Interesting Forbes article on the Volt, savior of GM:
http://www.forbes.com/2011/03/16/chevy-volt-ayn-rand-opinions-patrick-michaels.htmlChevy Volt: The Car From Atlas Shrugged Motors
The Chevrolet Volt is beginning to look like it was manufactured by Atlas Shrugged Motors, where the government mandates everything politically correct, rewards its cronies and produces junk steel.
This is the car that subsidies built. General Motors lobbied for a $7,500 tax refund for all buyers, under the shaky (if not false) promise that it was producing the first all-electric mass-production vehicle.
least that's what we were once told. Sitting in a Volt that would not start at the 2010 Detroit Auto Show, a GM engineer swore to me that the internal combustion engine in the machine only served as a generator, kicking in when the overnight-charged lithium-ion batteries began to run down. GM has continually revised downward its estimates of how far the machine would go before the gas engine fired, and now says 25 to 50 miles.
Virtually nothing that we have been told about this car is true. Somehow, I don't think this is going to save GM.
From an automotive journalist:
http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/transportation/blogs/first-drive-in-the-electric-chevrolet-volt-thats-right-not-a-hybridThe Volt, which will be on the market in three markets (Washington, D.C., Michigan and California) by the end of the year, uses its small gas engine not to drive the wheels, but to provide electricity for the onboard battery pack. You get 40 miles of battery cruising, then another 300 miles, courtesy of that gas engine acting as a generator.
“The Volt is not a hybrid or plug-in hybrid,” said Jim Campbell, the U.S. marketing vice president at Chevrolet. "It is an extended-range electric vehicle.”
As far as sales are concerned, it's as subjective as the gas/hybrid/electric thing:
http://gm-volt.com/2011/02/02/as-volt-sales-outpace-the-leaf-gm-works-on-lowering-price/January sales figures for GM were announced yesterday, and the automaker continued to see positive gains with overall sales coming in 22% greater than a year ago.
Included in the total of 178,897 cars and truck sold, GM announced that it had sold 321 Chevy Volts. This is in addition to the 326 Volts sold in December, indicating 647 have so far reached customers. Nissan for its part only sold 87 Leafs , and only 19 in December for a total of 106 units sold, less than one sixth as many as Volts.
Demand for the Volt has been red hot, and sales figures would be much higher if GM wasn’t deliberately pacing themselves. “Right now we’re selling every one we can make,” GM spokesman Tom Wilkinson said, “so as shipments rise we expect sales to rise as well.”
