Updated: 2:51 p.m. ET.

General Motors (GM) loses as much as $49,000 on each Chevrolet Volt, according to Reuters, proving that the innovative plug-in hybrid is impractical and will probably never be more than a niche product.

The estimate from Reuters is hardly a shock. With a sticker price of $39,995, GM is asking people to pay BMW or Mercedes prices for a Chevy.

Those consumers who would buy such a vehicle are so passionate about doing right by the environment that they aren't deterred by such pedestrian issues as economics. Obviously, that's a small target market --  too small for GM to be able to make the Volt profitably. 

As Reuters noted, the Detroit car maker is basically giving the Volt away with deals that enable consumers to pay $5,050 to lease the vehicle -- which costs as much as $89,000 to produce -- for two years. GM will probably sell fewer than half of the 40,000 Volts that it had hoped to unload this year.

Lackluster sales have forced GM to idle the Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant that makes the Volt for four weeks starting Sept. 17, according to media reports. Doug Parks, GM's vice president of global product program, told Reuters that the Volt will "eventually" make money but was vague as to specifics. That's probably because he isn't sure when this wondrous event will occur.

GM said this afternoon that the Reuters report was "grossly wrong." It says that estimates it costs $75,000 to make a single Volt, including development costs, is not accurate. It allocates development costs over the "lifetime volume" of the Volt, not across the current number of Volts sold.

GM can take solace in knowing that other electric vehicles are selling poorly as well.   According to the Detroit News, Nissan probably won't come close to meeting its 20,000 U.S. target for the Leaf this year because it has only sold 4,228 units so far, down 31.5% from a year ago. The Toyota (TM) Prius is the exception, but that vehicle has been around for more than a decade and, as Bloomberg News recently noted, also had a rocky history. 

As long as gas remains relatively cheap -- below $5 a gallon -- most consumers will take a pass on hybrids. The technology has a future, but it's unclear when its day will come. People who own Volts and Leafs should hold onto them. Given their limited production runs, these vehicles will surely be collector's items in the coming decades.

Jonathan Berr does not own shares of the listed stocks. Follow him on Twitter@jdberr.