No Spark: The Unanswered Questions of the Chevy Volt

by: warner todd huston | published: 08 24, 2011

Every time we turn around these days President Obama is touting the idea that the "future" of America lies in green energy and one of those greenie ideas is an Obama favorite: electric cars. Not to let him down, Government Motors has obliged by pushing the Chevy Volt as the car of the future. But thus far the future looks a lot like GM's present; a whole lot of failure leaving a whole lot of questions.

While Obama continues to tout his -- meaning our -- investment in GM others are not so sanguine. For instance, billionaire Warren Buffet has invested in a Chinese electric car company instead of putting his considerable investment acumen to use with the Chevy Volt. Buffet may be a dolt on taxes, but apparently his investing senses haven't gotten any spark from the Volt.

One of the reasons that Buffet went for the Chinese company is that some of its technology seems superior to various systems of the Chevy Volt. According to Forbes, Buffet has targeted the company because the, "car can travel 186 miles, more than the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt, on a single charge with a top speed of 87 miles per hour."

Naturally, sales of the Chevy Volt are dismal and have been for quite some time. Sadly, some reviewers are saying that the Volt is overly flashy and techy and isn't a good value for the money, so no help for GMs sales record there.

Even lefty profs at Berkeley could see that the Volt was a horrible investment. Berkeley physicist Leon J. Schipper, for one, was not enamored of the Volt.

Analyzing the Chevy Volt, the new sedan that is supposed to go 40 miles on batteries and then use a gasoline engine, he calculated that because of inefficiencies in electricity generation, its fuel economy was no better than a Toyota Prius hybrid running on gasoline, while its price was roughly double that of the Prius.

"Does the extra $20,000 justify the overall fuel and possible carbon dioxide savings?" he asked. "If two drivers switched to Prius, the overall savings of oil likely would be larger than one driver switching to a Volt, for the same money."

So, why should the American people sit idly by while GM pumps even more money into the Volt, a car consumers don't want? Maybe because wealthy environmental activists think it's wonderful and seem to imagine that sales will grow up from the ground as if by magic.

Great, isn't it? We have political considerations programming GM instead of having sales and technological reasons guiding the company We The People bailed out. Sounds like a good deal for the American people's Government Motors, doesn't it?

When all is said and done, it seems that even as GM execs are talking up the Volt, GM CEO Dan Akerson, a Chevy Volt evangelist who refers to GM's newest EV as "not a step forward, but a leap forward," led the kick-off parade at a recent event riding in…..a gas-guzzling 1960 Corvette!

When he had a chance to tout his supposedly favorite new car, Akerson instead went for an old gas hog that gets 12 miles to the gallon.

Whatever is going on, none of it sounds good for Government Motors' Chevy Volt, now does it?

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  Mark Bartosik

  Me and my girlfriend own a Volt.

  I've just got to say it is by far the best car that we're ever driven.

  What's more it saddens me that there is so much noise over a non-issue. Where is the noise about how many gasoline powered vehicles catch fire each year (about 170,000 in the USA alone). There has not been a single Volt that has caught fire outside of the lab as a result of a road accident. (One was in a house fire - not caused by the Volt.) Given that there are about 8000+ Volts on the road (ours is number 3 thousand and something), proportionately your chance of burning in a Volt are much less than in a gas powered vehicle!

  Also here is how buying a Volt supports the USA:
  1) American built by American workers.
  2) Reducing our dependency on oil.
  3) Improves balance of payments.
  4) Environment, even if you don't believe in climate change, then surely less NO, CO, and particulates in the air causing asthma and cancer is a good thing.

  We bought our Volt in May 2010, and we have so far only put 15 gallons of gas in it! We'll likely have to fill up again in March sometime! We'll likely use only 3 or 4 tanks of gas in the whole year!

  Oh and our Volt is not really burning coal either, it charges overnight when there is more renewable wind energy available from wind. Also we don't even pay for the electricity directly since we have enough solar power to balance it out.

  During safety testing 3 weeks after a Volt was crashed a battery smoldered and then caught fire. I think that 3 weeks is enough time to get out of the car. What's more if the battery had been discharged, just like gas tanks are emptied after an accident, then there wouldn't have been a fire. The other two laboratory induced fires where where the battery was taken out and crashed by itself (without the car), which is like taking a full gas tank by smashing it into a concrete wall and then being surprised that the gas tank might explode!

  Please don't bash GM products just because of the bail out, otherwise logically you would never buy a product from them, and thus ensure the demise of an American industry. Not just GM would go under by their supply chain, and thus likely take Ford with them too.

  Why not support a piece of world class engineering and American workers?

  How many dollars have you sent to the middle east lately?

  
  

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