Comments on: Electric Chevy Volt debuts with lofty ambitions

At its centennial party, GM unveils the production Chevy Volt, an electric car that can reach 100 mph and be driven for less than a dollar a day.

[softwarepro]

why on the earth people say shape is not good. It looks way way better compare what we have in market for hybrid cars or say any car (front look is awesome)

[planblove]

Some of all are crazy for putting this car down just because it looks "normal". I mean, You all do realize that if your commute is less than 40 miles per day, you'll NEVER have to go to a gas station again? No more $100 per week fill ups for me please. And yes you will have to fill it up on occasion but otherwise this car is way ahead of the automotive technological gap. Sign me up, I'm ready.

[samkass]

Plablove, even if you pay $100 a week on gasoline (which I'd say is on the extreme high side for your average person) and you got all your electricity for free (which is a very low estimate), that's $25,000 over 5 years. The car is anticipated to cost $40,000! Go out and buy a beautiful used car for $15,000 and you'll be saving money, keeping old cars out of landfills, and saving the energy it takes to produce a new car.

There may be arguments based on aesthetics, "cool" factor, or just liking new stuff, but there's really not a very good economic or environmental argument that favors the Volt.

[gabelevinson]

Lie# 1: Cost per kilowat Hour for most people is 15c- so the cost to charge the Volt will be at least $1.20 or 3c per mile
Lie#2: you will always drive it electric- no at best a 50 50 driving is to be expected
half the times like on the highways or on longer trips you will use the gas engin for a cost of 12c a gallon (GM numbers) avarage the two and you get 7.5 c per mile not 2.

Lie # 3: To compare to a car getting 30 miles per gallon and not to compare to the true competition - Honda or Toyota hybreeds that get 50 miles per gallon city or hyway!
that comes to 7.2 cent per mile- less than the Volt's 7.5c.

lie#4; It will save GM, At 40,000 plus GM will be lucky to sell a few thousand units and I understand that the batteries will need to be replaced after 3 years at a cost of 10K.

[formularacer]

For those of you who complain about the design, think about it... Form FOLLOWS function, not the other way around. If they left the vehicle unchanged from the concept, the coeffecient of drag would be much higher, thus lowering the fuel economy/range traveled on the car. IMO, it looks better than the Prius and if you look at the pics of the interior, its quite nicely done. For those hoping for Hydrogen...keep waiting. At this point in time its just a science project until they can get an infrastructure in place...Have fun waiting for that. In terms of advanced propulsion technology, GM is on par with Honda and ahead of Toyota if you ask people who really know the business.

[purcell429]

Of course form follows function, but the point is still valid that is bait and switch tactics. They knew damn well it had an awful drag coefficient, but just failed to mention it. Then they reworked a malibu instead, slapped a prius rear end on it, and Wham!, here is your volt! Most companies at least show a concept that has at least SOME styling cues taken from it for a production vehicle.

[ygopichand]

how will this impact the electricity charges of an average consumer and the electricity grid during peak usage hours (summer) once the car obtains wide acceptance. Did anyone investigate this aspect?

[J_Meach]

This car looks really good. At first when I saw the pics with the GM execs I was kinda thinking it looked a little boring when compared to the concept, but the design is really growing on me. I think this is not only a looker for all age groups, but also well executed. Hopefully they make their release deadline and the EPA doesn't screw them over with bad tax incentives!

[johnqh]

I would glad buy this car.

Most of my trips are going to and back from work, 15 miles total per day. The Volt costs almost nothing.

Also, that can be another incentive to install the solar panel.

And to "samkass", do you think this car will depreciate to $0 in five years? Do you know how much following EV1 has? the worst case, it will have a value of $20K after 5 years, that's 20K ahead of your advice to "buy a used card for 15K and spend 25K on gas".

[pego99]

What is all the excitement? The press has gone gaga. The incompetent CEO of GM Wagoner shows a prototype car that is over 2 years away at best and everyone acts like it is the second coming. Get real people. Watch the movie Who Killed The Electric Car if you want to see the real story.

[Reality3389]

Ok, so the car will do 40 miles on a full charge of its battery. How much fossil fuel is burned to produce the electricity that will power the car these 40 miles? Natural Gas, coal, deisel, or wind, solar and nuclear? Electric cars only shift the energy use to somewhere else, with the exception of the hybrid mode, but then the driver has to live with far less power, and complicated circuitry and expensive energy transfer hardware.

But seriously, how much fossil fuel would have to be burned to produce the electricity to fully charge the Volt?

[yakitat]

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) released a report which stated that there is enough unused, off-peak electrical generating capacity at thermal plants in the USA to recharge up to 200 million plug in hybrids each night. This is without adding a single new power plant. Thermal plants must stay hot so they can quickly respond to demand changes. A large amount of energy is wasted which could be utilized effectively by PEHV

[ElMocoLoco]

Disappointing. If I can afford one, I might buy one because of the technology inside. But the excitement is gone. I wonder how the engineers who designed the original concept car feel about having it reduced to this. Sighh.. Sure, it's good in lots of ways that really count, but it could have been GREAT!

[TomMariner]

Just noted that the blog that announced the Volt was written by the Vice Chairman of the Board of GM!

Could those guys finally be getting it from top to bottom?

[jequeen1]

They are backing the wrong horse. Hydrogen Cell is the answer and this is just another diversion from that correct path.

Call this green? I call it the Black death
Where does all that wonderful lithium ion poison go when the batteries become worn out?
Thanks to the anti nuke nuts, we have to burn coal to make electricity to charge this car every day so where is the green in that?
E85 is the dumest thing the government has ever done. Lets take our food and make fuel out of it,get crappy gas mileage with it and then wonder why everything from Beef to Bread has had double digit cost increases

Maybe I am bitter because I can not use this thing. Like MANY of us, I drive 60 miles round trip each day to work and this thing can only go 40 miles

Good first step but the value isn't there. I'd stand in line to buy a Prius rather than pay more for the Volt.
And where is Chrysler? They hold the current position of ugly cars with poor mileage.
Why anyone would crow about their vehicle gets 24 mpg is obscene.

[Pegs56]

I'm always astounded by the argument of how much energy is used to manufacture these cars (this, the Prius, the Insight) & then how much to produce the relatively small amount of electricity to recharge the battery & therefore it's not very "green" or cost effective to use. Um, the same amount of the above goes into the manufacture of an internal combustion engine vehicle. The difference is after you start using the electric vehicle, you are generally no longer adding to the pollution problem by burning gasoline (note I say generally).

Also not considered is the relative ease of switching to solar power in the household. Between solar panels, solar shingles, the still in developement solar windows as well as wind power, there's no reason to think that plugging in the car every night would be cause for burning more fossil fuels.

As someone whose car trips rarely exceed 10 miles each way, I will be thrilled to get an electric vehicle, when any are again available in this area (Volt, Prius, whatever). Heck, I could make do with a golf cart. As for styling, except for the Prowler, I think every car designed in the last 35 years is ugly. But, I don't buy a car to look at it, I buy a car to drive it (and when I'm driving, I can't see much of the outside anyway).

I live in Houston, where most of the Metro is without electricity because of Hurricane Ike (I'm one of the very fortunate to have had power & phone restored quickly), but even where power has been restored, there is almost no gas to be had.. I can guarantee there are a lot of people here who would LOVE to have an electric/gas hybrid right now.

[phogan]

I wonder where GM comes up with 10 cents a kilowatt/hour? My last electric bill was $184.89 for 886 kilowatt/hours which figures out to 20.87 cents per kilowatt/hour, more than DOUBLE their figure. Also we already have brownouts on warm days when folks are using A/C. If everyone wants to charge electric cars as well, not a chance of them being able to supply the juice to do so.

[yakitat]

They, the utilities, already have enough excess capacity to charge millions of PEHV each night. You are correct that it can not be done on-peak. Come home, park it in the garage, plug it in. The utility can manage demand including switching your vehicle charger on and off. This will provide a lower rate for interruptable power. BTW $0.09/KwHr is the national average off-peak rate; going up steadily.

[ckurowic]

Um, the volt gets 40 mpg while running on the GASOLINE engine (this is not a pure electric car) and it can only travel 40 miles on the battery. My Toyota Yaris gets 42-52 mpg (depending on the setting, highway or city, don't believe me? Look it up on fuel economy.gov, EPA estimates are total bunk). Also my Yaris was $13,300 out the door, not $40,000! If GM is betting the company on this, may as well kiss it goodbye.

[cjohn126]

I really don't care about the looks.

This car would be perfect for me since I only work 6 miles from work. However I'm am absolutely NOT paying $40,000 for it. I have two cars, the '98 is paid off and the '05 will be paid off by year end. I like the idea of using no gas to go to/from work, but the idea of $0 in car payments is even better. Even if I were to get it, how long would it take for the high price tag to pay for itself? 4 years, 5 years...longer? On a given week I drive less than 100 miles, so something like this is not economical for me at least at this price.

I am not a fan of American cars, but I do wish GM luck with this. Hopefully there are enough people that will benefit from this and Volt ends up being a huge success. This would pave the way for more electric cars; and driving the price down so many more people will be able to benefit.

[Rosesimone]

Geeeez. This looks a heck of lot like the General Motors EV1 that GM deliberately discontinued in 1999 and pulled off the road in 2003 and became the topic of the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:GM_EV.jpg

[band444]

If GM wasn't going to produce the Volt looking like the original Volt then they should not have advertised it on tv as the car of the "future". It was flashed on tv screens all over the US in front of us. Concept cars are usually only seen at auto shows and are seen as that....concept cars. But this one was different. They had to present it all over everywhere and lead people to believing that this is the Volt. And I believed them. Now they throw out this imposter and everyone that was so excited about what they have been seeing and waiting for is gone. Shame on me. I, for one, was one of those that was prepared to get one when they became available. Now..I am saddened and disappointed and feel totally betrayed by a car company that I thought was going to blow everyone else away with a car that would be unrivaled by any other. I guess I was dreaming. To me, this 'production' Volt will always be an imposter and I will always dream of the true Original Volt that was presented to us that will never be. I had told my colleagues at work about the Volt back some time ago and they had even seen it advertised on tv and was even interested in it and talking about it and even excited to see it debut. When I showed them the imposter Volt they were like,,, "oh my gosh, what happened? That's not the Volt. That looks like a Malibu. I'm not interested in that". All interest is now gone. What a waste. Even though it has new technology, if you can't package it to show it, then it doesn't matter. Oh well, the old bait and switch again.