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Capable of getting somewhere in a hurry.
Posted on 05/01/2012 7:11:55 PM PDT by Hojczyk
It’s a boxy, snub-nosed little bastard, with roughly the rear visibility of a Mercury space capsule. But Chevrolet’s Volt is plenty slick, in its way.
The one I’ve just strapped to my back in New York City is Silver Ice Metallic with four leather-appointed bucket seats and a pair of seven-inch LCD displays on a dash arrayed with twoscore buttons and dials by which one can access the onboard DVD player, the satellite radio, the built-in nav, and the “Driver Information Center.” This last gives you a real-time graphic representation of the distribution of operating power among the Volt’s 288 lithium-ion battery cells, its electrohydraulic regenerative brakes, and the geologic pesto of processed Paleozoic carrion that folks in the flyover states call “gasoline.”
Those regenerative brakes, which are augmented with good old-fashioned “Oh, %&#!” anti-lock discs, are spongy and take some getting used to. The blind spots are more like blind blotches. And the driver’s seat accommodates a 6̋ʹ2″ buffet enthusiast like this reporter only at the expense of the circulation in the rear passenger’s lower extremities. But the Volt is tight and responsive through turns. Its 149-horsepower (that is, 111-kW) Voltec electric motor considerably overachieves, since it requires no transmission and therefore delivers its 273 foot-pounds of torque all at once. After barely a few miles at cruising speed I figure I could get used to this. It sure beats my usual ride — a dun-colored ’94 Cherokee with a failing transfer case — if for no other reason than that its right rear bumper isn’t held on by duct tape. Oh, and it is quiet. Ghost quiet. U-boat-full-of-mutes-in-cotton-booties-coasting-through-an-ocean-of-mineral-oil quiet.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
The Volt is a POS....50 grand sticker loaded, and 4 billion in research to produce a car that sets itself on fire.
The 50s era hotrodders turned into computer nerds in the 80s and 90s. Building your own computer is almost a thing of the past now though. I don’t know what they will do when its no longer worth your time to build your own computer.
Go back to gardening maybe...or hydroponics...or home brewing and distilling?
“Too bad about the price. If they could’ve made them for half the price they would’ve been the greatest things on the planet since the model T Ford.”
Yep. If they had committed to building 100,000/yr they could have sold them all at $25K and made a profit.
I understand that they couldn’t do that, however, with an entirely new design. If there had a been a serious flaw found — not the bogus overblown battery fire issue, but something real — they would have had to eat a huge loss.
People don’t realize that with a gasoline vehicle, there is never any such thing as a “new design”, as it is built on reusing 100 years of refinement. With the Volt it was not “refinement” but entirely new system integration issues that were bound to have teething pains.
Actually, it just occurred to me. They will be building, tweaking, modding, hotrodding...wait for it...robots.
Yes it is. But there are other more fruitful endeavors in need of our hotrodding urges. In my opinion.
Brilliant design...
2 energy storage systems - batteries + gas tank
2 prime movers - electric motors + internal combustion engine
1 regenerative braking system - motor/generator + hydraulics
What do you think it costs you up front for all that extra crap? And Obama still hasn’t repealed F=MA — what do you think it costs you to accelerate all that extra mass? Sure, you get some of it back on braking, but not all of it. And let’s not get started on maintenance costs — what do you suppose it will cost to replace all those LiIon cells? Lastly, what about safe disposal of the highly toxic batteries?
No Rube Goldbergs for me. The whole thing in just nuts.
True but all work and no play and all that...
White lighting now has two meanings. Sounds like the result of trying to soup up the Volt.
If you want my opinion on the future: Compressed natural gas. Right now it’s dirt cheap and pumped in America.
So the writer loves the power, smoothness, quiet, leather interior, electronics, and handling of the vehicle. Things that in any other car review would be paramount concerns.
Then he spends twice as much space lamenting that he can’t find recharge points while on a long trip — while never mentioning that exactly what makes the Volt better than the Leaf is that you can utilize gasoline on long trips. Then he laments that he can’t find working charge stations in DC, and complains about the cost when he finally does find one, when the whole point of the Volt is to charge at home and never need public charging stations.
So he leaves no doubt in our minds that he is and idiot. Why would his editor not have bounced this bumbling fool’s article and fired him for his temerity in submitting it ? The standards at NRO have really gone downhill.
GM is not capable of building anything brand new, earth shattering, ground breaking, revolutionary...for anything even in the ball park of a sane pricepoint...even with daddy-obama-warbucks backing them. GM is a factory. They are extremely good at assembling things that other people design...maybe the best in the world bar none. They have a serious labor cost problem. They have a serious “inertia” problem in terms of adaptability and flexibility. They are overburdened with internal bureaucracy. These are terrible hurdles to overcome.
That is the root of the problem.
one word:
Locomotive
WHAT THE * DO YOU THINK A DIESEL ELECTRIC LOCOMOTIVE IS YOU NITWIT??
UNION effing PACIFIC has been doing it for three quarters of a century.
now take your nonsense and stick it. I’m not putting up with your asinine bla bla bla.
Everyone with knowledge in this area has known for years that the future is hydrogen. But we can’t jump right into hydrogen now, there are too many difficulties. Step by step. piece by piece. Gasoline now. Then maybe butane, or something similar. Then propane. Then methane(aka natural gas), then finally hydrogen.
Wow, aren’t you the vicious one? You want to drive a locomotive on the streets, be my guest.
Suggest you take your hostility over to DU. You’ll be very welcome there.
whatever. grow a brain, then post something worthy of a civil response.
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Capable of getting somewhere in a hurry.
Go ahead, refute my points. I look forward to your reasoned and intellectual engineering response. Bonus points for some basic physics or engineering analysis.
Fine. start by redoing your silly analysis. Then I will respond to it.
No he was making a point that long range transportation on electric is a fool’s errand. You can do all the long trip stuff on a gasolene engine cheaper than this hybrid. There are cars that get over 50 MPG that make much more sense.
And you can also not find any charging points if needed cause they barely exist. This car has limited usage and high costs and that simply isn’t going to change anytime soon.
The funny thing is I am the perfect candidate for this car. I live only 10 miles from my job so a round trip on electric would be easy for me with charge to spare if I needed to make a small side trip. However, at $50,000+, its a no-go for me.
Sorry, but all the excuses the electric carheads make for this highly subsidized car is simply so much wind. Government pushing these follys aren’t going to change anything. Like someone else mentioned, Asia would probably be the best market for these vehicles if they can ever get the costs down.
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