If they can't sell it in Europe, they can't sell it anywhere..............
For more info:
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140723/AUTO0103/307230062/GM-scraps-European-version-Chevy-Volt
If they can't sell it in Europe, they can't sell it anywhere..............
For more info:
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140723/AUTO0103/307230062/GM-scraps-European-version-Chevy-Volt
Dead Battery Ping...................
I figured the Ampera would be an even bigger flop than its North American sibling. It has too many small, economical diesels as competition in Europe.
Doesn’t it have a generator onboard to charge the battery or some such? BTW, they can’t sell the very expensive Cadillac version, either:
Drastic price cuts place Cadillac ELR where it should have been all along
http://www.torquenews.com/2250/drastic-price-cuts-place-cadillac-elr-where-it-should-have-been-all-along#sthash.KjRucm6k.dpuf
Oh, and they did cancel the Opel just now:
GM scraps European version of Chevy Volt
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20140723/AUTO0103/307230062/GM-scraps-European-version-Chevy-Volt
I have great memories of an old Opel we had decades ago. My bil put a racing motor in it and I had so much fun with it. I learned to drive a straight shift on Memorial Parkway. Guys would come in the other lane and I would leave them in the dust. Of course, I was a lot younger back then. I miss it. : )
The volt would have been a good concept IF they would have went with charging while driving, and utilized regenerative braking, instead of the total loss isolated traction system that they came up with. They basically replaced one gallon of fuel with a ton of lithium ion batteries.
If you want a truly fuel efficient vehicle, fuel cell to electric propulsion is the way to go. 90+% efficient electric motors combined with 50+% efficient fuel cells would squeeze as much energy out of the fuel as you could get, and would be a two fold increase in fuel efficiency. As a benchmark, about 22~25% at best is what you get from an internal combustion engine as far as converting the energy in the fuel to moving the vehicle forward.
Put in other terms, for every gallon of fuel that you burn in your car, 75% of that fuel is wasted as heat in the exhaust, the cooling system, and parasitic losses in the drivetrain as frictional losses.
The Volt isn’t a bad looking car. That thing is gross.
Evidently they need more generous government subsidies like they have in the states.
When do we get Diesel-ized? Those FIAT-weenies are a disappointment because they are sitting on a very cool diesel that is a best seller in the EU ... and like totally unavailable here.
I remember about 8 or 9 years ago my father-in-law showed me a Powerpoint presentation that was making its way around the cyber universe about this huge conspiracy by certain “powers” to kill the original Volt which was prototyped by GM. It was classic lefty conspiracy stuff.
Not long after Obama was elected and GM was bailed out, the Volt as we know it today was introduced. I always felt that Lefties in the administration (redundant) had to make things right after learning about the injustice based on the PPT presentation and force this POS on the market.
There is an irony that high electric rates in many European countries as a result of green energy could make a rechargeable vehicle too expensive to operate.