WASHINGTON, D.C. -- General Motors Chairman and CEO Dan Akerson defended the Chevrolet Volt before a House subcommittee Wednesday morning, saying no customer was ever in imminent danger of fire and that the hybrid electric vehicle seemed to be under attack as much for political as practical reasons.
As advanced as the Volt is, Akerson said, pointedly, "We did not design the Volt to become a political punching bag and that's what it's become." He declared the hybrid electric car safe.
A subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee called Wednesday's hearing to ask questions of Akerson and David Strickland, the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, about the timing of release of information regarding a fire last June in a crash-tested vehicle that led to a NHTSA investigation in November. That investigation was formally closed last week, and GM has instituted a fix and new protocols for dealing with damaged lithium ion battery compartments in the Volt.
The committee also put out a report in which it asked whether the government's investment in GM -- and negotiations about new, higher fuel economy standards -- played a role in NHTSA waiting months before releasing information about the fire.
"This is about safety. This is about government's role," said Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who chairs the full committee.
U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, a Pennsylvania Republican who is also an auto dealer, asked Akerson if the Obama administration played a role in running GM. Akerson said that since he's been there, it has not.
"I will testify in front of the good Lord that this administration has never had a presence in the boardroom or any input in the operation of the business," Akerson said.
Speaking to reporters after testifying, Akerson acknowledged "there is a certain political air" about the discussions regarding the Volt's safety.
But he characterized it as a chance to find and correct a potential design flaw -- no matter how unlikely it was to result in a fire under real-world conditions -- with new protocols for dealing with Volt batteries going out to dealers and salvage yards after a crash. The first fire only occurred three weeks after NHTSA crash-tested a Volt in Wisconsin, and both Akerson and Strickland said it took months to determine what caused the fire and recreate it so a fix could be found.
Akerson said the fix for the Volt costs "in the hundreds of dollars," no more, but it will be up to the company to convince buyers that the vehicle poses no safety threat. He repeated several times during questioning that no fire has been documented outside of the NHTSA crash-tested vehicles.
Akerson said the car is safe. "We're going to have to go about reconstructing that image."
Strickland, particularly, was singled out for criticism. He appeared before the committee in October but made no mention of a June fire when asked about safety concerns. It was only after Bloomberg News broke the story of the fire, in November, that NHTSA made the fire public and even later -- after GM and NHTSA managed to re-create the fire -- that an investigation was launched.
"Why didn't you tell us?" U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican and the chair of the subcommittee, asked Strickland.
But Strickland explained that it's improper -- and possibly illegal -- for his agency to release information about a possible safety concern without making sure first the concern is a reasonable one. In this case, a formal investigation was launched in November -- nearly six months after the initial fire -- and has since been closed, following GM's retrofitting and making safety design changes to the battery compartment.
Strickland also said politics played no role in the Volt investigation or the timing of the release of information.
But Republicans hammered away at concerns that the Obama administration might have tried to hide the fact of the fire to protect the Volt's reputation, since billions of taxpayers' dollars were invested in the company as part of the 2009 rescue package that saw it and Chrysler sent through a structured bankruptcy.
Akerson said he had no conversations with administration officials about the fire, and when Issa asked him whether NHTSA's response was "more aggressive or less aggressive" compared to a "typical catastrophic event, " Akerson described it as "proportional."
The GM executive echoed concerns raised by Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, that Republicans could hurt GM sales by overstating safety concerns with the Volt.
"I do think there has been collateral damage. We're going to have to work hard to get it back," Akerson said.
"The Volt is safe," he said earlier in a prepared statement. "It's a marvelous machine."
Issa said next up for the committee is to look into similar events not involving GM to determine NHTSA's reaction. By doing so, it can compare the response times.
"We are disappointed. NHTSA could have done a much better job," said Issa, suggesting the timing of the release of information -- following the release of fuel economy standards -- amounted to a "statutory cover-up, if you will."
"The truth is, they should have been more aggressive," Issa said of NHTSA. "This is a brand-new car."
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
