The Chevy Volt

My dad, an engineer, has been telling me for the last three years not to replace my car because there will soon be a feasible electric car. I listened, to an extent, but while looking around online today I found this wikipedia article about the Chevy Volt, which is allegedly going to be released starting in 2010.

Has anybody else heard about this?

 

I've heard some radio commercials. Chevy REALLY needs to do a better job with them. The big line in the ad is the Volt can get 40 miles on a single charge, which ain't much for even a modest commute. You go 20 miles one way, get stuck in traffic, and you're stranded.
The wiki article says 640 miles on a tank of gas using the Volt's hybrid technology, which is damned impressive. They need to tout the latter, and not the former.

 

Yea, my commute is about two miles. I'll be fine. I don't care about the hybrid shit. Rarely do I drive further than 20 miles.

 

That's awesome. Any word on how much one of these will cost?

 

GM's site: http://www.chevrolet.com/electriccar/

Can't really find much about the price though. I'm not sure I care thought.

 

It's pretty interesting technology. It's powered by an electric motor, and it's able to travel on battery power alone for about 40 miles. Once the juice runs out, a gasoline engine kicks in but it doesn't power the car -- it acts as a generator to produce power for the electric motor. It can also be plugged in to recharge the battery overnight.

GM is saying it'll get something like 40 or 50 mpg when running on the gas engine.

The downside? Technology ain't cheap. It'll probably cost close to $40,000. It's not known yet what sort of tax breaks there will be.

Bottom line: It's pretty interesting, but, like any new technology, isn't going to be inexpensive at first.

 

So this just gives me further incentive to get out of journalism

 

Will GM even be around by the time this is supposed to come out? My dad, a GM employee, says things on the inside aren't great and major panic has set in company wide.

 

If I only had a 2-mile commute to work, I'd walk or ride a bike, if the weather was nice.

As it is, anything less than a 100-mile range is a dealbreaker for me. Not that I commute that far — but there are games to cover, etc.

 

The Volt also has a gas engine. The 40-mile deal is on the battery only.


http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/archives/2008/11/volt_the_next_phase.html

 

GM has been pimping this for a while. Charge the car, get 40 miles, from there its gas time.

 

Tax incentives are definitely the way to go if you want to promote cleaner cars.

And not to rile up anyone, but beyond the limitations of the electric motor and the overall cost, does (or would) anyone object to heavier promotion of these kinds of vehicles? What's the downside?