[QUOTE=FoieGrasIsEvil;12741229They moved about 100,000 units between 2004 and 2008. The car was never built in America and I “made” my car and ordered it over the internet (which was a pretty cool experience), it was built in Japan and shipped overseas to America a month later.[/QUOTE]
I hate to say this, but selling 25K units in a year is actually pretty dismal. The Chevy Cobalt and Ford Focus each sell that volume in a couple of months.
Given the fact that these cars ARE available and selling well, I am not sure why people are complaining about the Volt. It’s in a different market niche.
Yep, the Volt is failing. At current gasoline prices, it makes no economic sense.
Why Chevrolet would think otherwise, is beyond me.
Why don’t they make a turbo-diesel hybrid car, that would get about 70 MPG? That would make far more sense than the Volt.
Face it, if you cannot recharge your car at work, you proably won’t get home.
RIP, Volt.
So I take it you haven’t read ANY of this thread or done even basic self-education on the Volt?
Not only does the 40 mile range of the Volt cover the round trip commute of more than 90% of Americans, but the whole point of the Volt is that it has a gasoline backup to extend the range, so that last 10% will get home, too, albeit using some gas at an estimated 236 MPG. It’s an electric car without any of the range limits.
Also, it actually exists (or will, shortly), which can’t be said of 70+MPG diesel passenger cars.
Some people may think it’s expensive (although where I live it would be one of the cheapest cars on the road, even without rebates), but range limits aren’t a good argument against it.
I know its dismal, my point was that for a lot less than what the Volt sells for that you can get a reasonable alternative that costs much less, has a decent amount of options for a basic car and gets great mileage.
It won’t get 40 mpg in the Winter and I seriously doubt it will do it in the Summer.
It’s a pig with very expensive lipstick. It does nothing well and won’t be able to tow anything. It’s another overpriced piece of good intentions.
Please explain to me how the Volt would get 236 MPG in hybdrid mode-that would be one interesting calculation.
Once you drain the battery pack, your in hybrid mode, just as a Prius would operate. So if you cannot locate a charging station, you have (basically) a Prius.
What is really needed: a new battery that can deliver at least a 200 mile range.
Sorry, the Volt isn’t there yet.
**When gasoline is providing the power, the Volt might get as much as 50 mpg. But that mpg figure would not take into account that the car has already gone 40 miles with no gas at all.
So let’s say the car is driven 50 miles in a day. For the first 40 miles, no gas is used and during the last 10 miles, 0.2 gallons are used. That’s the equivalent of 250 miles per gallon. But, if the driver continues on to 80 miles, total fuel economy would drop to about 100 mpg. And if the driver goes 300 miles, the fuel economy would be just 62.5 mpg. **
I think it needs significantly more than 40 miles to a charge to be practical. The money spent on development would have gone farther if used on diesel technology.
I think its a price fail as well, but I think some wrong assumptions are being made on what drivers are used to buy a car.
A LOT of cars make no economic sense. No one drives a BMW or a Mercedes or an Audi because they make economic sense. Certainly no one goes and buys a Porsche because its a good buy and gets great mileage. There are other factors that go into the decision.
I drive a Prius. I was not deciding between a hybrid Prius and a Honda Civic or a Yaris or a Camry or another hybrid. My previous car had been a Jetta. My choices in cars had been narrowed to two. The Prius or an A4. The Prius made a LOT of economic sense over the A4. Of course, compared to the A4, it has no acceleration and handles like a pig. Why those two very different cars? Because those where the cars that I liked. I want alternative fuel vehicles to be successful, and the Prius was the only one I was willing to own that was available when and where I was buying. So I did my part in making hybrids commercially successful by buying one instead of buying the more fun Audi.
There may be some people who buy the Volt because its an alternative fuel American made car. That will be their decision factors. I don’t think it will be enough people to make it successful at that price point.
Settle down: Volt batteries can recharge while driving - Autoblog Pessimistic all the time aren’t you? It recharges as it drives with a conventional motor. Yes it also has a motor. You will not get stranded.
I read leasing will be at $350 a month. That may move them.
It makes sense to support an emerging technology but the other side of that coin is that support may be going toward the wrong one. I’ve been following various energy technologies for years as a matter of interest. I’m not sold on the hybrid’s because I think diesel was the better route to take (a whole different thread). The idea of a battery operated car would make more sense if it was introduced with a greater range. It costs a penny a mile to drive in this mode. That goes out the window when the ice motor kicks in. It’s great if you live in Mayberry and everything is 5 miles away. It’s mediocre if you don’t.
The reason I wanted the research money to go toward diesel is because we will be able to produce all our fuel in the future with bio-technology. Diesel cars cover the full range of automobile needs and are cheaper to make which puts more cars on the road.
:smack: Using a gas engine to recharge another power source (the battery) is a loss of efficiency for the gas engine. It would be better if the engine didn’t recharge the batteries. The only time it would be a plus is if it was used in regenerative braking. It might make sense to partially charge the battery in advance of stop and go driving so the computer can shut off the ICE while stopped at a light.
That is not necessarily true.
The gas engine can be optimized to run at a specific RPM, since it only needs to power a generator. There is no transmission losses, also. The Volt is estimated to get 50+ mpg on gas alone.
There is a loss of efficiency using an ICE to charge a battery to drive the car.
It’s simply not price competitive with a diesel. You will never recoup the difference in fuel saved unless it’s driven solely on the battery. It would be great if you lived and worked on a small island but it is not practical in real life.
Oh for Og’s sake. It’s a commuter car: the average American commute (even people who don’t live on small islands) is well under 40 miles (this says 16, but I think that’s one-way). Most people who are the market for this car will never drive it on gasoline at all. If that’s not you, fine. But Chevy’s not stupid for picking that range; it was deliberately chosen to cover the commute needs of the bottom 90%. And even that’s assuming only one charge per day. If you can charge at work, you can go twice as far (the force-charger can charge in 3 hours, or a standard outlet in 8).
And things don’t have to be price-competitive with a diesel to have a market. I’d buy one to avoid having to stop for gas more than a couple times a year, and to use an energy source that centralizes pollution (at the electrical plant) rather than emits it from a few million tailpipes. No hybrid today is price competitive based on gas mileage (under average driving conditions, a hybrid pays for it’s price delta in saved gas in about 22 years, depending on the model), and yet there sure are a lot of them being sold.
