Celebrating its 100th anniversary, and staring at some of the most anemic sales and profit figures it's ever seen, General Motors today unveiled the car that is supposed to save Detroit.
The 2010 Chevy Volt (if it reaches production as scheduled) will be the world's first Extended-Range Electric Vehicle, or E-REV. Like a hybrid, it has both an electric motor and a gasoline engine. But in the Volt, only the electric motor provides power to the wheels. In fact, that electric motor can carry the Volt up to 40 miles at highway speed, and can be recharged from a standard household outlet. The small flex-fuel engine of the car is just a generator, which kicks in to recharge the batteries if their power dips below a certain threshold. In other words, for most drivers, the Volt would act as an electric car most of the time -- with a gasoline engine for long trips.
For details on how the Volt works, what it will cost to own and why it might be a failure before it hits showrooms, see our extensive preview page.
Press reaction to the car has been mixed.
CNN reports, "Based on photos released last week - inadvertently, GM says - many people posting comments on car blogs have expressed disappointment that the production car does not look as angular and aggressive as the original concept vehicle." Lyle Dennis, who runs the blog GM-Volt.com (but has no official affiliation with GM, acknowledged to CNN "A lot of people are saying they're very disappointed and 'take me off the [waiting] list.'"
The Boston Globe seems to like the look, saying "Striking features abound: an all-black roof, solid front grill, and in the interior, a bright white center stack and customizable LCD displays."
Edmunds Inside Line characterizes the production Volt as "a few notches down from the breathtaking sex appeal and edginess of the original Volt concept."
Still, with Honda's new Insight hybrid bearing a disturbing resemblance to the Toyota Prius, Chevrolet has at least pulled of a unique look in the Volt.
Inside, Autoblog says, "GM designers attempted to pull off a Buck Rodgers meets Apple iPod theme. ... The first thing we noticed was that GM decided to use two seven-inch LCD screens, with one working as the main driver instrument panel (no gauge cluster here) and the other for everything from navigation to tracking battery charges. Both screens are user configurable, and two different configurations can be saved for two different drivers."
But will it save GM? Popular Mechanics comments, "The key for GM will be to move as quickly as possible-faster than Toyota did-in ramping up production on the Volt. But it must also simultaneously drop the price tag from the un-Chevy-like $35,000-40,000 we're currently hearing from GM product czar Bob Lutz, and closer to a number that the mainstream mass market is paying ($22,000 to $28,000) for typical midsize sedans."
Or perhaps the Volt's role isn't to sell a million cars after all -- but to lure you into the showroom so that GM can sell you something more conventional, but more fuel-efficient than what you're driving today. On the same day that Chevrolet debuted the Volt, it held a much less-hyped event to roll out the first official version of its 2010 Chevy Cruze small car -- a Honda Civic-fighter that, GM claims, boasts an EPA rating of 40 miles per gallon. The Volt might prove impractical for many...but if it draws them into Chevy dealerships (or onto Chevy websites) out of curiosity, it may have done its job.
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