It won nearly every serious automotive award and had a huge carbon-free footprint of positive reviews from critics and consumers alike. So if that's the case, why is the Volt GM's slowest selling product? More than that, why does there seem to be such a negative charge to the car? People across the country who have never even seen a Volt let alone driven this engineering marvel have nothing good to say about it, confounding both auto analysts and company executives. – YouTube

Dominant Social Theme: The Volt is just swell.

Free-Market Analysis: We've written a number of articles about the floundering Chevy Volt – and electric cars in general. This Autoline "round table" discussion of the Volt in particular – presented in the video below – puts the Volt into a larger perspective.

The discussion, which took place several months ago, was held on "Autoline This Week," hosted by John McElroy – joined by Joe White of the Wall Street Journal, Manny Lopez from the Michigan Capitol Confidential and Gary Witzenburg, a former engineer on GM's original electric project, the EV1.

Group consensus? Unless the technology gets much better very quickly, the Volt and the entire electric car industry is doomed to a lagging position that may see it penetrate one or two percent of the car market over a period of years ... at best.