If by ballsy you mean spending a ton of money on an unlikely success to keep up with a marketing trend, then yes, ballsy.
It seems really that the Volt idea is at least a little driven by the green push in marketing. Obviously an efficient and powerful electrical car would be in some ways attractive and would be a money-maker. But experience with all kinds of batteries shows that no one has come close to this yet despite all the anti-oil company conspiracy theories. If the technology had a feasible future date as GM has set (2010), GM wouldn't be the only company putting itself on the line. As you mentioned tons of people are already working on fuel cells and GM should be too. But to have this car out there before any realistic expectation of success is only going to hurt. They're already wedded to the car even though they're not going to make any money on it.
Among it's non-profit incentive drawbacks is a big one electric car fanatics seemingly forget: you have to produce electricity with some other source of fuel. 6hrs of charging with the Volt is not inexpensive or necessarily carbon emission reducing. This makes all the enviro-talk with cars going green all the more absurd. The need for energy efficiency will drive the market in the longer term. Once people realize their plug-in cars are not saving the world and are simultaneously more expensive than other cars, the marketing fad will end. And it is a marketing fad. I think it was one of Toyota's executives (maybe one of Ford's too) who had the candor to say their cars were not more efficient economically for the consumer, but the consumer is dumb enough to buy because for fashionable political reasons or in the belief that the consumer is helping the environment. Trouble is you had to be on the front end of this fad to make money (Toyota) and not get in the game in 2010.
GM needs to (or should have) shed old labor costs with buyouts and such and focus on building better cars and trucks. However, whether they're anticipating a bail-out or not, it is in the wings. Can we honestly anticipate our political class letting Ford and GM die? We can't even let airlines go without them feeding at the public trough and still being unprofitable.
