Chevy Volt Named Motor Trend Car of the Year - FoxNews.com

I actually agree.

It will be an awesome car.

 

I don't know the specifics of the criteria they may or maynot of been applying, but I'm not a big fan of pre-release accolades and awards.

What the Chevy Volt may or maynot become to the majority of consumers remains to be seen. How it compares in the real world against currently offered hybrids and soon to come full electrics also remains to be seen.

Relative high initial purchase price, coupled with a very limited initial release and I don't think The Chevy Volt is going to be very many peoples Car of The Year next year.

 

They probably just voted it car of the year to convince the public to start going hybrid/alternate-fuel.

 

i think it's silly to award a car the title "car of the year" when it isn't even available for consumer purchase yet. it's the same as awarding gran turismo 5 game of the year or giving james cameron an emmy for avatar 2.

remember when the insight was under development and all the auto blogs (ie: green.autoblog.com) were praising it and predicting that it would change the hybrid market and knock the prius off the green hipster-mobile throne? yeah.....

 

Well, one thing to consider is that GE is ordering 12k of these in 2011

General Electric (NYSE:GE) Orders 25,000 Electric Cars

 

soon there will be a black out across america.

 

Yeah, 30+grand less government subsidized rebates (your tax money). yah-hoo.

How does Car and Driver rate this as yet unsold success story? I have a few other questions.

1. How much will the 220 volt charging system for your garage cost.?
2. How much does a re-charge cost you? This is only good for 40 miles you know.
3. How many re-charges will the batteries take until replacement is needed?
4. What is the cost of that battery replacement?
5. Where will the tons and tons of derelict batteries go? Your landfill, or mine?
6. Were will the energy come from to charge up these things when there are a couple of million of them on the road?
7. How will this energy be produced and delivered? From what fuel?

Answer these first G.M. I have dozens more.

 

I'm not with GM but watched Motorweek about the car and the charging station is about $2200 and gets a tax break. The re-charge they said was about $3.50. Don't know about the other questions, they didn't cover that but maybe we'll dump them in Canada, we've got a joint venture with them, they take ours and we take theirs. I guess its WHAT we take from each other though.

 

i seriously doubt the current power grid can handle any more than a few cars in a community charging at the same time at night. there's going to be blown transformers everywhere and black outs (just speculation but i dont see power companies making much progess on supporting these high power chargers...(?))

although i dont agree to it, hybrids is still better imho cause at least you dont mess with power going to the houses.

 

These comments are ridiculous. New fangled horseless carriages almost always scare some percent of the population.People are skeptical whenever there is "new" technology. Power demands at night are much less than those of the day. The amount of power these cars demand are not "immense" If EVERYONE on the block was charging at the same time, there MIGHT be problems, but that is unlikely to occur because of the Chevy Volt on its own..

Electric vehicles are just one of the many ways we can improve our energy dependencies.

 

Yeah? On what do you base this assertion?

No, but the amount of energy required to move a 3000 lb car one mile is fairly consistant. It is simply a matter of physics and is not arguable. It IS NOT cheaper to use fossil fuel to generate electricity (with attendant loss of energy), transport that electricity to the end user via power lines (with attendant loss of energy), Transform that A/C electricity to D/C (with attendant loss of energy) and charge a battery with it (with attendant loss of energy). It is far more efficient to put the primary source of fuel (the fossil fuel used today) directly into the automobile.

Oh, the electric car is a cute idea, and the greenies swoon over them, but they are NOT efficient. More power is required to move that auto that one mile. Do they decrease emissions? Yep. At the car. BUT the emissions are INCREASED at the primary point, the power generating plant.

Now comes the kicker. If somehow tomorrow 50% of all automobiles were powered electrically, there would be NO ELECTRIC POWER AVAILABLE for any other use in our country. Read that again. ALL available electric power on the grid would go into batteries to power our lovely little electric cars.

There are a lot of other problems involved here. Lots of them. We haven't even started discussing the inflation of electric power prices that
would happen when the demand started spiking, or the resulting rise in the cost of everything that requires electricity to produce.

 

I agree with the bulk of that post, but by chance can you swing us some links to some figures for the curious? :D