The new Chevy Volt

[Mike Poore]

http://gm-volt.com/

Funny, a year ago it was dead in the water, now, after a bankruptcy they're offering a car what will get 230 MPG and recharge for 41 cents a day. I know the purchase price is high, but with the fuel savings + the tax incentives, it's a no brainier, if all you're talking about is a transportation appliance for local trips, never mind it's a damned nice looking car; and surely the price will come down.

One wonders how this amazing technology has suddenly surfaced. :eek:

Ladies and gentlemen, the race is on. :cool:

Stand by, while Charlie does the math....:D

[Vortex]

Ill be curious about how many people really want a true (v. hybrid) electric car. For all the talk, even hybrids are relatively slow sellers from what Ive read.

[CBT]

Hopefully they actually sell it this time (unlike the EVO-1.) before they get spanked by a competitor, like last time.

[Canadasvt]

I'd rather ride my bike if I wanted to save money and Earth.

[juno]

As a stockholder (taxpayer) and gas hoarder :) I hope they sell a million of them, just as long as they stay out of my way. :eek:

What is the pricing? I thought I read north of 40k somewhere before incentives. :eek:

[Glenn]

Read the details - 40 miles on a charge before using the engine and the 40 miles is under ideal and calculated conditions - not real world. So you really drive 30 miles or less on the battery. What possible good is this type of car. O' and by the way the 230 mpg is a calculated number not actual. The mpg as you read on is actually 100 mpg or even less - all calculated. So where do you plug up this car - at home right! Gee, what flexibility! After the "Cap and Trade" bill is passed by the state authority your electric bills will double - great for electric cars. But, this is the change people voted for!

One thing no one looks at is the depreciated value of these cars after a few years will be Zero due to the very expensive maintenance and replacement of the expensive batteries. Battery replacement has been quoted at about $10,000 and they do not last that long.

Also, this car wil be very expensive to insure. If you have an accident and damage the battery compartment or batteries - forgot it. Can you image what battery acid would do to this car in an accident.

Sorry, I'll stick with the IC engine.

Glenn Ford

[cvpiftw]

If they actually used decent technology and made it fast as hell.....id get myself into debt to buy one.

[Glenn]

Any real speed is for a very limited time - . The Testa car is a real joke - 100 miles on a charge. Sure it will do 80 mph - but for only a few miles. The pubic is not getting the true story on these cars - only hipe from the state controlled media.

Glenn

[LIGHTNIN1]

I'm reading the same thing Glenn. A lot of these numbers they put out are not real world. The car is like anything else battery powered, it does not just magically stop after a certain mileage. Please show me where the savings is.

[Breadfan]

I think the Volt is a good car if it does as advertised. It could dethrone the Prius and put some positive focus back on the USA instead of Toyota. I hate Priae anyway...junkers!

The Volt's hybrid technology is how it should've been done from the start, and is nothing new - Diesel locomotives been doing it for years.

I suspect the technology for the Volt has been in Chevy's design studios for a whlie. It's getting the Volt through all the Gov't regulated vehicle standards that took longer...

GM is fully capable of producing this car and doing it right let's hope now "Czar's" get in the way.

[Joe Walsh]

I hope that they do well with the car. It would be great for someone who lives and commutes almost exclusively in the city.
I like the idea of a battery powered car with a small I.C. engine to power the HVAC system, to recharge the battery pack, and to power the vehicle at steady state highway speeds were only a fraction of the typical I.C. engine's power is needed to keep the vehicle at 65 mph.
The vehicle would not be a performance car, but it's not designed to be that....it is supposed to use very little gasoline.

Right now...all battery powered cars are hampered by the same thing:
Battery technology.
As was noted: Battery packs are very expensive to replace....and they will need to be replaced eventually.
They don't do well in real world conditions of heat and cold.
They are heavy.
They don't like being charged at a rapid rate.
Until we figure out better battery pack systems, this is the best we can expect.

BTW: DO NOT lay your crescent wrench across the battery terminals of that car!!!

[Glenn]

Check out more information ------

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnews/20090811/ts_usnews/howthechevyvoltwilltransformfu eleconomy

Glenn

[RR|Suki]

If only the cost wasn't out of the range of so many that could really benifit from a daily driver that gets that kind of mpg...

[LIGHTNIN1]

$40,000 for what? Even $30,000. So I can brag about helping save the planet? I got better things to do. It is like all the other environmental shenanigins, hard to prove in real life and you have to jump through so many hoops to get there. Give me a large gas guzzlin V8 and forget about it.

[rayjay]

I'm willing to bet it won't work where I live. The university has a fleet of electric cars. As soon as it gets cold out they all disapper until the following spring. The batteries won't hold a charge in cold weather.

[Eric-Blk2004]

I believe the 230mpg is rated based on mileage driven. If you drive 40 miles you dont use any gas since thats battery, 41 miles you use some gas so thats when the MPG is calculated, based off distances (41 miles) and gas used (X amount). So the longer you drive, the less MPG you get - average MPG is like 62.5 I was reading.

The battery costs are just speculation, no one has had to replace them yet, and most Liths will last 2 to 4 years - and those are the little camera ones. I am pretty sure the technology into building these cars is more sophisticated then Kodak.

I view the 230 MPG as a marketing stunt and the car will last a little while until the Japanese make a better more practical and cheaper verison.

Sad part is when towns will increase energy costs to "accomdate." Some reason they chose to shoot down clean Nuclear energy and then expect all this electricity to appear out of no where.

[omarauder]

Sad part is when towns will increase energy costs to "accomdate." Some reason they chose to shoot down clean Nuclear energy and then expect all this electricity to appear out of no where.


When there's enough electric vehicles out there, then they'll start adding "Road Tax" to your electricity bill....:eek:

[Donny Carlson]

It'll take at least 10 of em to balance all the fuel that Glen and I will burn at Steele next Sunday ;)

[Aren Jay]

As an Albertan I hope none of them sell.

[Aren Jay]

Mdi http://www.mdi.lu/english/

[a_d_a_m]

My commute to/from work is 20 miles. That'd be nice to not have to fuel up the daily driver...and I'd feel less guilty about hammering on the Marauder!

Plus, I think I remember them saying they'd be built at Lordstown Assembly, which is good for Ohio!!!

[twin03]

The new Chevy Volt will not save GM. Nothing will......

[Wires]

The 230 miles per gallon figure is as meaningless as me saying that my Marauder gets an infinite number of miles per pound of hydrogen gas.

Miles per gallon is only a usefull number if the car gets energy from only gasoline. Unless electricity is free, we need to consider the cost of the electricity as well.

According to the US department of Energy, there are 114,500 BTUs per gallon of gasoline (summer) 114,500 BTU is 33.6 Killowatt hours (check my conversion, and my math)

So, there are 33.6 killowatt hours of energy in a gallon of gasoline.

How much do you pay for electricity? Multiply that by 33.6 and you have the cost for the same energy as a gallon of gasoline.

At 5 cents per KWH (kilowatt hour), the energy in 1 gallon of gasoline would cost you 33.6(.05) = $1.68 in electricity. That’s not bad.

At 10 cents per KWH, It would cost you 3.36 cents. (a little high, but OK)

If the nay-sayers are correct, and this cap and trade bill doubles electricity costs, at 20 cents per KWH, we’re up to the equivalent of $6.72 per gallon. Let’s hope that it doesn't double, or triple!

The correct figure of merit for a plug in vehicle, which the Volt is advertised to be, is miles per kilowatt hour. Only counting the gasoline is deceptive, because the car uses energy from two sources. As long as electricity isn’t free, we need to be concerned with how many miles we get from the total energy used.

Until we get better batteries, we won't have a practical electric car. Batteries are far too heavy for the amount of energy they can contain, don't last very long, and are very expensive.

While hybrids get around the battery problem by using gasoline as their primary storage method, even they are hurt by the battery's disadvantages.

http://www.sciencebuzz.org/buzz-tags/volt