a detail.

Prediction: Statements about events outside the person's control, checked once they fell due: did they come true?

What would count as true or false

Judge it as a prediction of Chevy Volt volume: about 40,000 units shipped by 2012. Accept either reading: shipments or deliveries in calendar year 2012, or cumulative from launch through 31 December 2012. Use whichever reading the evidence supports more closely, and state which one was used. True: GM or registration and sales data show about 40,000 units (36,000–44,000) under that reading by the end of 2012. Mostly true: the figure is within 15% of 40,000 (34,000–46,000) but outside the true band. Mostly false: the figure is between 50% and 85% of 40,000, or between 115% and 150% of it. False: the figure is below 20,000 or above 60,000. Volumes reached only after 2012 do not count toward the deadline.

Set before the research began.

Evidence (4)

  1. E1 Chevrolet Volt - Wikipedia Wikipedia

    “| Calendar year | USA | Canada | Europe (Opel/Vauxhall Ampera)[47] | |---|---|---|---| | 2010 | 326 | n/a | 303 | | 2011 | 7,671 | n/a | 5,270 | | 2012 | 23,461 | n/a | 3,198 |”

  2. E2 Chevy Volt sales triple in year of paradoxes for electric cars The Christian Science Monitor · 4 January 2013

    “GM sold a record 23,461 Chevy Volts in 2012, triple the amount it did last year in the electric car's shaky debut. But the impressive figure is still well below GM's 2012 target of 35,000 to 40,000”

  3. E3 Electric Car Sales Triple In 2012 CBS News (Detroit), originally from Green Car Reports · 9 January 2013

    “In December, Chevy sold 2,633 Volts, bringing its year's total to 23,461.”

  4. E4 GM losing as much as $49,000 per Volt sold NBC News (Reuters content) · 10 September 2012

    “Discounted leases as low as $199 a month helped propel Volt sales in August to 2,831, pushing year-to-date sales to 13,500, well below the 40,000 cars that GM originally had hoped to sell in 2012.”

Reasoning

I used the calendar-year 2012 reading because it fits the 40,000 figure best: E2 and E4 describe 40,000 as GM's sales target for 2012. Three sources (E1, E2 and E3) put 2012 US Volt sales at 23,461, which is about 59% of 40,000 and falls in the mostly-false band. Under the other reading, US Volts sold from launch through 2012 add up to 31,458 (326 + 7,671 + 23,461 in E1), about 79% of 40,000, so that is also mostly false. The Europe figures in E1 are for the Opel/Vauxhall Ampera, not the Chevy Volt, and E1 gives no Canadian figures, so neither changes the result.

Cite this claim

Vinod Khosla, “The Chevy Volt is expected to ship 40,000 units by 2012.” (said 23 December 2010). Verdict: mostly false. Reliability API, claim c_944d0f710690, method 0.1.0+c876030c, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_944d0f710690

This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.

Reply to this claim

For Vinod Khosla, or someone speaking for them: a correction or counter-evidence. Replies are read before anything is shown; an approved reply shows your name, role, date, statement and link. Your email address is never shown and is deleted 30 days after the decision (privacy).

More prediction claims by Vinod Khosla

  1. Resolved false Prediction 23 December 2010
    “Now almost certainly, the traditional lithium ion bulk batteries will not be around in 15 years.”

    Traditional lithium-ion bulk batteries will almost certainly not be around in 15 years.

  2. Resolved false Prediction 28 September 2007
    “I believe 50 million acres of land in this country could supply all our biofuel needs.”

    Khosla said he believed 50 million acres of US land could supply all US biofuel needs.

  3. Mostly true Prediction 28 September 2007
    “It would probably add about 2 cents a kilowatt hour to the price of coal, depending upon the price of carbon.”

    Pricing carbon and requiring carbon capture and sequestration would probably add about 2 cents per kilowatt hour to the cost of coal power, depending on the carbon price.

  4. Mostly true Prediction 28 September 2007
    “Not only that, even if Germany switched over completely to photovoltaics, unless India and China adopted them, we are not going to see a change in the trajectory of climate change.”

    Even if Germany switched completely to photovoltaics, climate change's trajectory will not change unless India and China also adopt them.

  5. Mostly true Prediction 28 September 2007
    “It will work.”

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All of them

Verdicts are made automatically; how verdicts are made.