Nothing personal Sandy but by definition it is a hybrid vehicle. The gasoline engine can (and most of the time it must) propel the vehicle by mechanical means. Alternatively the vehicle can be propelled by electric motors under battery power. When I was interested in a Volt I looked at a prototype at the Los Angeles car show and was told it would be a strictly electric vehicle with a gasoline powered onboard generator. The onboard generator was not connected mechanically to the drivetrain but could supply electric power to the motors to propel the vehicle and also recharge the batteries simultaneously. The car could also be plugged in when parked to charge the batteries. That is the engineering definition of an electric vehicle with auxiliary onboard power generation. At the time I looked at the vehicle the range was supposed to be nearly 200 miles before the generator would activate autonomously. I had planned to buy one. But then the entire design changed and the modern looking coachwork shown as the prototype was dropped for a Malibu chassis. The cost of the batteries were prohibitive so GM dropped the battery design and opted for cheaper commercially available small batteries lashed together in packs. It was also cheaper for GM to use an already developed gasoline engine instead of the advanced highly efficient generator that had been specifically designed for the Volt. So we ended up with this somewhat inefficient hybrid with very inadequate range under electric power. I don't wish to give offense but my facts are all sound and documented. No need to take it so personally. My qualification to discuss the design of this vehicle is my electrical engineering degree and 25 years of working on satellite designs including the solar/battery electrical systems found aboard most commercial and military communications satellites. My post did not mention the unions (union workers), the workers or the dealerships and my gripe is with the engineering team and the executive leadership of GM who made very poor decisions regarding this car. I also find fault with the Obama administration who decided to give the company to the UAW instead of paying the bond holders who by law and tradition have priority. What is astonishing is that all the compromises to the vehicle that were made left its price still far too high. They might as well have tried to work with the original design because at least they may have been able to sell the vehicles. I certainly had planned to buy one and told people for years at the engineering firm I work for that I was going to buy one. Most disappointing.
Since you have related professional experience, please give your honest assessment of how much a Lithium-Ion battery pack that could propel the Volt 200 miles would cost today - just the pack itself, nothing else.
So if it's a hybrid, it needs two sources to power the vehicle. When I got my Volt 5 weeks ago, I filled it with gas(9 gallons). The car said the extended range with gas was 310 miles. 5 weeks later, it still says 310 miles. So what has been propelling my vehicle for the last month? It certainly hasn't been gas. I'm really not understanding what your point is. Your resume is very impressive but your reasons for not liking the vehicle are not. You seem totally upset that the gas engine may at times while in extended range mode directly power the vehicle when it's over 70 MPH. Really? That's your whole beef with the car? The theoritical car you described above is basically what we have today. Of course it's not perfect. Of course it would be great if the range was longer and/or the battery was smaller for the same range and therefore cheaper. But what major "compromises" does this vehicle have? Is is cost effective compared to a Cruze with 30+ MPG, probably not. But it's the only thing like it and a brilliant concept that I'm sure will be improved upon in future generations. If you really want to critisize something, the Leaf promised 100 miles per charge, Real world, people are getting closer to 60. Talk about range anxiety. Not to mention that Nissan has gradually creeped up the price now that the Leaf is almost as much as a Volt. A more practical approach would be a Volt with extended range capabilities or the new Prius with a 15 mile range for considerably less money. By the way, the Volt is on the Cruze platform, not the Malibu. The engine is also the 1.4L engine that is in the Cruze.
you can tell sandy is a true americancar salesman, peddiling bs all day long. Of course toyota is a better brand than gm, look at the stats before GM jumped on the gas efficiency bandwagon (2 years ago- to simply appeal to the foreign car crowd). Toyotas hold resale value much more over the crappy malibu. And have you ever seen an American car that is 5-10 yrs old. They look and drive like junk. After that warranty that is made by a team of insurers that make sure the car falls apart right after the warranty expires. All gm cars are junk imo, they look nice new, and they are not in business to give the consumer the best car for the money. They are in business to make money however they can. They know they have a market for their cars (i.e. people who 'buy american'), and they produce them as cheap as they can, and give dealerships huge margin of profit (more-so than japanese car makers, and euro car makers), so guys like you can peddle cars, and dumb people who make decisions on buying 20k-40k cars leaving it up to what the salesperson at the dealership says. Seriously, the only reason why these cars sell is the reason Sandy stated earlier in the thread. "I said the Camry was a good car and I'm sure they would be happy with it and then gave them a few reasons why I thought the Malibu was better. The next day they came back and bought the Malibu. They told me that the deciding factor was when they asked the Toyota salesman why they should buy a Camry over a Malibu. He told them, "well, because it's a Toyota." Who buys a car after hearing explanations from salesmen at the dealership as the deciding factor? I guess a lot of people in this country, which is why this lemon factory sells cars lol.
You're clearly towing the company line, everyone else seems to disagree: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevy_volt#Terminology
BTW, I traded my 08' escalade truck last year (55k miles then everything started to fall apart, right after factory warranty), for a '11 Chevrolet Avalanche, that I got $7,500 off msrp, cause there were dozens on the lot. I think American trucks are good in the long run, and I plan on putting 150k+ miles on it in its life. Rather pay for parts on a chevy over a cadillac in the long run. I also own a toyota and a nissan. I owned a maserati for a couple years, and have driven family owned mercedes. Just my 2cents from the last 6 years I've been buying and selling cars. All cars depreciate, some sooner than others. My gf bought a used toyota corolla in '06 for 7k. She sold it in '09 for $7,500 . Think that will ever happen with the used chevy malibus?
How did they legally do that? GM stripped the bones from all of the remaining EV1's. Also truthfully, if you're wondering how the performance would be with lithium batteries, look to the Nissan Leaf. Very cool car, but nimh was allot easier to deal with, and lithium still has limitations!
I remember GM's first anti-skid brakes: they were just some stuff slapped on to an existing model so they could advertise they had anti-skid just like the car manufacturers that really do engineer stuff. They had a mechanical linkage that sensed movement of the rear axle and applied the brakes. Really low tech, really cheap to engineer and probably really didn't do much. I remember their first hybrid powered vehicle. They stuck an electric motor on the fan belt of a V8 and had it provide some assist! It did barely anything but they could say they had a Hybrid vehicle. Once a union gets it's death grip on a company it's over. Management can't plan anything, they have to pay so much in wages that they can't afford to engineer anything.. Kodak struggled with that for a very long time but they finally died. GM is in the same death struggle. A lot of GM sales are to public sector entities. They have to make products good enough for those folk and for rentals that get sold off after only a year or less. There is no reason for GM to raise the bar much at all.
problem is, it creates more pollution to mine and burn the coal to make the electricity than it does just to drill the oil and burn it in the car. Anybody ever tried a natural gas car? At one time I had a flatbed straight truck with a methane tank, but we never could get it working.