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Posted: 8/12/2007 7:24:45 PM EDT
[#1]
Make it into something less fugly(and I'm a GM fanboy), and that'd be great!
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Posted: 8/12/2007 7:25:15 PM EDT
[#2]
Why do they have to make these things so damn ugly?
If manufacturers actually wanted to sell enviro-friendly cars, you'd think they'd try to actually make them appealing... |
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Posted: 8/12/2007 7:26:27 PM EDT
[#3]
Great concept, ugly car.
I would buy an electric car if it offered comparable performance at a comparable price/reliability/maintainability point as a conventional car. It's comin', folks. It just pisses me off that commies like Ed Begley, Jr., are championing the cause. |
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Posted: 8/12/2007 7:29:19 PM EDT
[#4]
Actually, the pictures of the car at all angles make it look more thin and long... almost like the older Honda Preludes. I'll see if I can find the link to the pics of it on static display in DC.
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Posted: 8/12/2007 7:32:24 PM EDT
[#5]
Granted, its a shift more towards electric as a hybrid, but the EV1 got 120-150 miles out of a charge, and 10 years later, this is getting less than half that, thats what is disappointing.
And yes, I understand the EV1 was stuffed full of batteries and was as efficient as they could make it but still... |
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Posted: 8/12/2007 7:32:52 PM EDT
[#6]
They had one parked outside the field at a Washington nationals game last month. I spent a little while walking around it and sitting in the drivers seat. Those pictures on the web don't do it justice - it's a very sharp looking car!
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Posted: 8/12/2007 7:35:44 PM EDT
[#7]
Here's some pictures of the car on static display in DC:
Slideshow GM says they're going to try to keep a lot of the concept design elements. I think seeing it from a few other angles helps. As I mentioned, it does seem long and thin when you see it from the side at a distance. The steering wheel and gauge cluster need to be more... practical. I would like to see a nice multi gauge OLED computer driven display. Who knows what we'll see. GM has put forth the following timetable: Battery pack final design - October this year Prototype for road testing - spring 2008 Contract for battery packs awarded - June 2008 Volt enters production - late 2010 |
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Posted: 8/12/2007 7:37:49 PM EDT
[#8]
The original EV1 only did what, 60 miles? The problem with trying to sell pure electric cars is that people don't want to be limited by how far their extension cord stretches! The Volt makes the following compromise: Enough electric range for about 80% of American commuters, and an onboard gasoline / flex fuel generator for longer trips. I tell people to think about it like this: If your commute is short enough, it's an EV. If your commute is longer, it's a PHEV. Heck, with the generator running, it will get about 50mpg. |
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Posted: 8/12/2007 7:40:17 PM EDT
[#9]
Concept cars of late are always chopped, the low roofline disappears when it turns out that only midgets can drive it. There are a few exceptions, like any of the 1983 and up vettes, which are decidedly unfriendly for those of us over 6 foot.
The Chrysler offerings with the lowered rooflines are also self-selecting for lil guys and women. Why is this? The designers and the bosses are lil pricks. That's why! eh, happier with a truck anyway... |
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Posted: 8/12/2007 7:41:33 PM EDT
[#10]
I want my damn fuel cell car
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Posted: 8/12/2007 7:49:12 PM EDT
[#11]
They're going to be working on one of those... I don't think those will be feasible, or cost effective, for a long time. I think the Volt as designed with the gasoline generator (or possible a diesel) is the best way to go. |
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Posted: 8/12/2007 7:51:12 PM EDT
[#12]
looks pretty sharp
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Posted: 8/12/2007 7:51:46 PM EDT
[#13]
It's a heck of a lot better than a Prius.
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Posted: 8/12/2007 7:56:02 PM EDT
[#14]
It's a GM car, which means it won't function as promised and it won't last very long.
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Posted: 8/12/2007 7:57:31 PM EDT
[#15]
Front end looks like the new Camero.
I think it's pretty cool. |
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Posted: 8/12/2007 8:01:04 PM EDT
[#16]
I'm getting the impression GM knows it needs something that will SELL... they'll need to put out a quality product... the Prius has sold so many, and I can see the Volt as making EVERY Prius owner want to ditch theirs for a Volt! I'm hoping GM gets on the ball, and realizes if they fuck this up, they're screwed, but if they hit a home run, they will be sitting pretty. I've been negative about GM, and frankly would never buy a product from them... until the Volt. It will be a 'game changer', and I hope that it is. I'd love for an American company to be the one that does it. |
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Posted: 8/12/2007 8:02:42 PM EDT
[#17]
if only they could make a small nuclear reactor for my truck I woudl be happy, this does not have the range I need, not any kind of hauling capacity (where woudl I stick my moose?
 )
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Posted: 8/12/2007 8:09:42 PM EDT
[#18]
The problem with many of the batteries they are using in these electric/hybrid cars is that the whole point (for many who buy it) is because it's more environmentally friendly. The amount of waste put into the atmosphere making one battery is much greater than environmentalists are willing to admit.
There is also the problem of lifespan. The batteries currently tend to only last a few years, then need to be replaced at cost between $3,500 - $20,000. |
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Posted: 8/12/2007 8:14:28 PM EDT
[#19]
In 1979 I flew RC planes with the low capacity NiCd batteries available back then, they barely flew and then for only 4 minutes. These planes used DC motors.
For a couple years I've been flying RC planes using Lithium Polymer batteries and with airframes and wings made of modern materials. The motor can be AC or DC but AC is better. Performance is good and duration is well over 30 minutes with a 'small' LiPo battery. The improvement is astounding. Lithium Polymer batteries are like Li Ion but without the protective metal case. That makes them more dangerous. The worst case is very bad. Better batteries are coming and with them will be cars for the daily commute that have backup gasoline engines, like this GM car. Motor transportation fuels are more heavily taxed than residential electrical power and residential fuels. Expect a large extra tax on electricity used for transportation when this use becomes common. This tax is never factored into cost calculations. |
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Posted: 8/12/2007 8:22:52 PM EDT
[#20]
I like the looks of it.
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Posted: 8/12/2007 8:26:04 PM EDT
[#21]
Volt looks fugly? As opposed to what? The
I'll take the Volt's looks any day. At least you can tell what it is without looking at the badging. EDIT: I'd also love to have a Volt. 90% of my gasoline usage is within the Volt's electric range... can we say money savings? Yes we can. EDIT 2:
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Posted: 8/12/2007 8:26:51 PM EDT
[#22]
The outside shape of the car doesn't matter. It's the leap forward in technology that's the point.
They can change the shape of the car to whatever they want. Most folks seem to want a generic 4 door sedan like the Camery. It's what's under the hood that's important in this article. Electric cars are coming. They won't replace all vehicles types right away. There will still be diesel powered F-250's until electric power gets more perfected. But for the average commuter, the Volt will work. I wonder if Ford and Chrysler have anything to compete? |
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Posted: 8/12/2007 8:32:16 PM EDT
[#23]
Compare the Volt to the Prius and that Honda abomination (whatever it's name was) and the Volt looks the best.
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Posted: 8/12/2007 8:34:12 PM EDT
[#24]
I guess all 4 of mine with a combined 525,000 miles on them are exceptions to the rule. 
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Posted: 8/12/2007 8:41:28 PM EDT
[#25]
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Posted: 8/12/2007 8:46:16 PM EDT
[#26]
If you think the oil lobby is going to let GM build this you are out of your mind.
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Posted: 8/12/2007 8:46:18 PM EDT
[#27]
GM likes to showcase its engineering - and the company does indeed excel at engineering.
However, beancounting - not engineering - is what has been responsible for virtually all of GM's many product failures. |
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Posted: 8/12/2007 8:46:44 PM EDT
[#28]
My Trans Am's having some problems at 113,000, but I think most of them are more due to the wreck my dad got in in it the one time I lent it to him (  ) than age. Engine still runs like a finely tuned instrument.
Yup. Most of the badassest concepts ever made are GM. But, oddly, they never get built. By the time the design gets past the beancounters it's always been watered down into a boring vanillacar or killed completely. Solstice is the only car on memory that that hasn't happened to. |
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Posted: 8/12/2007 8:48:27 PM EDT
[#29]
I was into RC planes. I was a member of the Ezone, A website like Arfcom for RC. We were trying to build a "Livingroom flyer". We had engineers and industry folks helping. Most said it couldn't be done, Then a Guy in Japan did it. Then Batteries improved. Now 5 years later, you can buy one made in China at the Target store fo $30 as opposed to $2000 we had projected it to cost. Amazing advancement. I now have a box full of expensive, obsolete RC equipment.  As for TAX, how can they tell if you are drawing from the grid for your car or your computer? And grid capacity is not used at night now. That's when most folks would recharge their car. |
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Posted: 8/12/2007 9:00:26 PM EDT
[#30]
Keep smokin that pipe you've been smokin on. Engineering and GM don't go together very well. The only thing GM has been able to put together well in the past 20 years are trucks. The trucks rock, no doubt. Also a few under rated FWD platforms from the 90s but....
I'll be on board when it works.. BTW the liPo battery revolution in R/C airplanes has been amazing.. |
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Posted: 8/12/2007 9:06:29 PM EDT
[#31]
You need to read the article. Newer lithium chemistry is getting cells up to 7000 cycles. That's 7000 charge and discharge cycles. In a vehicle, even if you charge it once a day, that's almost 20 years. Long enough for ya? |
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Posted: 8/12/2007 9:06:51 PM EDT
[#32]
The EV1 also carried all that battery weight in an oddly sprug rear axle to keep it from making the car handle worse than a shopping cart, and there was some concern that the driver could become a pancake if the battery case let loose during afront impact. I think the volt is a good comprimise, and ought to goad toyota into pushing the plugin angle a bit. I'm all for plugin hybrids, as long as I get my solar panels installed before they take the antiquated grid down. 
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Posted: 8/12/2007 9:14:08 PM EDT
[#33]
wheel 2 wheel powertrain built a 550hp 402 that ran on hydrogen 
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Posted: 8/12/2007 9:24:24 PM EDT
[#34]
HOOK ME UP |
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Posted: 8/12/2007 9:52:31 PM EDT
[#35]
Supplied by hydrogen made from a nuke powerplant. No emissions baby! |
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Posted: 8/12/2007 9:55:33 PM EDT
[#36]
Really? I'll be driving my Prius to work tomorrow morning and you (or anyone else) won't be driving a Volt! |
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Posted: 8/13/2007 12:48:29 AM EDT
[#37]
And no money to towel wearing enemies, baby!
People drove Model Ts in the time before the Corvette hit the market too. Ph34r the T. |
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Posted: 8/13/2007 1:27:24 AM EDT
[#38]
There's not a lot of love for big oil in general these days, and they're being watchdogged like never before. If there was ever a time to get this tech to market, now is it. |
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Posted: 8/13/2007 1:35:11 AM EDT
[#39]
Lame. I like my American V8 rear wheel drives just fine thanks.
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Posted: 8/13/2007 1:47:02 AM EDT
[#40]
The clock starts at zero. It stops at the time you have to spend a single dime on anything other than gasoline, tires, brake pads or a bettery. You can pour money into any car and run up a huge number on the block. But your still wasting money on things like water pumps, alternatorss, gaskets. All i expect from a car is to go 100,000 miles on nothing but gasoline, oil changes, brake pads, tires and a battery replacement. unfortunately only honda and toyota have met that goal in my cars. with GM I'm always replacing something around 60K. With my saturn it was an alternator. With my Chevy it was a water pump. With my pontiac it was an intaker gasket. |
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Posted: 8/13/2007 2:13:05 AM EDT
[#41]
I'd put the same power train into a small 4X4, think something the size of the old Geo Tracker. Something with some ground clearance and a bit more rugged.
One thing with these plug-in hybrids, once there's enough of them on the road, what's that going to do for electricity usage during the summer? Where I live in metro Detroit there are usually 2-3 AC driven power outages a summer. Once you have even 5% of the cars out there plugging in, that's a big incremental increase in electrical consumption. I have a feeling that once these sort of vehicles start to take off, we're going to find out how stressed our electrical infrastructure really is. |
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Posted: 8/13/2007 3:58:43 AM EDT
[#42]
Folks, Before we get all giddy about plug-in cars, We must remember that there is no free lunch.
Thanks to the sierra club, alGore, greenie-weenie types, Most of our electricity comes from coal-fired power plants. These plants are the source of most of the greenhouse gas emissions that these eco-waco frauds are complaining about. Not only that, They also release tons of radioactive thorium into the atmosphere. Don't be fooled by the coal lobby commercials you see on TV touting clean-coal technology. Their full of shit! It does not exist! Our only hope is for the powers to be to wake up and realize that the only alternative for our future power needs be generated by CLEAN nuclear power. We must stop burning coal and natural gas to produce electricity in this country and around the world if we are going to have any effect on man-made global warming. France has realized this and at least 80% of their electricity comes from CLEAN nuclear power. They have so much surplus power at night that they can use the eccess to produce hydrogen. Which takes tremendous ammounts of electricity. Don't let the greenies bullshit you into thinking that you, The working-man, Driving your gasoline-powered car is the cause of man-made global warming. Cars nowdays are so clean-burning, They don't emit but a fraction of what the coal-fired power plants world-wide emit. Wake up people. Educate yourselves. The problem is not you, The working-stiff that has to drive to work every day to support his family. It is the sierra clubs, The alGores, The greenie-weenies that have contributed to this man-made global warming by shutting down the nuclear power industry in this country. If we did not have the limited nuclear power generation in this country that we have now, How many blackouts would would we have experieced already? Please educate yourselves and log on to pushback.com and at the top, Click on Bill Wattenburg's link and learn about the man and his excellent radio program. Thank you all for reading this. Eddie |
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Posted: 8/13/2007 4:13:39 AM EDT
[#43]
So, Matthew Q., you are giving up your Boxter for this???
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Posted: 8/13/2007 4:17:48 AM EDT
[#44]
SO DO I BUT I HATE SUPPORTING THE MIDDLE EAST FOR MY FUEL |
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Posted: 8/13/2007 4:44:43 AM EDT
[#45]
BIG +1. I believe it is some 60% of our electricity comes from coal burning power plants. Also, do you all think it will actually be cheaper to plug in an electric car than to put gas into a car? There is a reason why so many people have Oil, natural gas, or LP. Electric powered appliances and such are horrendously inefficient. Electric heat is incredibly inefficient. Have you guys noticed how much your power bill goes up in the summer when you turn the A/C on? Think of how much it will go up if you start plugging in your car every night charging up batteries. We are talking about a significant increase. Also, you can go to different gas stations to find the best price, but with electricity the utility company owns the lines and the electricity, so you will be getting the same price regardless. What do you do when the power goes out because the transmission lines are so overloaded? You can't charge your car up, so how do you get around? How many miles can you go in an electric car in the winter time when it is below freezing or lower? Batteries lose capacity as the temperature goes down. Look at airsofters for an example (Oh teh noes!!11). Their guns only get about 1/2 to 1/3 of the shots that a fully charged battery gets when it is, say, 80 degrees. So that means if the car can go, say, 150 miles on a full charge at 80 degrees. What happens to that when it is 20 degrees? You can go 100 miles? 60 miles? I may be wrong on some of my figures, but there are more questions that need to be asked about the electric cars that I haven't seen anywhere. I will stick to my good old fashioned gas burner until there is some solid alternatives. |
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Posted: 8/13/2007 4:45:40 AM EDT
[#46]
Nothing like lobbying for a govenment mandated artificial environment so you can force your product onto the market... |
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Posted: 8/13/2007 4:50:54 AM EDT
[#47]
It does not exist to completely reduce emissions out of the air, but it does exist...........I work in a power plant, and they are building scrubbers that reduce the emissions by 80% or more of SO2 and other chemicals, and by running the gas emissions through a slurry of crushed limestone and water, we will produce synthetic gypsum that we will be sold to USG to produce sheetrock...........and trust me, there are plans for more nuke plants..........soon as the govt gives the ok
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Posted: 8/13/2007 4:52:54 AM EDT
[#48]
So your gas bill will go way down and your electric bill will go way up.
Let us know if it balances or is better. |
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Posted: 8/13/2007 5:36:31 AM EDT
[#49]
Get off Ed's back......I actually respect him.....unlike all other hollywood types, he actually PRACTICES what he preaches. |
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Posted: 8/13/2007 7:13:33 AM EDT
[#50]
Nope. The Boxster, and my 911 will remain in my stable. When/if I get a Volt, it will be my daily driver. The Boxster will be my TOY! I'm thinking... supercharger... then track it! |
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