delusionofgrandeur

Chevrolet is going ahead with it’s production of the ‘Volt’ hybrid-electric vehicle with an estimated market date of 2010.

Coolsupercars.com notes that the Chevy Volt is to now cost $40,000, $10,000 more than originally announced. Furthermore, GM are apparently not expecting to make any profit on the Volt, this will in fact, it seems, be a loss-leader for future hybrid or all electric models produced by GM.

The Volt is a proper PHEV [Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicle] which means that while it has a petrol [gasoline] engine for extended journeys, it also has a sizeable battery pack which can be recharged from a normal domestic mains outlet giving the Volt a 40 mile, electricity-only range.

GM has a bit of a patchy history with EVs. The all-electric GM EV1 of the late 1990s had twice the range of the Volt on electricity only and was loved by it’s owners but GM ultimately recalled all of the EV1s and controversially crushed them, thereby ending their involvement in electric vehicle production up until today. It is to be hoped we don’t see any repeat performances with the Chevy Volt.

I’ve been keeping my ear to the ground on and off but I haven’t heard anything yet to suggest that GM will introduce the Volt or an analog thereof in Europe via the Chevrolet, Opel or Vauxhall brands.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 11:10 pm and is filed under Automotive, Cars, News, Tech News.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.