By Dan Tsuchiya

Pros:

• 100 miles on a full charge
• Eco Mode for dummies
• Drives like a car, not an enclosed golf cart
• It actually looks good and not a social statement
• Batteries are mounted very low so out of the way physically and lowers the center of gravity
• Total energy cost for a year is about $500
• It turns a new leaf in the saga american motoring

Cons:

• 100 miles on a full charge (run it down, you’re stuck)
• 14-16 hour charge using 110V household current
• Front seats are very basic
• $35k base will keep it away from the masses.

Video from Roadfly.com (click ’360p’ to watch in HD)

Remember the first time you rode/drove an EV? It could have been a battery powered toy car, a golf cart, or even a gas powered car converted to electric, but they all had one thing in common; acceleration like an on/off switch….no modulation. More than 10 years ago Toyota brought the hybrid Prius to the United States and it was one of the first cars with fantastic modulation and packaged in a base car that was previously gas powered. I currently have a second generation Prius in the stable and our staff was lucky enough to test the Chevrolet Volt a couple of months back.

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By Megan Green

This past April, I was given the opportunity to go on a June road trip in a 2011 Chevy Volt and photograph it with the newly launched Olympus E-P3 camera.

When I told friends that I was going to Alaska to drive a Chevrolet Volt around, their first reactions were, “Ice Road Truckers!” Then came a barrage of questions; “Good luck with that, can you even drive that far in it? What’s the range, like 50 miles? How are you going to charge it in the middle of the wilderness? Are small towns even equipped to recharge electric vehicles? How long does it take to charge it?”

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Chevrolet Volt Consumer Reviews	Chevrolet Volt More Expert Reviews	2011 Chevrolet Volt Photo Gallery	2011 Chevrolet Volt Specs

By Dan Tsuchiya

Positrons

• Great Design and better looking than any Prius made to date
• Electricity first; leading to 250-500 mpg if you have access an outlet
• Feels safer and more substantial than it’s competitors
• 0-60 acceleration faster than a Honda Civic

Electrons

• Electric Vehicle (EV) range limited to 35 miles before gas motor has to recharge batteries
• Interior has too many hard plastic surfaces
• Soft-touch buttons are too sensitive
• Navigation and radio are integrated such that you can’t have one on without the other

Living with the Chevrolet Volt is about making a green statement, but without the usual green sacrifices. It’s not a hybrid as defined by the Toyota and Honda camp, it’s an extended range electric vehicle (EV) that combines the gas saving benefits of pure electric cars with the range and convenience of conventional gas powered cars. While the Toyota and Honda camps utilize gas and electricity in parallel, the Volt takes a series approach, EV first then gas. The EV range fully charged is about 35 miles and once that power depletes, the Volt fires up its 1.4L engine to charge the batteries and provide juice to the electric motor, allowing for another 250-300 miles of driving under normal conditions.

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Chevrolet Volt Consumer Reviews	Chevrolet Volt More Expert Reviews	2011 Chevy Volt Photo Gallery	2011 Chevrolet Volt Specs

By contributing editor David Colman

Hits

• Breakthrough engineering tour de force
• No driving sacrifice needed to validate green passport
• Interior design top notch

Misses

• Even with tax rebate, pricey
• Not the package for the driving enthusiast
• 35 mile battery radius seems hardly worth the extra cost and weight

You’ll be reading reams of technical information about this car in the months to come, but what’s it really like to drive? Based on a 100 mile round trip between Sausalito and Marshall, the Volt offers a workable solution to everyday transportation for 4 with the added bonus of 25-50 miles of gas-free operation daily. Volt operates in 2 different modes. There’s battery power, which is good for that gas-free 25-50 mile romp, plus gasoline power for an added range of about 350 miles. If you drive short trips every day, it could be months before you need to refill the Volt’s 9.2 gallon gas tank.

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Chevrolet Volt Consumer Reviews	Chevrolet Volt More Expert Reviews	2011 Chevrolet Volt Photo Gallery	2011 Chevrolet Volt Specs

By Derek Mau

Don’t bore me with the technical details about GM’s hybrid system built into the Chevrolet Volt. I don’t care if the Chevy Volt is a pure battery-electric vehicle, or a parallel hybrid, or a plug-in EV that requires an electrical umbilical cord. The techno-geeks can search elsewhere if they are looking for torque/power efficiency maps that identify speeds the gas engine engages to assist with driving the car. Just tell me if this Popular Mechanics wet dream, range-extended EV can take me where I want to any day of the week without having to include a visit to an electrical recharging station (which are mightily scarce here in eco-conscious California and around the North American continent).

I drove the new 2011 Chevrolet Volt at one of the stops for the Chevy Volt’s western region “Volt Unplugged” tour where they are traveling from Seattle to San Diego in a caravan of Volts. My test drive was short, but very revealing as it gave me an opportunity to learn more from the team of engineers and experts from GM. The test course, laid out in the Presidio of San Francisco, included a chance to test brief accelerations, ability to climb short hills, some sweeping turns, and lots of low speed driving. Freeway performance is “very good” according to the anecdotal accounts from the team members who are on the western region tour. So far the tour has been a success and traveling between cities has had zero hiccups. Every night the Volts on tour are recharged off a 110V outlet and everything is good to go in the morning.

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After nearly four years of development and extensive testing with the pre-production models, General Motors has officially announced pricing and has begun taking customer orders for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt in seven select markets starting today. For the general public who are not up to speed on the details, the Chevy Volt is the first electric vehicle with extended-range capability and not limited to the battery’s capacity. The Volt’s MSRP will start at $41,000 ($33,500 net of full federal income tax credit, which ranges from $0 – $7,500) and includes the $720 destination charge.

The Chevy Volt has a total range of approximately 340 miles. The beauty is that the Volt uses a small gasoline engine which recharges the Li-Ion batteries and extends the car’s range another 300 miles after it runs tailpipe-emission-free for 40 miles on battery power. The purpose of the small engine is to recharge the batteries and extend the range of the vehicle — not to assist the powertrain as with the case of hybrid vehicles.

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OnStar 2.0 mobile app adds Google maps and voice search

GM has been talking about the 2011 Chevrolet Volt for three and a half years now. After listening to years of hype and Volt propaganda, GM’s main marketing message for the 2011 Volt is centered around the message that “It’s the electric car without limits, the one you can take on spontaneous road trips, and it’s different from all those other EVs with their limited ranges.”

Since battery powered EVs are relatively new and beginning to become available to the mainstream consumer, the most common question remains, “Where can I recharge when away from home and battery power is getting low?” With all-electric vehicles, “range anxiety” is very real among consumer perceptions. People don’t want be to waiting for roadside assistance if their batteries are depleted because getting restarted isn’t as easy as running for a gallon of gas. The reality is that building the infrastructure to support EVs will take some time and customers need an easy way of finding a charging station until they become as common as your local 7-Eleven store. The Volt isn’t bound by this problem because it has a small engine onboard that extends it’s range beyond the capacity of the batteries. Regardless, range anxiety exists and GM has the answer, or more accurately, a smartphone app that addresses this important issue.

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OK, looks like the big time electric cars wars are on for real. Not just Tesla, and not just the Volt or Prius (which are hybrids anyway), but recent news of the Nissan Leaf threw fuel on the fire, and now come word that Honda will be making their own EV that will hit the streets by 2015.

Word out of Japan is that Honda plans to roll out an all-electric automobile in America by 2015. Honda, a company that essentially defined fuel efficiency combined with practicality by the early 80s will move to battery power in order to meet upcoming zero-emission regulations.

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Despite all of the economic turmoil swirling around General Motors these days, they still say everything is on track for the late 2010 debut of the Chevy Volt plug in hybrid. “At this point in time, I know of no reason why we can’t be in production by November of 2010,” said Tom Stephens General Motors’ global product development chief, to a group of journalists on the sidelines of an event at the University of Michigan. He also said that the American automaker is on plan with the development of the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid.

Stephens, the replacement for Maximum Bob Lutz as GM’s vice chairman of global product development, also said that General Motors has yet to make a decision on which of the three remaining GM brands, Cadillac, Buick and GMC, would get a vehicle based on the Volt’s plug-in hybrid drivetrain. As we all know, Pontiac got the axe, and GM is trying to sell off Saturn and Saab as quickly as they can.

“Its best utilized in urban vehicles. We have to consider what is the usage of the person buying the vehicle. For a commuter who drives 40 miles a day and takes it shopping on the weekend, it’s the perfect application,” said Stephens concerning who else would get the advanced hybrid drivetrain.

Many signs point to Buick, a brand that has turned into a surprise hit in China, as being the brand that will get the Volt underpinnings.

Source: CarScoop

Photo from Flickr user Kevin.Ward

Not all the car news is coming out of Geneva these days, there’s big, if low-key news that came out from the auto show in Melbourne Australia. Much has been made about just what GM would do with its highly anticipated Volt hybrid besides selling it in North America. There were rumors of an Opel variant for the Euro market, but other than that, it was a big question mark.

But now GM makes the obvious, yet great move of rebadging the thing as a Holden, a raises the possibility of selling them in the Australian market. The Holden Volt shown at the Melbourne Auto Show is right-hand drive but other than that and the badges, it does not differ in any way from its Chevy counterpart. The Volt, in either GM or Holden form, can travel up to 64 kilometers on electricity before using petrol or producing exhaust pipe emissions, will be launched in Australia in 2012. When compared to similar sized petrol-powered vehicles, the Volt will save Australian motorists up to 1892 liters of fuel a year.

GM Holden Chairman and Managing Director Mark Reuss said, “We think Volt has the potential to change the game in Australian motoring. Since we announced our plans to introduce Volt to Australia, we have been overwhelmed by public interest in the car and the technology that makes it work. At Holden, we believe Volt will play an incredibly important role in our efforts to make motoring better for the environment.”

Source: CarScoop