The New Prius Volt

GM's 'Volt' is a concept, a possibility, a "MAYBE".

The Toyota Prius has been REALITY for over a decade. BIG DIFFERENCE.

IF & When General Motors sells its first Chevrolet 'Volt', then someone can drive it, compare it, test it, and "Roll the Dice" on its reliability, something no GM product owner can ever be certain of.

BUY a Very Expensive totally new Technology from GM the world's most renowned 'Lemon Builder' in its first year of production ? If that describes YOU, give me a call, I have a Terrific Deal on some Brooklyn Bridge 'Stock' !

 

It rolls out this fall. You will see it.

the uh rest of what you said...yeah well my chevy hhr ss goes BACK in the shop for excessive valvetrain noise after it's sat for more than 20 minutes. My last POS chevy for a while!

 

What comes out this fall is a bastardized version of the car they promised. Something with a volt badge will come this fall, but it won't be the volt...

 

$42,000 for a car that gets only 40 miles range on EV, and 300 miles range on gasoline is hardly a bargain.

Prius would be better choice. Not the PHV, but just a regular prius. $20,000 price difference will buy you maybe 20 years or more of gasoline... So i don't see what you'd be saving in terms of money buying a volt.

 

lol

 

A) $41,000

B) $33,500 after rebate

C) My Prius will cost over $2,300 a year in fuel, my old car cost close to $4,700 a year. Not because I drive a lot but because it costs $7 a gallon.

 

will there be a $7500 rebate in UK too? Whats the pricing for UK, i'd guess it'd be a tad bit higher due to export/import fees?

Gas here is averaged at $2.80 a gallon =) So a prius driver who drives 15,000 mi a year will pay about $800 a year for gas.

 

OK so a 40 mile range= 42k
So a prius in good conditions can go a 1 mile so 40 miles takes 40 prius so 23k time 40=$920,000 to go 40 miles in ev in a prius.

You can do math any way you want.
Prius waste of money because you can buy a little mini bike and get 100mpg, plus save tens of thousands in buying it over a prius.

How about we all wait and see what GM gets out there, then you can bash. Maybe there is some good with the volt idea? Better then the Hummer H2XL?

 

The eCVT PSD was invented by a team at TRW in the late '60s. They took out a couple of patents which were granted in 1971. However, they weren't able to monetise them and stopped paying the renewal fees in 1988.

The problem was that they couldn't figure out a mechanical control system necessary to blend the inputs to the engine and the two motors. Toyota and Ford independently developed control software in the late '90s to allow the use of standard controls with the power-split design; Toyota filed for patents first, then sued Ford. It's believed that no money changed hands - Ford traded some diesel engine patents.

The patent system doesn't allow for independent development of similar technology. It's my view that similar results are evidence that the solution was obvious - patents are supposed to have a 'non-obvious' test.

The Paice patent mentions the TRW patents, disparages the solution, and goes on to explain how their system is different. I can't see how that leads to an infringement. Unfortunately a US jury panel disagreed. The appeals system seems to be focused only on gross procedural errors and on the size of awards, it will not change a jury's 'findings of fact'.

 

When driving at 70MPH on the highway, the gas motor is going to run full time to charge the batteries?

 

If you've exhausted the EV range, yes. though it won't actually charge the batteries. They remain "empty" and only enough power to move the car (~20kw at that speed) is generated. if you go slowly the engine will stop and start, just like the Prius.

 

From the NY Times (July 29, 2010):

Op-Ed Contributor

G.M.’s Electric Lemon

By EDWARD NIEDERMEYER

Published: July 29, 2010


GENERAL MOTORS introduced America to the Chevrolet Volt at the 2007 Detroit Auto Show as a low-slung concept car that would someday be the future of motorized transportation. It would go 40 miles on battery power alone, promised G.M., after which it would create its own electricity with a gas engine. Three and a half years — and one government-assisted bankruptcy later — G.M. is bringing a Volt to market that makes good on those two promises. The problem is, well, everything else.


For starters, G.M.’s vision turned into a car that costs $41,000 before relevant tax breaks ... but after billions of dollars of government loans and grants for the Volt’s development and production. And instead of the sleek coupe of 2007, it looks suspiciously similar to a Toyota Prius. It also requires premium gasoline, seats only four people (the battery runs down the center of the car, preventing a rear bench) and has less head and leg room than the $17,000 Chevrolet Cruze, which is more or less the non-electric version of the Volt.



In short, the Volt appears to be exactly the kind of green-at-all-costs car that some opponents of the bailout feared the government might order G.M. to build. Unfortunately for this theory, G.M. was already committed to the Volt when it entered bankruptcy. And though President Obama’s task force reported in 2009 that the Volt “will likely be too expensive to be commercially successful in the short term,†it didn’t cancel the project.



Nor did the government or G.M. decide to sell the Volt at a loss, which, paradoxically, might have been the best hope for making it profitable. Consider the Prius. Back in 1997, Toyota began selling the high-tech, first-of-its-kind car in Japan for about $17,000, even though each model cost $32,000 to build.



By taking a loss on the first several years of Prius production, Toyota was able to hold its price steady, and then sell the gas-sippers in huge numbers when oil prices soared. Today a Prius costs roughly the same in inflation-adjusted dollars as those 1997 models did, and it has become the best-selling Toyota in the United States after the evergreen Camry and Corolla.



Instead of following Toyota’s model, G.M. decided to make the Volt more affordable by offering a $350-a-month lease over 36 months. But that offer allows only 12,000 miles per year, or about 33 miles per day. Assuming you charged your Volt every evening, giving you 40 miles of battery power, and wanted to keep below the mileage limit, you would rarely use its expensive range-extending gas engine. No wonder the Volt’s main competition, the Nissan Leaf, forgoes the additional combustion engine — and ends up costing $8,000 less as a result.



In the industry, some suspect that G.M. and the Obama administration decided against selling the Volt at a loss because they want the company to appear profitable before its long-awaited initial stock offering, which is likely to take place next month. For taxpayers, that approach might have made sense if the government planned on selling its entire 61 percent stake in G.M. But the administration has said it will sell only enough equity in the public offering to relinquish its controlling stake in G.M. Thus the government will remain exposed to the company’s (and the Volt’s) long-term fate.



So the future of General Motors (and the $50 billion taxpayer investment in it) now depends on a vehicle that costs $41,000 but offers the performance and interior space of a $15,000 economy car. The company is moving forward on a second generation of Volts aimed at eliminating the initial model’s considerable shortcomings. (In truth, the first-generation Volt was as good as written off inside G.M., which decided to cut its 2011 production volume to a mere 10,000 units rather than the initial plan for 60,000.) Yet G.M. seemingly has no plan for turning its low-volume “eco-flagship†into a mass-market icon like the Prius.



Quantifying just how much taxpayer money will have been wasted on the hastily developed Volt is no easy feat. Start with the $50 billion bailout (without which none of this would have been necessary), add $240 million in Energy Department grants doled out to G.M. last summer, $150 million in federal money to the Volt’s Korean battery supplier, up to $1.5 billion in tax breaks for purchasers and other consumer incentives, and some significant portion of the $14 billion loan G.M. got in 2008 for “retooling†its plants, and you’ve got some idea of how much taxpayer cash is built into every Volt.
In the end, making the bailout work — whatever the cost — is the only good reason for buying a Volt. The car is not just an environmental hair shirt (a charge leveled at the Prius early in its existence), it is an act of political self-denial as well.
If G.M. were honest, it would market the car as a personal donation for, and vote of confidence in, the auto bailout. Unfortunately, that’s not the kind of cross-branding that will make the Volt a runaway success.





Edward Niedermeyer is the editor of the Web site The Truth About Cars.

 

Doesn't this pretty much say what so many have said regarding the Volt on PC?

 

wow requires premium gasoline? now this car is about as useless as Chevy trying to sell a Nova in mexico.

 

Against all odds, Taco Bell did pretty well in their Mexico City branch...

Dont know where that takes the analogy, so I will leave it at that. But just to beat this dead horse a little more, GM is counting on a failure.

One thing I dislike about the article is how it references the US president as if he had any control over the situation. If he meddled with anything, people would be complain that it was communism or something crazy like that. I have little doubt that he was aware of the situation, and maybe in an extreme case wrote a letter to a high up saying this sounds like a bad idea, but in general just smiled and nodded.

 

I am not an admirer of this adminstration ... but in this case, I agree with you. The president is not a hands-on leader. He is much more comfortable campaigning, making guest appearances, visiting various groups, participating in photo OPS, and making speeches, all of which he comes across very well.

 

Actually that was not very nice since i only thought I saw dog in a mexican butcher shop window...it could have been a goat. Not if Taco bell opened up in China...

 

The Volt will have a hard time selling at $41K.

 

The world is not the USA. this car is a world car.

I'm sure just as many people said just as many negative things about the Prius,