“Electric cars have been around for over a hundred years......................and they still have the same problems they had a hundred years ago....................”
Agreed.
Additionally, the Volt is a variation on existing technology. Locomotives are diesel-electric. That is they use diesel motors to drive electric motors on the wheel. The Volt uses a gas engine to do the same job, when the charge runs down.
As for your examples of innovation, they were improvements over existing technology, even if they weren’t very good. The first airplane didn’t go very far, but there was no other form of powered flight. The first computers filled a good sized room, but they did the job that hundreds of people with pencil and paper did, and quicker, (and they could stay on for more than 5 minutes). As for early automobiles, actually, they were pretty good. Not as fast and safe as today’s cars, but not bad. The Volt is touted as an improvement, superior technology to conventional gasoline powered cars.
I would say that the Hyundai Elantra gets better mileage, and has a smaller carbon footprint, while saving the consumer 10s of thousands in upfront costs versus the Volt.
“The first computers filled a good sized room,”
If I recall correctly. more like a large gymnasium. Full of a couple thousand vacuum tubes. I doubt if they ever shut it off.
“The ENIAC contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, along with 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, 1,500 relays, 6,000 manual switches and 5 million soldered joints. It covered 1800 square feet (167 square meters) of floor space, weighed 30 tons, consumed 160 kilowatts of electrical power. There was even a rumor that when turned on the ENIAC caused the city of Philadelphia to experience brownouts, however, this was first reported incorrectly by the Philadelphia Bulletin in 1946 and since then has become an urban myth.”