Chevy Volt: The Car From Atlas Shrugged Motors

Forbes ^ | March 16, 2011 | Patrick Michaels,

[fightinJAG]

Who is going to buy all these cars?

The Chevrolet Volt is beginning to look like it was manufactured by Atlas Shrugged Motors, where the government mandates everything politically correct, rewards its cronies and produces junk steel.

This is the car that subsidies built. General Motors lobbied for a $7,500 tax refund for all buyers, under the shaky (if not false) promise that it was producing the first all-electric mass-production vehicle.

At least that's what we were once told. Sitting in a Volt that would not start at the 2010 Detroit Auto Show, a GM engineer swore to me that the internal combustion engine in the machine only served as a generator, kicking in when the overnight-charged lithium-ion batteries began to run down. GM has continually revised downward its estimates of how far the machine would go before the gas engine fired, and now says 25 to 50 miles.

[Fresh Wind]

U.S. government to purchase first 100 Chevy Volts and thousands of hybrids

GE Announces Plans to Buy 25,000 EVs, with 12,000 of them to be Chevy Volts.

(US Government and GE, not much difference)

[Eldon Tyrell]

Immelt from GE got some commerce job from Bamster.

Then turned around and said GE would buy a bunch of them.

So - there ya go.

[sergeantdave]

We need the Volt to go across the Mackinaw Bridge in November to see if it joins the fishes and the Yugo in the Mackinaw straits. Volt/Yugo - both have 4 letters in their name. Not good. I’d bet the Volt goes 50 yards before it jumps the guard rail and becomes a boat. Does it float better on its roof?

[fightinJAG]

The Sonata is a very nice car.

[Kellis91789]

So it’s not really an apples-to-apples comparison ? The Volt is a electric car that can be driven between 25 and 50 miles between recharging depending on conditions, and can be driven an unlimited distance if you want to put gas in it every few hundred miles. So it is really two cars in one, and nobody seems to want to acknowledge that.

It is not a $30K Leaf that can be driven 80 miles and then is disabled while waiting for an 8-hour recharge. It is not a $25K Prius or Sonata that can’t drive anywhere without putting gas in it first.

The Volt deserves more respect than it is getting. It still isn’t worth $40K, but it is a better value than the $30K Leaf.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Except that the Volt is a Chevy Cruze, their current Chevette, albeit with an electric motor in addition to a gasoline engine. The Hyundai Sonata is not their starter model, rather it is right in the middle of their model line, their Taurus or Camry, as it were.

[Kellis91789]

Well, I’m not in the market for a car right now so I haven’t compared the Volt to the Cruze side by side in fit and finish quality. I suspect that there are significant differences, structurally and with the interior. The weight distribution, climate control, sound deadening, dash controls etc. are necessarily going to dictate big differences. A Cadillac Escalade and a Chevy Suburban probably share more common components than the Volt and Cruze, but have very different levels of comfort, fit, finish, quietness, etc. I don’t know that the Volt being “based on” the Cruze automatically means it will feel as lowbrow as a Chevette.

A vehicle LIKE the Volt, with a 25 - 50 mile all-electric around town range independent of fuel but unlimited range with fuel makes a lot of sense to me. 90% of my days I’d be able to avoid using any gasoline at all. Unfortunately, CA has ridiculous electric rates, so I wouldn’t see the kind of savings that I would if I lived in NV or somewhere with $0.10/kwh rates. At $40K, it would never save enough money for anyone to justify it on that basis. Barring significant differences in quality and comfort, I think the Volt at $25K would be my choice over the Sonata.