First off let me tell you a quick fact about me: I drive a truck. A big, 18 MPG, nowhere-near-California-emissions-compliant, badass truck, and I love it. I love it so much that driving anything except my truck or a truck of equal or greater size always makes me feel like I’ve let the side of my family who distill their own liquor down. But that doesn’t meant that I hate the Earth; as a matter of fact I quite like the Earth. My house is there. But the conversion to biodiesel is around $10K if done professionally and $15K if I try to do it myself, because I will fuck it up royally. This is all just to let you know that I will never happily drive a Chevy Volt. I would consider getting one in addition to my truck though.
Chevrolet has jumped into the electric car pool (pun mildly intended) with its pants off and no sunscreen on. They’ve created a car that can’t be created. The Volt, as fantastic a car as any yet proposed, requires a LiIon battery that no one has been able to make, due to its necessity for durability and long life. Don’t let that cloud over the Volt’s positive aspects, and they are many.
The first, and most dramatic, feature of Chevy’s electric car is that it doesn’t require any special power station to charge itself. All you need is a standard 110V wall outlet (most garages have at least on pair) and 6.5 hours. That’ll get you 40 miles, which is more than it seems considering the average daily commute of most motorists falls well under that distance. But let’s say you have a longer commute or have heavy traffic or just have a lot of errands to run after work. No worries, Chevy replies. The E-Flex system that Chevy has developed (all except the battery) uses the 12 gallon gas tank to charge the battery while driving extending the full range of the car to 640 miles per charge/tank. You don’t even have to use regular gasoline to fill the tank. The engine itself is fuel flexible for ethanols up to E85. Say hello to your new biodiesel car.
The car itself is well designed and innovative from every angle, but is still labeled a concept. That just goes back to the battery problem. However, Chevy does plan on mass producing the car so look for it in a few years just when the oil reserve is giving out and you are looking around at which one of your neighbors you can kill to survive.
To learn more about The Chevy Volt check out the AutoBlogGreen coverage.
See how the Volt stacks up against GM’s previous half-hearted attempt at electric automotives here.
And find out more than you will ever need to know about the car here.
My thanks to AutoBlogGreen for the image and the interest.
