with 80 miles range it would serve 90% of my driving needs and I drove a 54mile ONE WAY commute 5 days a week.

I also tow a trailer (6700 pound camper) and a boat and a motorcycle trailer.

I have no doubt you could stick a hitch on this and I could tow my boat or bike trailer. the travel trailer? No.

why can’t it go camping?

I DO care about the environment but its a TINY reason for wanting an electric car.

I spend $3500 or MORE a year in gasoline. THAT and ONLY THAT is why I want an electric car.

Not at $40,000 though.

not at $25,000 either. still too much.

$15k or less

“The trick is getting something like that into a drive-train that fits on the road and still retains enough power to not be a dangerous impediment to gas-powered cars.”

the problem is you know NOTHING about electric cars besides the propoganda the oil companies perpetrate.

Take a mediocre electric car for me and a low end SUPER CAR for you

I will kick your ass every time in 0-60

trust me the gas cars will be an impediment to the electric cars. Not the other way around.

Unlimited torque curve fro,m 0 to max speed.

“I also wonder wtf would happen if even 5,000 people in a single metro area plugged this thing in every night how much higher would the energy load be on the power plant be?”

More lack of knowledge more propoganda.

I can tell you what would happen. NOTHING. the average household SPACE HEATER takes more power than recharging an electric car.

so absolutely NOTHING would happen.

in fact in the end overall power usage would “GO DOWN” since charging and running an electric car takes less electricity than running a gasoline car.

even better most of the electric usage for electric cars will be at night when the power plants are pumping out tons of UNUSED power since you can not shut them down for a night.

SOLAR panels? first SCREW the panels. The average american drives $11,000 miles a year.

SO the amount added to your ELECTRIC BILL each YEAR (not month but per YEAR) would be less than $200 TOTAL for the year!

so how long does it take you to spend $200 in gasoline? for me thats about 1.5 to 2 weeks. (I drive a lot (30,000+ miles MY total electric usage would be about $400-$500 a year)

For the average american using 12 gallons a week thats about 6.5 weeks.

Most people just have NO IDEA how cheap electricity is for driving and how much MONEY they will save every single year.

Average american spends $1500 a year in gas. so after adding $200 (probably LESS) to your electric bill for the WHOLE YEAR or less than $17 a month you would save $1285 a year in gasoline. I would save over $3000 a year in gas making a $15k car FREE in 5 years JUST in case savings.

then you get into the massive savings for maintenance and repairs (not with the volt I am talking PURE electrics only)

oh and as a side benefit you put oil out of business and help clean up the environment.

Oh and I get people all the time that say what if I want to go more than 100 miles

what if I want to tow that 6700 pound trailer.

Hmm let me think about that. Its coming to me (sorry for the sarcasm but its so stinking obvious)

YOU DRIVE THE DAMNED GAS CAR YOU ALREADY HAVE !!!!!

sure not all of us can have 2 cars but MOST of us can. so you keep your gas car for when the EV won’t do it for you. Just like the guy who has a town car CAN NOT town my 6700 pound trailer.

hell even an F150 is going to have a fight towing this trailer. I know my brother tried :-)

I can not wait till we get PROPER EV’s its going to be a while. not because its hard or the tech is not here but because the auto makers DO NOT WANT TO MAKE THEM. and Chevron is holding the NIMH patent that would make them affordable.

Electric cars by nature are CHEAPER than gas cars.

the high price is artificial.

Everyone’s so concerned with the distance to commute to work, and theirs is under or over 40 miles… like wow… I work about 10 miles away from where I live. 20 mile commute, right? That’s how far I go in a day, right? Hell no. Average distance I travel a day is 100 miles.

Let’s see, where does it all go… well, work, that’s 20 there. Then my best friend lives 15 miles away. I usually go over there twice a week. That’s 30 miles in a day. (They live in the opposite direction of my work.) Then if we go to a movie from their house it’s 10 miles. Then 10 back to drop them off. So that’s another 20.

So if I go to work (10m), come home to get my wife (20mi), go pick up our friend (35mi), go to a movie (45mi), drop off friend (55mi), go home (60mi). And that’s if we choose to go to the crappy movie theatre. If we decide to go to our favorite restraunt that’s a good 30 miles there. (I live in Dallas, restraunt is in Ft.Worth.)

So here’s what we’ve done before, in a single day. Work, home, friend, movie, restraunt, drop off friend, home. That’s 10, 10, 15, 10, 30, 30, 15. Or 120 miles.

That’s probably once every couple weeks we do that.

More normal is gym, home, work, home, softball practice, gym, home. 10, 10, 10, 10, 5, 15, 10.
Total = 70 miles.

You people who drive under 40 miles a day, every day, really, really, really need to get a life.

Seriously.

The only good reason to ride public transport is… um… I can’t afford to own my own car and put gas in it.

That’s the only reason I would willingly sit next to a complete stranger on my way to work, and I sure as hell wouldn’t let my wife ride public transport by herself, sitting next to all the freaks out there.

And since I *can* afford to own my own car, and put gas in it most of the time, then I won’t ride public transport. That is I won’t ride public transport until Obama manages to make it to where I can’t afford to own a car, which the way he’s doing his very best to destroy the economy beyond repair, that might not be too long.

Until people get over the anti-nuclear power plant bs that they spew most power plants (that provide power to your grid) get a decent portion of their power production using oil, or other fossil fuels.

That’s also a fun fact for all the tree-huggers because that means that by trying to cut down on your “carbon footprint” by using a plug-in vehicle, if your grid is powered by anything other than nuclear or wind, then you’re probably increasing your “carbon footprint” rather than decreasing it. And if in 20 years plug-in cars become the wave of the future, then how ’bout them brownouts in Cali a few years back?

The fact is that all the emissions that regular consumer cars produce is almost nothing compared to how much ‘pollution’ the coal and other fossil fuel powered plants make. Hell, the pollution created by consumer vehicles is less than the pollution caused by cow crap.

Everything action produces a result, plug-in cars catching on will have adverse affects. Such as brown-outs. In Texas it would produce a lot of road-rage over these slow ass POS cars getting in the way and since we own guns… not necessarily a good outcome there. But we wouldn’t have brown-outs because our state actually knows how to manage its resources and produce enough energy for everyone in it who can pay the bill.

Honestly, I don’t give a damn about the environment. I’ll go to the Ft. Worth Zoo if I want to see wildlife.

Someone called camping, hauling your boat, and other things that this car can’t do as ‘niche’ activites? Where I live, every weekend about 1 in 10 cars driving around are pulling a boat. Of course I live near a lake, but calling camping and boating a ‘niche’ is retarded.

This is absolutely not a revolutionary idea. Anyone ever seen a modern train locomotive? That’s an electric engine used for propulsion that is PURELY charged by a diesel powered engine. Those engines have been around for YEARS. The trick is getting something like that into a drive-train that fits on the road and still retains enough power to not be a dangerous impediment to gas-powered cars.

I want to know why they chose to use a gas-powered generator instead of a deisel, as deisel gets better power production per gallon. There’s probably a good technical reason that I just don’t know, but if there isn’t a good reason from an engineering standpoint I’d rather have deisel.

And to those people who have solar panels and feed power into the grid, that’s fking awesome. I’m so happy for you. I don’t have the money to make an investment on solar panels. Nor do MOST people. If the future of this car/platform depends on people who have solar panels, well, there is no future.

I also wonder wtf would happen if even 5,000 people in a single metro area plugged this thing in every night how much higher would the energy load be on the power plant be? There’s always a trade-off. I’m willing to bet that the gas-powered generator is a more cost-effective means of charging the battery than plugging it in over night. 1 gallon can charge the battery enough to go almost 200 miles beyond the battery’s 40 mile range? That’s amazing.

My opinion, which is from someone who could care less about the environment, refuses to plug it in at his house, and loves gas-powered engines, just can’t afford to put gas in them sometimes:

Put a 15 gallon tank on this badboy, take off the plug, go nearly 3000 miles on one tank of gas. (@ $2.45 a gallon) that’s $36.75 to go from NYC to LA. On one tank of gas. That’s awesome.
If they can do what I just said for $25,000 or less, and still make money then GM is gonna have one helluva car.

If we start now, like we should have started 40 years ago, we will be in a better position however you look at it.

I wish there was a way to get them to understand it’s in their best interest to provide the best to their consumers.

I don’t think GM calls the Volt a hybrid and I don’t either.

A Gas car turns its tires with a Gas motor only.
A Diesel car turns its tires with a Diesel motor only.
A Hybrid car, like the name suggests, turns its tires with a mixture of a Gas motor and Electric Motor(s).
But the Volt turns it tires with an electric motor only.

It’s an electric car. It’s immaterial how it charges its batteries. It doesn’t matter if it charges it’s batteries with a wall plug, a solar panel plugged into the cigarette lighter, a Honda portable generator duct-taped to the roof, or a built-in generator like GM is providing.

It runs via an Electric motor and gets its power from batteries. And those batteries can be charged up in lots of ways.

To get all hung up because GM is providing a built-In Generator as well as a plug to plug it into your 3 prong wall jack at home is confusing the issue. If it didn’t have its Built-in generator or if the generator was broken it wouldn’t matter. The car would still drive just fine, 100%, that is until the batteries ran out of juice and you had to plug it in to recharge them again.
It’s kinda nice to have the built-in generator, and it does make the Volt a pactical car, but it doesn’t need, and doesn’t run on the built-in generator.

The Volt is an electric car.

There is not, so it is TECHNICALLY and ACTUALLY a Plug In Hybrid of the series variety.

A Prius is simply a Hybrid of the parrellel variety there are MODIFIED prius’ that are plug in hybrids of the parrellel variety.

The Volt is by definition a Plug in Series Hybrid.

THAT is the correct name for it. it is NOT a pure electric car. (a pure electric car is usually by definition a BEV a battery electric car with no REQUIREMENT for gasoline)

That gasoline engine will turn on when it wants to and you have NO SAY in the matter unless you leave the gas tank EMPTY which is probably not too good for the engine.

its INFERIOR technology to GM very own decade old technology.

Thats like saying lets go back to 8 engine properller airliners and calling that INNOVATIVE.

Would you?

lets see. They start with a 120-160 mile range vehicle that is high tech light weight rust and corrosion proof virtually immune to regular maintenance with a life span of 20+ years before the $4500 battery needs replacing (maybe could be longer) that cost $80,000 AS A PROTOTYPE to make (if you know anything about prototypes you know thats a DAMNED CHEAP prototype)

to a car that costs FAR more money (an EV1 today would cost under $20,000) at $40,000 with 1/3 to 1/4 the range with a battery that has HALF the life span and 4 TIMES the cost when it comes time to replace it made of STEEL so it will rust and corrode like any other normal car with a complicated prone to need maintenance tiny gasoline engine to keep it charged up so it can go more than its pitiful 30 miles range ?

And you call that innovative? What planet are you from that going backwards and more expensive is innovative?

and thats for EASY access oil. Harder to get oil adds another couple centuries to our supply.

$7 a gallon will not fly in this country. You will see people losing there jobs at $7 losing there homes at $7 because they will simply NOT have enough money for gasoline so they will not be able to goto work. (not eveyone off course but enough to cause some serious problems)

at $7 I would break even. IE going to work would equal almost no net income for me. that’s $42 for gas EACH TIME I goto work or $210 PER WEEK or almost $11,000 a year in gasoline or more than 50% of my after tax income.

I would be forced to get a more local job. alas that would put the family business in trouble. if we lose that business we lose our home.

Now suddenly that local job is not enough to pay for a home. See the problem.

DUH!

its called entropy. ALL ENERGY TRANSACTIONS. 100% of the are “lossy”

There is no such thing as ANY fuel source that give you more out than was put in.

YOU may put less in but MORE was put in by SOMETHING more than your going to get out. Period. End of discussion until we learn new physics that says otherwise.

GAS is lossy
Propane is LOSSY
SOLAR is lossy
Hydrogen is LOSSY
ELECTRIC is LOSSY

they all are.

the real question is not energy in versus energy out. thats pretty much irrelevant.

the real question is DOLLARS IN and what you get OUT of it.

ie what does it cost to go 100 miles. that and only that is the really important question.

It takes far far far more ENERGY IN to go from crude in the ground to GAS in your car.

ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more energy and that is not even counting the ENERGY the earth and sun put into MAKING the crude to begin with!

the thing is that energy is a LOT CHEAPER than the $2.30 they charge at the pump :-)

Its COST of energy not AMOUNT of energy that is important.

Oil companies would not care if it took a thousand times more energy to put a gallon of gas in your car than you would get out of it so long as that 1000 times energy cost them less than what they can CHARGE you for that gallon.

Hydrogen is very inefficient compared to Battery Electric.

GRID to WHEELS hydrogen is only 24% efficient.
GRID to WHEELS BEV’s are 89% or better efficient!

but they can charge you a LOT MORE for Hydrogen out of a pump than the $0 they can charge you for the electricity in your garage of that you MAKE yourself!

THAT is the difference and that is why they KILLED the electric car in favor of the hydrogen car.

They are also more maintenance and repair prone PRESERVING that side of there profit line.

They are also more expensive so financing is higher preserving THAT side of there profit line as well.

THAT is why they are trying to do FUEL CELL instead of battery electric and that is why they sold the patent to Texaco/Chevron and because of the EXPIRING patent that is why Chevron made sure it OWNS the majority of the factory the ONLY factory that makes the batteries.

They can probably DELAY battery electric cars another 2-5 years by simply REFUSING to make them after the patent expires and forcing someone else to invest and “tool up” to produce them.

s/merry/marry/