I can’t be the only one who thinks the Chevy Volt is actually a pretty good looking car:
The interior looks pretty good, too. I guess all that matters now is performance.
*** Update ***
Apparently that was the test model. The production model looks like a generic Honda. Not ugly, but not as attractive as the picture above.
uila
I don’t know, the only thing missing from that picture is Ace and Gary. I’ll assume it’s the wide angle lens.
Ash
It’s very ~futuristic~
Bret
Sorry, John. That’s the concept. The production model is here
Kremer
Yeah, the show car/prototype in that pic looks great!
The production car? Not so much. (not bad, but worse than Hondas, IMO)
Evinfuilt
@Bret:
And that shows GM doing what it does best, screw stuff up. Tesla’s sedan on the other hand is hot looking.
http://www.knoler.eu/2009/tesla-model-s-sedan.jpg
And a better value too.
Calouste
@Bret:
It basically looks like a Prius with a Chevy make over.
Halteclere
The claim that it gets 230MPG in the city is highly misleading because much of that MPG is including energy stored in the battery from being charged up at home.
I think cars of this type – i.e. plug-in rechargeables – will require a new efficiency metric, such as distance on a single charge / MPG when that charge is depleted.
GP
I find it odd that they came up with it so fast. Really how long is that car been waiting in the wings I think its a great looking car.
r€nato
Perhaps so, but I think the point is that if you do a lot of city driving, the Volt virtually gets you off the gasoline.
People aren’t thinking yet, at this point, about how efficiently the car uses the electricity and I’m just fine with that for now. Let’s allow electric vehicles get much more widely in use before we start confusing folks with a new statistic regarding auto efficiency…
Ash
@Evinfuilt: Eh, the Tesla is actually too sporty for my liking.
General Winfield Stuck
Which begs the question on the pain when paying electric bill.
Seebach
Wow, could they have waited any longer to bring it out? Maybe once the entire company was liquidated and the coasts were underwater?
Ailuridae
@GP:
Its been in development for a while. One of the more interesting arguments for bailing GM out was that there was a moral/ethical imperative to make sure the Volt gets to market.
As for the design, I think its appealing if a bit conventional. The electric Nissan is a better looking car but I prefer the Volt to the electric Focus.
steve s
If GM is honest when they say that you’ll only need 8 kW-hrs to recharge and go 40 miles, and the avg residential kW hr costs 8 cents, you’re looking at about 1.6 cents per mile. By comparison, a 20 mpg car with $2.50 per gallon gas is running around 12 cents per mile.
(keep in mind, there are many other costs involved in operating a car)
BombIranForChrist
@Evinfuilt: Wow, the tesla looks bad-ass. I’m guessing I can’t fit two children’s seats in it, but it’s still mega-cool.
chopper
@Halteclere:
yeah, it’s 230 miles-per-gallon-equivalent. which is a bit of goofy maths.
i will say this, any plug-in hybrid will get some rockin mileage for short-trip use. electricity is generally cleaner and more efficient than gas especially when you consider the inefficiencies of the internal combustion engine.
i just wonder how i’d charge one of these in NYC, where i live in a third-floor walkup and park my car on the street a block away.
arguingwithsignposts
The problem: A Wall Street Journal columnist on MSNBC is lecturing us about what “real Americans” think about Obama’s health care plan.
Shoot. Me. Now.
Kirk Spencer
@General Winfield Stuck: Well, notionally each “full” charge of the battery will be 8.8 kwh. Around here the going rate is a bit over seven cents per kwh, so recharging the battery is notionally going to be around 60 cents. Note that this is nominal recharge from the 30% charge at which the onboard generator kicks in to the 85% point at which it stops (to avoid overcharge problems).
Since it’s supposed to go about 40 miles on battery before the generator kicks on, that’s theoretically 1.5 cents per mile. In comparison, my very old Saturn SL1, which gets pretty close to 35 mpg, will cost about 8 cents per mile (at the 2.43 per gallon I saw yesterday.)
cbear
Here’s another very sexy electric:
http://karma.fiskerautomotive.com/gallery/index
Halteclere
@r€nato:
I agree that this car would be great for city driving (I haven’t done the travel cost yet though for my $0.17KWh here in Dallas though). Cars of this kind will be great for a particular driving task.
But I think that either GM or the media that is covering this vehicle is being purposely misleading by throwing out such a gawdy MPG number that is not a real number. Hell, I could get 90MPG in my ’65Mustang if I lived on top of a mountain and only clocked my MPG when traveling downhill to work. I would instead like to see the total distance that this car can travel on a full charge and a full tank of gas. Maybe it is just the cantankerous engineer in me coming out.
To reiterate, I think cars of this kind will be wonderful in their particular niche, but I get easily turned off on products that are extremely overhyped, outright misleading or plainly false (see: Segway “It is coming – it will change the world” release, the Tesla, hydrogen vehicle conversion kits).
Wile E. Quixote
@GP
GM started playing with the technology in the early 1990s. They took an EV1 and put a small generator in it to recharge the batteries. Unfortunately since the fuck-ups at CARB, the California Air Resources Board, were stupidly hung up on the ZEV concept and the EV1 with built-in recharging went nowhere.
GM was also making a cubic metric buckin futtload of money cranking out SUVs so there wasn’t a lot of incentive within the company to continue working on the EV1 because they lost money on each and every car they made, which for some strange reason that environmentalists don’t seem to understand, made them reluctant to continue the program.
The Atlantic published a good article by Jonathan Rauch last year about the GM Volt program. I cling nostalgically to articles like this one these days as the rest of the magazine and their online presence, most notably McMegan McArdle and Sully, is of course utter shit.
Joshua Norton
Are we doomed to nothing but cars that look like claustrophobic lumps of molded play-doh? I’ve been car shopping and absolutely HATE every single one I’ve seen so far. I see nothing sexy about a car profile that has the trunk lid 4 feet off the ground and the hood ornament is practically rubbing against the road. A mid-size one looks like it’s going permanently down-hill and smaller ones look like travel irons.
And the so-called Smart cars. People look more like they’re wearing them than driving them.
F-U-G-L-Y.
/rant
MikeJ
Lucky that their particular niche is 90% of the driving done. Most people only rarely drive more than 40 miles at a go. Hence the high mpg for city miles.
If you want to know what it’s like on those uncommon trips, look at the hwy number. It ain’t rocket science.
Litlebritdifrnt
BFD they are about 4 years behind the curve, it figures.
http://www.carpages.co.uk/news/gwiz-15-04-05.asp
ominira
@chopper: My local Ralphs grocery store in Los Angeles has charging stations for people who want to charge their electric cars. Free. So even apartment dwellers with no garage parking can use it. Maybe that will become more widespread around the country (and will no longer be free) as these cars become more popular.
Mr. Furious
Yep. If GM had the balls to leave that design (at least somewhat) alone, they’d have a bigger hit on their hands.
You think people buy Priuses for their good looks? Not exactly, they walk the line of ugly, but they are unique and everyone knows exactly what it is and what it does.
Prius drivers revel in the fact that they drive totally obvious hybrids, and the first generation of Volt buyers want the same thing.
Halteclere
@chopper:
Got a long extension cord?
I can see a cottage industry springing up where people on building ground floors start offer charging services.
Mr. Furious
Notice to GM stylists: If you are going to make the trunk/decklid four feet above the ground, and only six inches from the rear glass to the back of the car, then go ahead and make it a fucking hatchback.
Who likes loading shit horizontally into what amounts to a rear portal?
Mr. Furious
@chopper: You’re S.O.L.
Halteclere
@Mr. Furious:
I read somewhere that when Honda (I think) made their hybrid vehicle look like a regular car they had less sales than when their hybrid was immediately recognizable for what it was.
General Winfield Stuck
@Kirk Spencer:
Thanks. That sounds like a good deal.
AhabTRuler
@Mr. Furious: Ehhh, if there’s a demand, someone in New York will come up with a supply. There is a cost effective solution (I mean for NY’ers, do you know what you pay for a box of fucking cereal in Manhattan?) out there.
Ailuridae
@ominira:
Beat me to it. I was asked outside the Whole Foods nearest me in Chicago what I thought of the idea of them offering the same thing.
b-psycho
Unless the Volt, when released, has a price point the average person can realistically meet, it’ll be meaningless.
First estimate I’ve heard is $40k. Cut that to $15k and you might have something.
ominira
@Litlebritdifrnt: Now that is a FUGLY car. Barf.
AhabTRuler
Fuck that noise. OTOH, I don’t even have a car now, and I would be sad if I started needing one.
Driving makes Ahab sad
Trollhattan
The show car prototype (as shown) was pretty darn kewhl, in that popular snub-nose high-beltline squinty-headlight look of the time, but as Bob Lutz later joked it would probably get better drag results had they put it in the wind tunnel backwards.
The dictates of airflow really limit small car design when you’re maximizing efficiency. Hence, the redesign.
I figger once they perfect and establish plug-in drivetrains in the early cars and gain public acceptance of the concept, they can shove them in to all sorts of platforms–efficient and stylish alike. I wouldn’t mind having a Volt-Mini.
chopper
@Mr. Furious:
exactly. meh, i’m not in the market for a new car for about 10 years anyways. i drive an 03 honda.
Ash
I never understood Smart Car drivers. The mileage isn’t anything revolutionary, you can barely fit two people in there, if you ever got into an accident they’re probably have to scrape you off the pavement using spatulas, and you can get a perfectly nice Civic or something for the same price.
chopper
@AhabTRuler:
you can afford cereal??
Beauzeaux
I’m glad Chevrolet is taking this step, and I wish them success…but I’d still much rather wait for a Tesla Model S.
chopper
@Ash:
and they fit into all the leftover half-parking spots all over new york, the spots that nobody else except for motorcycles can fit into.
Wile E. Quixote
@Litlebritdifrnt
Sure, if I lived in Britain I might not mind driving a fugly little box of a car that is only viable because it receives massive tax breaks and subsidies. But I don’t, probably for the same reason I don’t like warm beer and lukewarm, incredibly bad coffee, ubiquitous CCTV surveillance and completely and ridiculously over-engineered power outlets. Oh, this car is also a *British* electrical car, so I hope that no one who worked for Lucas had anything to do with this car and if they did I hope that the car comes with a plentiful supply of magic smoke to let out.
MikeJ
http://www.montrealgazette.com/unveils+electric+MINI/1793634/story.html
Tsulagi
At $40k I wouldn’t buy one. Definitely not one that looks like a Honda Civic with probably crappier performance and likely a shitload of expensive maintenance once the warranty runs out. That Tesla seems hot, though.
joes527
@Wile E. Quixote: You might want to wait for national healthcare before climbing behind the wheel too.
allen
I’m going to stick with with my old ’89 Saab 900 Turbo that has a little over 60,000 miles. But then I live about a mile and a half from downtown and take the bus almost to work and most everywhere else in town. When you have the best transit system in the west and the the bus that stops a half block from your house and costs $2.00 to ride nothing else makes sense.
Maybe I shouldn’t mention that my even older motorcycle, an ’82 BMW R100RT, sees about 8,000 miles a year but it gets 50 miles to the gallon.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Wile E. Quixote:
Ya know I suppose I am a little strange, I think a car is a means to get me from point a to point b. I have never considered what a car looks like to be an issue, ever. It is a means of transportation. If one has to consider what one looks like sitting behind the wheel of any vehicle then perhaps one might have issues that have nothing to do with the vehicle they are driving.
Fencedude
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Welcome to America!
angrystan
For those of you who do not obsess over automotive media, it’s worth pointing out the motive power is entirely electric, but powered either by batteries for an optimal 40 miles, or an on-board dynamo driven by a 1.4 gasoline engine. The dynamo recharges the batteries when producing more power than required to move the car.
When you reverse engineer the sketchy maths used to get the number 230, the Volt is a 51 MPG urban-cycle vehicle once the batteries deplete. Not bad for gas at that size. The 2011 Cruze (direct replacement for Cobalt) will be this vehicle without batteries, dynamo and with the same engine. I find myself wondering which will be the MPG champion in mixed-use cycle.
@Wile E. Quixote: The G-Wiz is actually a Riva sold through another distributor. It is an Indian interpretation of our NEVs.
@Ash: Being in an accident in the Smart is like being in a well-cushioned, eight-foot ball bearing. The structural rigidity is why it looks so very strange. More Smarts have destroyed delivery vans, Suburbans and the like than the other way ’round.
Who wants to hear about how algae-based oil will increase petroleum availability for products other than fuel oil, heating oil, diesel and jet fuel with the potential of making the US an energy exporter again?
joes527
@Litlebritdifrnt: I would buy a G*Wiz in a minute if (a) they sold them in the US and (b) it wasn’t a deathtrap in mixed traffic.
That thing might rule on the golf course, but it would be squashed like an ant by the hummers that the neighbours drive.
I once saw someone driving a sparrow locally. Now THAT is without doubt one of the fugliest cars in all creation. I had two reactions on right after another.
1) That is really cool. (own the geek in yourself)
2) I hope he makes it through this intersection.
Litlebritdifrnt
@joes527:
I drive pretty much 12 miles a day, to and from the office, a g-wiz would be perfect for me, in fact I could probably charge it once a week. So you are basically saying that I have to drive a tank like vehicle because people are fucking idiots and don’t obey traffic signals? By the same reasoning we should all be walking around armed to the teeth because some idiot with a gun might hold us up at the convenience store? Is that what you are saying?
Fencedude
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Judging by those pictures from Top Gear, the thing just isn’t safe.
By all reports the Smarts are quite safe however.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Litlebritdifrnt:
sorry meant to add, so people should never ride motorcycles or scooters because they are more at risk in collisions with cars? I mean really, my boss drives his golf cart from his house to the golf course every day of the week and probably twice on sundays and has yet to be killed by a hummer. Are you saying that everyone should drive hummers cause hummer drivers are too stupid to obey the simple rules of the road? I has a confuzed.
Fencedude
@Litlebritdifrnt:
You personally couldn’t pay me to ride a motorcycle.
You are however taking things way out of proportion.
EnderWiggin
@Litlebritdifrnt:
All things said, I am not actually likely to be held up at the convenience store. I go to one an average of once a day, and I have never been there to witness a crime.
I have been in several accidents because people are fucking idiots and don’t obey traffic signals.
Looking at the statistics, an American is far more likely to be seriously injured or killed in a car accident (42,642 in 2006) than by gun violence (12,791 in 2006).
I am also not poor, and live in a state with strict gun laws, so I am less likely to be effected by gun violence. But idiots running red lights affect everyone pretty in proportion to how much your drive.
I think for most of us, a g-wiz is not a safe choice, even if Obama declares all Hummers crushed immediately.
SixStringFanatic
@chopper: I still haven’t seen the movie version yet, so I don’t know if this carried over, but the graphic novel version of “Watchmen” had your problem solved over 20 years ago. Basically, big curbside electrical outlets specifically designed to recharge vehicles. Something along those lines will almost surely be developed if/when electric cars really take off. Once upon a time, there were no such things as gas stations.
Steve T.
Aw, hell with MPG or distance per charge. What we need is a rating system of something like MPkE, or Miles Per kiloErg. That’s what you need to know, how far this car will get you on so much energy, no matter how the energy was loaded into the car. Gas fueling an engine, charged batteries driving motors, doesn’t matter. Energy is energy, work is work, and how efficiently energy does the work (moving the car) is what we really need to know. If we can comparatively measure how any form of stored energy (gas, electricity in a battery) translates to useful motion in any type of vehicle (car, train, plane), so that we can really compare efficiency, then we’d be getting somewhere.
Steve T.
BTW, John, you really need to get that preview button back.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Fencedude:
I do not see how. You are basically saying that no one should drive a motorcycle because in a collision with an idiot hummer/suv driver they are going to come off worse. Where do we go from here? (Is this the way that’s clear – oops Rock On reference) by this logic we should all drive mack 18 wheelers cause in a match up between a hummer and a mack 18 wheeler the 18 wheeler wins every time. I do not get that logic.
Fencedude
@Litlebritdifrnt:
No, I never said that, and neither did joes.
Are you saying that safety considerations are completely immaterial to you?
Tom
Problem with the old design was that it was about as aerodynamic as a brick. The new one isn’t very sexy, but that jellybean shape really does make a difference in efficiency. In the end, I’d rather have function over form in my car.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Fencedude: No I am saying that the argument that “bigger is safer” gets quickly to stupid level, we should all be driving 18 wheelers cause statistics show that 18 wheelers come off better in crash scenarios than other vehicles. Are you saying that we should all drive 18 wheelers? The fact that I drive a teeny Kia makes me more likely to be killed by an SUV, so by that logic, an SUV is more likely to be killed by an 18 wheeler, ergo, everyone should drive an 18 wheeler.
Evinfuilt
@cbear:
Glad you put that link up, i believe the design was done from the gentleman who did the latest Austin Martins and Jaguars.
Price wise the Fisker is going to be up there, where the new Porche sedan sits.
Fencedude
@Litlebritdifrnt:
But nobody here said “bigger is safer”. You completely read way more into the statements than was ever implied. The statement was that that particular car was NOT SAFE, not that all small cars are not safe.
Granted, being in a small car and getting hit by a Hummer is probably not the best situation for you, but depending on the car, its quite survivable.
Mr Furious
@allen:
Allen, let me know when you ever want to sell that Saab!
Seriously.
Mr Furious
@Litlebritdifrnt: By YOUR reasoning we should all drive tank-like cars because some maniac in a Hummer is deliberately stampeding through traffic crushing all subcompacts.
Sometimes accidents really are just accidents.
Wile E. Quixote
@joes527
Yeah, after my unfortunate and all too brief career as a motorcyclist I have decided that in the future any motor vehicle I buy has to meet the following criteria
Front and side airbags
Heated front seats
Cupholders
Throw weight greater than 3,000 pounds (1,361 kilograms).
Wile E. Quixote
@Litlebritdifrnt
I don’t think that Fencedude is saying that no one should ride a motorcycle because of the scenario you mentioned. However if the scenario you mentioned occurs the motorcyclist, or the person in the cute little electro-deathtrap is well and truly fucked, and I speak from much painful experience here.
BretH
Imo any car that looks like you could easily drop a grand in tire changes is automatically disqualified from being “cool” outside of an auto show.
SixStringFanatic
@Litlebritdifrnt
@fencedude
I wouldn’t make the argument that a Smartcar could take on a Hummer with no problems, but it is far from a “deathtrap”.
Evidence found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mz-s1sIoLhU
SixStringFanatic
By the way, it took me roughly 30 seconds of research to find that link (it took a couple of minutes to watch the clip).
Perhaps we (and I include myself, as well) could all actually test some of our most dearly held assumptions, from time to time.
John Gallagher
Bear in mind that cars aren’t scared of motorcycles and trucks aren’t scared of cars nor are trains scared of 18 wheelers. You cannot ignore the fact that mass affects the out come of crashes. I quit riding motorcycles on the street because the laws of physics are strictly adhered to in an accident. I felt safer on a motorcycle race track because on the street some bozo can screw up and still walk away because his vehical was heavier and he was encased in steel. The laws of physics will prevail. You can do everything right and still end up dead as a roofing nail.
Paul in KY
If GM had the Volt looking like the showcar picture, I’d buy one! As it is, the prod model has been dummed down & castrated by their pussy management. Typical for GM.
joes527
@Litlebritdifrnt: I seem to have started something before I left last night.
A couple of points.
I don’t like that how and what the people around me drive affects my safety. I don’t like the law of gravity either. But not liking these things doesn’t lead me to ignore them.
I never said that heavier is safer. There is some general truth to that, but there are other ways to skin that cat. As a start, Airbags, decent front and rear crumple zones and a reinforced passenger compartment to stop the crumpling where the squishy people are.
The G-Wiz doesn’t seem to have any of these.
Smart cars HAVE been engineered to run on the street. I’m surprised how small the crumple zones are, but go compare the crash tests of the smart car and the G-Wiz. The difference is pretty dramatic.
Now that has added significant cost ($$ and lbs) to the smart car, but the difference between dying in a 40 mph crash and not dying in a 40 mph crash seem to justify it.
Some have argued that once you are up to the smart car, you can get similar mileage for similar $$ in much more conventional car, and that may be the case.
I drive a small car, and would love to drive a smaller car. If I could get an 100% electric car with with 30 mile range, 50 mph top speed, and reasonable $$ I’d be all over that. (that last requirement is why the current crop of electric and hybrid do not interest me)
But a reasonable minimum standard of safety is non-negotiable. G-Wiz doesn’t make the cut.