Looks great - the Volt is just what GM (and this country) need. I wonder how readily they will be able to adapt the drivetrain to other vehicles or if it requires a new design from the ground up. I'm thinking the latter.
Awesome! The media is swarming with news on this right now. I searched Yahoo News (a search engine for media news), and there were over 1,000 articles written on the GM Volt just yesterday. So what is the current "promised" date that it will be on dealer lots? "Production is scheduled to begin late 2010." That can't be right. They already have a working car (photo below). Honda said their new car will be here in Spring 2009. why is it going to take GM two more years before the Volt arrives? image source: http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//080916/ids_photos_wl/r2316691693.jpg/
Has the final production version gone through the government safety tests? Is the production line ready to go, or was the first one hand-assembled? There are lots of things that take a fair amount of time. I won't give GM a hard time for the delay between the first 'production' vehicle and full production. I will remain skeptical until I actually see these for sale on the showroom floor
Wow that Volt looks pricey. Sure seems to have a wider track than the Prius. There was a full page ad in the local newspaper today also. At $40k, the car won't be affordable to a great many people. Let's hope it turns out to be a good car that sells pretty well, 'cause the US needs a boost.
Good news. The first vehicles like this won't be super affordable. It's rare that a new tech comes out and is instantly cost competitive, esp for something like a car. I just hope that they don't fall flat on their faces. If GM is able to pull this off, it will force a lot of naysayers to take a serious look.
GM now has advertisements for the Volt on various websites. This screen shot was taken from finance.yahoo.com
Only 10,000 will be available the first year and only in select states... which means the average joe will be waiting a minimum of 3 more years before getting a chance to follow-up on that advertisement. Then in 2012, they are anticipating a production capacity of just 60,000. They promote a green image but won't have an inventory to match. What else will consumers be able to purchase? .
That's a good point John. Clearly they're not fully committed to this project and I have little doubt that Toyota will be scaled up with some sort of PHEV by then that will be cheaper and more widely available if not with the EV range of the Volt. Would like to see something closer to 50k available the first year and in 49 or 50 states.
I love my Prius but, the Volt interior looks great. The next Prius better look this good. There has been a great deal of automotive electronic advancement since the Prius was released. That spy shot of the Prius interior looks awful compared to this.
If this is the actual production Volt, why won't it be in showrooms for another two years? They do seem to have fooled a lot of people into believing they're actually going to build it, though.
For those who missed it, Bob Lutz was interviewed on Charlie Rose about a month ago and they talked a fair amount about the Volt and showed some of their labs. See A look at the new GM Volt with designer Bob Lutz - Charlie Rose. It also gives you some idea of some of the processes they go through. IIRC, it didn't have a lot of in-depth technical details. Kinda OT, long ago, an episode of Behind Closed Doors with Joan Lunden (great show, no longer on the air) had a segment where she went behind the scenes at GM. Their testing facility was quite interesting. Even though they make mostly crap cars IMHO, they showed some fairly crazy tests. Too bad I can't find a clip of it on the net and I only have it on VHS.
I'm very impressed with how this car looks inside and out! I'm 8,000 something on the list right now so I will have this car in the fall of 2010. I'm actually hoping that it will be sooner. I drive 30 miles a day to and from work. I'm guessing that all I have to spend on gas is about $240 a year depending on how far I drive with the Volt.
As a number of people have said, if this is what the production model is going to look like, then why is it still two years before it is available. Or are we looking at yet another concept car? Is it a case that GM is just not using the word "concept". I recently ran across the following article that was generated as a result of this release of photos: What is this Volt thingy, anyhow? | Up to Speed | Los Angeles Times I found the article very fair - it tries to explain in simple terms what GM are hoping to release, and, if they do, I believe that they will have a winner, but, as the article states, "if they fail, it will not be pretty".
From what I understand, that "list" is the project of a private individual who is enthusiastic about the Volt, but has no connection to GM or any of its dealers. Thus, a position on the list is meaningless. If GM were to actually market the Volt (which I doubt!) it would send them to dealers who would sell them according to their own criteria, without reference to that "list."
Look, this volt is just an EV. This volt they are driving around showing people is a pure EV probably with EV1 parts. The real volt test cars are actually malibus with the eflex system inside because the malibu was ready to put the stuff in way back when they started while this car was recently built. They are going to start building real volts with the eflex system soon for testing. This is what I've found out from gm-volt.com
No, it's a SERIES hybrid. The fact that the engine is used for warming of the battery-pack in the winter is the most obvious proof of that. Wanting to call it something other than "hybrid" is an effort to escape previous claims, now that the market for guzzlers has turned sour. .
My impression of GM is this: Thank god for CAFE 35, because they won't build fuel efficient vehicles on their own. I'm very optimistic for the volt and I think they know that they must become a green company because all the young people today, the majority of which are concerned for the environment, will soon be the people who buy the cars and many already are. The old people who think like Lutz will become smaller and smaller shares of the market and one day disappear. My experience with buying the cobalt xfe is that dealerships don't care about fuel efficient cars. CAFE 35 by 2020 is what's pushing this change and not just gasoline price. GM cars will have to have around an average (that's average) of 45 miles per gallon in order to cover the trucks. In fact the law dictates that a car company that only builds cars must have around a 45 mpg average which will screw over Porsche. GM isn't going to feel confident that this 35 mpg average by 2020 is going to be the standard for years after that. I bet we go to 45mpg by 2030. With an estimate of 100mpg EPA for the volt, that will allow them to keep building the vett, while trucks need their own version of the volt, what a surprise, the saturn VUE PHEV is being developed so that big fat Tahoes can still exist. This is still good, but it shines a light on GM and the importance of CAFE 35 and it shows how important it is to not stop there in 2020. CAFE 35 is based on highway EPA, but how hard would it be to redesign the bill for it to be based on combined EPA. Things can change between now and 2020.
