2011 Chevy Volt pinned with a November 1st official production kickoff date?
By Ross Miller 
posted February 8th 2010 12:02AM
posted February 8th 2010 12:02AM
posted February 8th 2010 12:02AM
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Car story? Unusual, but I like it.
@FauxNews
Seriously...Megan Fox, then Beyonce...I was starting to think I was on the wrong site!
Thanks for bringing me back to real life engadget :)
@forrealdood Right, 'cause gadgets and hot babes is not at all what Engadget is about ;)
I really hope the Volt does well, for if nothing else, the automotive industry needs a sign that electric has a green light amongst consumers.
@DanMan Oh yeah, and I like seeing my tax money do something productive as well.
@DanMan Unfortunately, it'll probably be too expensive for most ($40K). But it should get the ball rolling for mainstream electric cars.
@DanMan
Right, as opposed to letting GM make the worst commercials ever.
See Chevy Volt Dance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvwTMZNWGuk
Wow this is terrible. Should have been done years ago, or not done at all.
@jol
What do you mean?
If it's a good idea, then why should it not have been done at all.
It took all the innovation with lithium batteries to get to this point anyway, which weren't ready yet when the EV1 was around.
"Kickoff" lol
Seems a bit late. Dont they start selling the 2011 model around September?
@Intel I remember it was suppose to come out as a 2010 model, guess better late than never... then again, I'd say they're 5-6 years late, not a year.
@2late2die GM said the car will come out in 2010, as a 2011 model. Its been on time so far. This car has a lot of promise, it maybe 40k now, but it should go down in price once more manufacturing starts to happen. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a 30k volt in 4-5 years.
Will it actually be cleaner than your run-of-the-mill gas sipping car? A fully eletric car isn't necessarilly a cleaner car. It depends on how you get your electricity. If it's from renewable sources then yes, but what about coal?
It would be interesting to see what kind of distance you can get for a single kV of charge and what that transposes to from a coal/nuclear/etc power plants and also how much gas it would take to travel that distance. Compare the numbers and see where we are at.
I'm not saying that electric cars are bad. I just find it interesting to dig a little deeper.
@Bengal34 Electric engines are far more efficient than their combustion counterparts. Overall, this may still save some carbon emmisions.
@Bengal34
I'd imagine we won't know those answers for at least 2 more years after the cars are on the road. By then, recharge stations will probably start popping up with solar panels to attract the environmentally conscious. If it turns out that most of the energy is coming from coal plants (probably), then we may see a bigger demand for solar and wind technologies. It's not that the powers that the movers and shakers are lazy, it's just that more complex problems tend to have slow linear implementations.
@Bengal34
I heard that electric cars are even worse for the environment due to the metals that have to be mined from the earth and their impact for the batteries.
@Peytral Rumors put out by the oil industry.
Older cars used batteries containing Nickel. The newer cars use Lithium batteries like your cell phone. Lithium is much less toxic and is recyclable.
@Dante of the Inferno
I'm not really worried about the recharge stations using non-renewable sources of energy to recharge cars - I'm most worried about the charging that will be done in the homes/garages of owners. It's just common fact that most peoples' homes are powered by nonrenewable sources today, and that area of power usage isn't likely to start coming from renewable sources on any real scale for a while.
@tamayoduck The carbon footprint wouldn't even be close to that of a an ICE engine. There are many analysis on the web for the environment impact of the 2.
@Bengal34
I found some stuff:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/news/6543936/Electric-cars-could-increase-carbon-emissions.html
From wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal
1,995 billion kWh from coal per year and 1,460 coal power plants
http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/c02c.html
3,700 kTons of CO2 produced by your average coal plant
370.27 kWh/ton of CO2
[link removed due to being over the 3 url limit]
Average CO2 emissions for a car: 151 g/km
if you drive 40,000 mi/year that would be 10.7 tons of CO2 per year (yes I converted km to miles)
I'm still missing a few dots here, but I think that while we rely heavily on coal for power then I think that it could be possible that they would, in the end, produce more CO2 than a gas sipping car.
@Bengal34
Electrical plants of almost any variety are still more efficient than cars. Now efficiency doesn't necessarily mean clean, but the greater percentage of fuel that i consumed the less fuel is used in the long run.
Very nice. I may consider one of these to hold me over until the Tesla model S is released in a few years. I hope GM can do well with this car.
Wish it's not the end of GM.
This car will FLOP.. I don't say that as a hater but it just doesn't sell. It doesn't look like a good car. I commend them on their efforts but still.... How many people can afford a $33,000-$40,000 sedan? What the hell, just pathetic. How about we actually increase the supply of electricity via solar power, nuclear, coal (yes coal), natural gas etc and streamline the process!? But I do like the idea, it sounds great. But the average American will NOT buy it. Count on it
@Mike Vick
I'm pretty sure that the people who could afford all those SUV's and Escalade's will still be able to afford a car that uses less expensive fuel sources.
@buri100
Cars in your garage = also boring
@BUNT2 This is just in the same relm as any gadget here on engadget. There is a lot of tech in this car. Besides the fact it is a car. Would it be more worthy if it has MS sync in it?
@Titan2k
You're not replying to me are you? Did buri100 get his post deleted just because he said carts on engadget is boring?
My problem with electric, is that they will just turn the same way the gas companies are, by raising the prices until it almost matches that of gas
A Volt is not really a green car. The batteries pretty much ruin any hope of that. The amount of pollution created from raw materials to battery is astounding. The car would have to work for a very long tine, just to break even, not including replacement batteries.
@Moo
Care to cite any information sources on massive pollution from the Volt's lithium batteries (not like the Prius' nickel metal hydride)?
@Moo This guy can't cite information, cause he's speaking out of his ass like most people.
@Moo
Exactly. The most environmentally friendly thing to do is keep old cars on the road for as long as possible. I actually work for an engine rebuilding company here in England ( http://www.uk-parts.eu ) and we are doing more for the environment than any electric cars! Did you know that something like 75% of Land Rovers ever produced (and thats since the 50s) are still on the road! Thats a seriously low carbon footprint as most of that comes from manufacturing and/or recycling/disposal.
People just can't seem to see beyond the pollution that comes out fo the exhaust pipe. I guess its because the production of the cars is 'out of sight, out of mind.'
@ocswimwear
You fail to take into account that most older vehicles are recycled for parts, components, and raw materials when they reach their end life.
@ocswimwear Hey if you came on here to plug your engine rebuilding company, then bully to you. But you still can't provide any proof that the Volt and it's battery are massive pollutants. Maybe your engine rebuilding company can team up with a battery rebuilding company to get that NICKEL off the road.
This turns out to actually be a great place to get a sampling of the public's ignorance level when it comes to EVs -- somewhat surprising considering the supposedly tech-savvy crowd.
I suppose many of these EV-myths will be dispelled soon enough, but expect the entrenched powers to put up a fight, be it direct economic force (like lowering oil prices) or the usual propaganda that most will swallow without doing any homework.
@retread
What you need to look at though is the source of your electricity. With a high reliance on sources of energy such as coal then the notion of EVs polluting more, or the same, as regular combustion vehicles isn't that far fetched. I'm attempting to crunch some numbers but it is proving... difficult.
http://www.euractiv.com/en/energy/analysis-efficiency-coal-fired-power-stations-evolution-prospects/article-154672
This article claims that the efficiency of coal power plants are ~31%
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine_efficiency
gasoline engines are 20-30% and electrics are 70-80%
If you draw your energy from coal and then throw that into your car you're looking at the same or less energy efficiency of a regular car. You're acquiring loss at two stages, instead of one.
@Bengal34
It's true that running an EV on coal merely shifts the pollution from the tailpipe to the smokestack, but on average an EV will still pump out only half the CO2, even after losses... but wait, there's more:
An EV will allow you to "fuel up" on electrons of the non-sooty variety, for example solar, hydro, nuclear, waves etc., so at least you have a choice. Also, the USA has enough oh-so-squeaky-clean-coal to power itself to both hell and high water, so you will not be at the mercy of religious nutbars when you plug in -- only the corporate nutbars.
Give it 5 years and see how the Palin administration handles the massive oil crunch. At that point we'll all wish we were driving EVs.
People are such lemmings - a bit of oil volatility and the Volt will be a massive success. I'm already a lemming, so sign me up!
I'm not familiar with this chart in specific but it makes sense. For any new model, they build a slew of what they call "Captured Test Fleet" vehicles. I followed the 2010 Camaro launch extremely closely and they started building those in December 2008 and full production was supposed to kick off in February 2009 but was delayed until March 2009 because of some last minute issues.
With that being said, the Volt production will likely be handled at least a bit differently than any previous GM vehicle so all bets are off. But my guess is that cars won't be rolling off the line until just before the end of the year as there's at least a few week gap between allocation (Nov 17th according to the chart) and production of the car that's been ordered using that allocation. GM is probably hoping to sneak a few deliveries in before the end of the year so they can meet their promised deadlines.
Didn't they change the Volt to have a gas generator because they couldn't get the range they wanted off batteries alone?
@Michael Pollard
Cool, I didn't see that. It seems to not work like a conventional Hybrid. Essentially when your batter gets low a gasoline powered generator kicks in to charge the battery. One of the things a Prius has that was always a good kicker for me was that it charged the battery when you would hit the brake.
I'd be interested to see how she feels. I've been planning on looking at a hybrid (or something similar in this case) when my car finally dies (not the Prius, the driving experience in that thing is gawd aweful)
@Michael Pollard
The gas generator was to give the car ability to travel long range distances, something like 600 miles on a single tank of gas. For short range distances, 40 or so miles which is the equivalent of most commutes, the car can run entirely on electricity.
The difference between a gas vehicle and an electric vehicle is that with an electric vehicle you can change the energy source because you can generate electricity from multiple sources. You cannot create oil from sunlight, but you can create electricity from sunlight.
Gasoline engines will lose their value as gas prices rise and the oil supply dwindles. Inevitably, they will become useless. Electric engines will continue to be valuable, because you can just swap one energy source for another and keep the same car running.
The Volt has a gas generator which recharges the battery while your driving to keep the car running. I wonder how difficult it would be to switch that to an hydrogen generator, or other fuel source. I'll bet it's a lot easier than trying to get a gas engine to run on something other than gasoline.