GM revealed the Volt yesterday: Jalopnik Link.

If this car actually works as advertised, and comes in at a reasonable price, it will be brilliant. I think this is the car of the future (at least the immediate future): a plugin hybrid, where the sole purpose of the small gasoline engine is to generate electricity for the electric one. 40 miles without even starting the gasoline engine is more than enough to cover many people's commutes. If I had one of these I wouldn't use any gas at all during the week.

Price and reliability, of course, are going to be key. If this thing can compete in price with ordinary cars the same size and trim level, it should be a license to print money.

Lets plug the car at home with clean electricity from coal

Looks similar to a H-Civic...

I'll let ya know when they come into our dealership Mike if you want to take one for a spin.

+1 Omar

It's a long wait....until 2011... :P ..Nice dashboard though... Very futuristic...

40 miles ... not gonna do it for my 3 day a week commute - 27 miles each way ... unless it will charge long enough during the day that it can make another 27 mi journey back home.

31K for the Volt, my Prius was 26K fully loaded with Nav (we get 48-52 mpg -- and keep in mind the Prius interior space is identical to a Camary). Also a new version of the Prius is on it's way before 2011 that will probabaly obsolete the Volt before it's even made available to the public.

Can't see where the Volt has any regenerative braking?

I applaud GM's efforts, but too little too late IMHO.

I still believe the best energy saving solution is for more people to work at home -- no matter how you slice it, video conferencing is still considerably less energy wasting than a commute. I would say at least 30-40% of the current commuters could get all their work done from home if provided with a computer and video conferencing.

The ONLY reason I go into the office 2-3 days a week is because company Pres wants the face to face -- translate into -- he can't write well. It's amazing at how many CEO's have lost the ability to write and communicate in any way other than face to face meetings.

We were just reading about this at work yesterday. The price will be about $40,000 then is supposed to drop to about $30,000 after it's some production time. Looking at the gm-volt.com website, it appears there are two models in the works. The Cruze and the Volt. Check out the gallery on that web site.

The flex-fuel (not gasoline) engine is a 1 Liter, 3 cylinder generator for the electric motor, the engine does not power the car at all. When the electric motor energy level falls to 30% the engine automatically kicks in to keep it at 30% until the car gets plugged in to recharge it. The mileage they claim is an equivalent to road gas mileage. In other words, the amount of fuel will last as long as a gas engine getting 40 mpg. You can continue to run on the 30% charge until the small fuel supply runs out, then you've got to plug it in somewhere.

This car gets about 40 miles on a single overnight charge. Compare that to the much more expensive Tesla which gets over 200 miles on a single charge.

It will be interesting to see if GM actually comes thru with production, and if they get the price down to where the average not-upper-class American can afford one.

I think the manufacturers need to work on improving the performance of natural gas engines, then we can fuel up in our own garages as well (if you have natural gas at home, that is).

>Lets plug the car at home with clean electricity from coal

LOL, well you got me there, Antonio, that's a whole 'nother issue.

>The Cruze and the Volt

The Cruze is a conventional car, just gets very good mpg.

>we get 48-52 mpg
...
>the amount of fuel will last as long as a gas engine getting 40 mpg

Yeah, with your range needs this certainly won't help you any, Rob. The point of this thing is to not need the gas engine at all, that's when it pays off. Still I'm convinced that this approach makes a ton of sense and is only going to get better. When it's up to 100 miles on battery it's going to be the thing to have. And your point is well taken, it may well not be GM that does it. I hadn't seen the price yet this morning, $40k is aiming too high.

Rabbit with Energizer battery stay alive longer then this car.