Chevy Volt a charged issue

Politico ^ | April 22,2012 | Darren Samuelsohn

[Hojczyk]

The Chevy Volt — manufactured by bailout recipient General Motors, championed by President Barack Obama and touted as a solution to global warming.

No wonder it’s become an election-year punching bag for conservatives.

From Rush Limbaugh to Mitt Romney, critics on the right have tried to turn the electric-gasoline plug-in hybrid car into a synonym for Big Government overreach. Fox News business anchor Neil Cavuto recently called it a “Fred Flintstone car” and the “dumbest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s going to lead to a lot of divorces,” Cavuto said, theorizing that spouses will fight over who forgot to charge their Volt overnight.

But the Volt also has passionate supporters who want the right to embrace it — starting with former GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz, who famously called global warming a “crock of sh—.”

“We’ll probably see the Volt as a political football through November, and then it’ll go away,” Lutz told POLITICO.

Lutz, a Republican, has been making the rounds in Washington and New York over the past several weeks to defend the car during visits with conservative think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute and influential columnists like Charles Krauthammer.

He said people need to separate the Volt from their feelings about Obama, climate science and Al Gore.

“The problem with conservatives is getting them to accept that an electric vehicle is not necessarily a left-wing environmental plot,” Lutz said. “They see it as a product of the Obama administration and a product of the green movement, and this is the result of government mandates. It’s taken on a symbolic role in the right-wing media as everything that’s wrong with Big Government, and yet, the vehicle was conceived by private industry.”

[Kickass Conservative]

Newt wants the CAFE Standards abolished.

For that alone he is my choice for POTUS.

[vette6387]

“It shows Obama can embrace the top 1% if they will buy the crappy Volt!”

You need to separate your anger for the GM bailout from the Volt. It is a very nice vehicle. A much better car in every way than the Prius “clown car.” You might even venture onto the web and find out what owners think. One guy right here in my neighborhood has both a Prius and a Volt and says that they Volt is better in every respect and he commutes in in 150 miles a day!

[ROCKLOBSTER]

One guy right here in my neighborhood has both a Prius and a Volt

What the hey? He couldn't find a TDI? He must have more money than brains.

[MasterGunner01]

Instead of buying the Chevy Volt gas-electric hybrid ($46,000) that catches fire spontaneously while parked in your garage, you can spend $20,000 less and buy the gasoline Chevy Cruze and looks nearly the same. Oh, wait, the Chevy Cruze also suffers from engine bay fires. At least General Motors was consistent when it came to engineering the self-destruction features into the Volt and Cruze — and they do work.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

Those are all valid points & do advance the argument against the Volt. What I was trying to say is that criticisms that imply that the Volt is a pure EV aren't helpful. At best, they simply set up straw men, which the other side (envirowhackos) can easily knock down. At worst, they are the like the disingenuous arguments I usually associate with leftists.