Earlier today, Reuters published a report going over the numbers of GM's (NYSE: GM) Chevy Volt, and positing that selling them is not good for the company's bottom line. "Nearly two years after the introduction of the path-breaking plug-in hybrid, GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds, according to estimates provided to Reuters by industry analysts and manufacturing experts," stated the article.

With more than 100 comments and 5,000 Facebook recommendations on reuters.com, the story has piled on in a big way to Volt's already tarnished reputation.

GM fired back in a press release, taking particular issue with how Reuters calculated loss per unit. Reuters allocated product development costs across the number of Volts sold instead of across the number that will be sold across the lifetime of the program, wrote GM.

GM also pointed out that the Chevy Volt is part of a larger research initiative to bolster the corporation's electric vehicle technology, research that will ultimately benefit the company as a whole.

GM can't definitively know whether the Volt will or won't pay off in the long run, but the company is attempting to stress that Reuters can't, either.