If General Motors is to recover from the stigma of bankruptcy and government majority ownership they are going to have to impress consumers with something significant. The Detroit Free Press reports on a new car which might help GM in its recovery. General Motors has announced the Chevrolet Volt, an electric-drive car which they clam gets 230 miles per gallon in the city.
The m.p.g. estimates are calculated under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s draft procedure for plug-in electric vehicles. Henderson added that GM believes it will also get triple digit m.p.g. for a combination of city and highway driving. He didn’t give a highway m.p.g.
“From the data we’ve seen, most drivers could operate purely on grid electricity in a Chevy Volt,” Henderson said in a statement. “A car that gets more than 100 miles per gallon is a significant step in the reinvention of the auto industry and GM is and will continue to be a leader in that reinvention.”
Mileage ratings are tricky to calculate with the Volt. In theory, some drivers would burn no gas for extended periods of time.
It is an electric-drive vehicle, not a hybrid. GM has said it wants the Volt to have a 40-mile range on an electrical charge alone.
The car will have an on-board generator to recharge the batteries after 40 miles, and the generator will be powered by gasoline.
Update: More from The New York Times
Whether this is successful depends heavily on how much they plan on selling that car for. If it’s inaccessable for the average person, they could say it gets 3 zillion MPG for all it’d matter.
True. It is not possible to say if this will be successful with the limited information here. There’s also the question as to whether it will really work as billed.
$40K is a bit high. But when you consider a Cadillac (also GM) sells for $35K to over $100K, the price doesn’t look so bad.
After the bankruptcy GM had to come out with a game changer.
This car has an Electric motor and a battery that must be recharged after 40 miles.
If you will be the lucky one to kip this battery for 300 charge/discharge cycles you need a new battery set after driving 12000 miles (40miles x 300 recharge cycles). If the cost of the battery is $5000 , then you spend $0.4 per mile only in battery cost. Kilowatts, recharging the battery are extra.
Oh, by the way, this car has a gasoline engine 40MPG.
I bought a used Toyota Corolla, manual, on 2002 with 35000 miles. Now the car has 120000 miles and still makes 34MPG (Summer).
@b-psycho: It’s said to cost $40k. There’s an article about the full cost of ownership at http://business.theatlantic.co.....t_cost.php.
Personally I don’t really see this as a game changer. It seems to me that GM will be up against some steep competition against the Nissan Leaf, the Tesla, the Karma, and the current king of fuel-efficient cars, the Prius. In addition to the above link, I’d point you to http://www.newsy.com/videos/al.....r_the_volt, which hits some of the top criticisms and praises of the Volt.
As more electric cars hit the market, there is going to be a definite problem with funding road maintenance through fuel taxes.
Fritz,
Possibly at some point but do you think that there will be that much of a reduction in gas sales (and taxes received) in the near future? If we actually manage to achieve energy independence it would be worth the cost of having to come up with some other way to fund road maintenance.