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Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Chevy Volt-the lie from Government Motors

Remember the Chevy Volt? You know, the "fully electric car" that would get 230 mile per gallon of gas. YOU KNOW, the car that actually wouldn't even use any gas except to recharge the battery on long drives? Of course, I knew you remembered. Pft, well here you go-after some testing by independent sources it looks like all of those claims are lies......

Advertised as an all-electric car that could drive 50 miles on its lithium battery, GM addressed concerns about where you plug the thing in en route to grandma's house by adding a small gasoline engine to help maintain the charge on the battery as it starts to run down. It was still an electric car, we were told, and not a hybrid on steroids.

That's not quite true. The gasoline engine has been found to be more than a range-extender for the battery. Volt engineers are now admitting that when the vehicle's lithium-ion battery pack runs down and at speeds near or above 70 mph, the Volt's gasoline engine will directly drive the front wheels along with the electric motors. That's not charging the battery — that's driving the car.

So it's not an all-electric car, but rather a pricey $41,000 hybrid that requires a taxpayer-funded $7,500 subsidy to get car shoppers to look at it. But gee, even despite the false advertising about the powertrain, isn't a car that gets 230 miles per gallon of gas worth it?

We heard GM's then-CEO Fritz Henderson claim the Volt would get 230 miles per gallon in city conditions. Popular Mechanics found the Volt to get about 37.5 mpg in city driving, and Motor Trend reports: "Without any plugging in, (a weeklong trip to Grandma's house) should return fuel economy in the high 30s to low 40s."

Shocked? Nah, me either.

6 comments:

  1. At the end of the day, the Chevy Volt is still going to reduce fuel consumption, right? I don't see what's wrong with that, no matter how the Volt's mechanism may be advertised.

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  2. Whatever Chevrolet may have been hiding, it sounds to me like they still did a magnificent job with the Volt's engineering. Having different engines power front and real wheels is sheer genius.

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  3. "At the end of the day, the Chevy Volt is still going to reduce fuel consumption, right?" The argument there is that charging the car will take up generated electricity, anyway, which also causes emission.

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  4. I agree with Speed Star. This hybrid's engineering is great in its own ways.
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  5. This is the big weakness of hybrids. They still need gasoline to increase their mileage.

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  6. Though this may not be the optimum standard for hybrids, it at least created a blueprint for manufacturers to improve on.
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