Posted on 07/30/2010 12:56:20 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
The Chevrolet Volt may be wearing out its welcome. General Motors has been hyping the gasoline-electric car ever since the company showed it off to the public 1,300 days ago. The company has let countless reporters into its battery labs and given interviews with its engineers, all in a very credible attempt to show that GM has smart people with good ideas. And it has worked. GM has picked up some technological credibility and fostered goodwill with the environmental crowd.
Now that GM is finally, after three and a half years, getting close to selling one, the commentariat is taking shots at the Volt. In an editorial in the New York Times today, Truth About Cars Editor Edward Niedermeyer panned the car as “GM’s Electric Lemon.” He criticized the car for, among other things, having bland styling and because it will likely lose GM money. Before that, “Tonight Show” host Jay Leno, a well-known car buff, also took a shot at the Volt’s styling, telling the Detroit news that, “if you didn’t know, you might think it’s a Cobalt or a Camry.”
What gives? It could be a case of Volt fatigue. Sure, documenting the tale of the car’s development gave GM a great story to tell. But in the past few months the company has amped up the noise on a car that has been hyped for years. I count 14 press releases on the Volt since June, including an announcement today that GM will boost 2012 production from 30,000 to 45,000. Some of those releases were absolutely necessary, like vital information on pricing, warranty and ordering options.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessweek.com ...
Now THAT'S a great pricing strategy that's good for ANY bankrupt country that owns an auto manufacturer.
Wait, that's us!
You might make it out of the garage.
Ok here we have the 40K obama motors toy.
40 mile range? What the hell is up with that?
How much additional electricity will it take to recharge the batteries?
Chevy is trying to outdo itself.
Vega
chevette
this pos
Of course if you decide to roll down the elec windows, use the a/c or heat, turn on the radio — all bets are off.
Of course, you are liable to get a little better milage if you keep the tires properly inflated. ;^)
Rename GM British Leyland and get it over with.
Nope. Michelle knows he's gay.
Keep in mind, there is NO trade in value for a hybrid.
No one buys a used hybrid.
The batteries last longer than the drive train. 10 years and your investment is gone. You need a new car.
yitbos
What? Didn’t you hear? It will go FORTY MILES between battery charges!
Battery powered electric cars will NEVER be viable because of the amount of power and time required to recharge the batteries. I don’t care if you have a battery pack that only weighs 150 lbs and will take a 3000lb car 350 miles, the amount of power required to charge the batteries will be ENORMOUS.
If a car with a 50 hp electric motor had a 350 mile range at 70 mph and you could change out your battery pack at a commercial station that could recharge 30 batteries at once in 5 hours, that service station would have a 1.125 MEGAWATT draw on the system just to service the batteries. If you speed up the charge to 2 1/2 hours, you double the power draw to 2.25 megawatts. And that is just for 30 batteries at once.
Critics may say that the batteries can be charged in off peak hours, but off peak hours are when we rely on the cheapest forms of electricity, hydroelectric and nuclear, but when you add hundreds of thousands (probably more like tens of millions) of megawatts, you have to put your coal fired plants back into production and even they won’t be able to keep up.
Perhaps if the same effing envirowhackos who want to force us into electric cars hadn’t killed the nuclear power plant program in the US we wouldn’t care because we had plenty of cheap and clean power.
I might say that stupidity and short sightedness bit them in the ass again, but their ultimate goal is to reduce the US to turd world status where only the liberal elite have vehicles to travel in.
Fixed it.
Yesterday I got my Navigator tuned up at the local Ford dealer. The had several 2010 Focuses, each with more passenger space, more reliability, and better performance than a Volt, on sale for between $14,000 and $18,000.
40 miles range if you don’t need heat or air conditioning. Meaning it is useless!
Forty grand for a mouse car which will travel nearly 40 miles before running out of juice, after which you’ll have a nice 4 cylinder mouse car.
(1) For $40,000 you can by a Prius and $18,000 worth of gas. At 40 mpg and $2.65/gal that $18,000 will provide 272,000 miles of driving. Hmmm...
(2) The electric range is "up to 40 miles". Any bets on the range with the heater running on a cold Minnesota morning? Or with the A/C running on a hot Texas afternoon?
LOL!!!!! I just broke a rib!!!!!
Are those supposed to be selling points? Bwaaaaahahahahahaaaaa!
"Honey, unplug the drier and drop that 10ga extension cord down from the laundry room will ya? Honey? Honey? Where'd she go?"
Truth Guy....you have made yourself quite a spokesman for this zeromobile....I have seen all kinds of posts you have made singing the praises for this overpriced bucket of electricity. Any fool knows this has about of much chance of being a success as flatus in a whirlwind. If I didn’t know better I would say you were a gummint motors “hack”.
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