GM's bringing back Electric Car?

GM's bringing back Electric Car?

Imagine a stylish economy car that seats two adults and three children, has a top speed of 150 miles an hour, but runs on batteries that can be charged en route by a generator that uses a variety of fuels, including hydrogen.

General Motors will unveil such a car today at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Though production is still several years away, the automaker will announce plans for the Chevy Volt, a car that will have a cruising range of up to 640 miles on 12 gallons of fuel, or a range of about 40 miles running solely on a lithium-ion battery pack.

General Motors plans to unveil its plug-in electric hybrid car, the Chevy Volt, today in Detroit, though production is several years away. The batteries can be recharged with an onboard generator – or by being plugged into a standard household outlet.

The Volt will be the first plug-in electric hybrid car with an onboard generator built by a major automaker. And it will be cleaner than the gasoline-electric hybrids now on sale.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16503845/#storyContinued

Pretty neat, that baby won't be cheap though...

I hope they set it up for flex fuels so that it can run on ethanol or biodiesel!

Darell... Calling Darell. Is there a Darell in the house?

makes so much sense. i personally drive over 40 miles a day about 2 or 3 days a month. i would use almost no gas at all except for a vacation or two.
awesome.

UncleFester said:

Darell... Calling Darell. Is there a Darell in the house?

Click to expand...

Check. We've been all over this thing. My favorite line is that it'll be the first, blah, blah... but no production date of course. Tough to claim to be first at anything when you aren't making them! First to announce a "concept" yes. But that doesn't do much for us!

Not really even a first for the concept, as far as I can see. Wasn't that cal-car's idea?

Dan

Pumaman said:

makes so much sense. i personally drive over 40 miles a day about 2 or 3 days a month. i would use almost no gas at all except for a vacation or two.
awesome.

Click to expand...

Perfect car for you would need no liquid fuel at all! While I think a plug in hybrid is the perfect transition vehicle to show people what electric power can do - and of course it would suit, oh, 100% of the driving popuplation - I cringe at having to drag around the engine, gas tank, exhaust, etc... just for the warm fuzzies of having that friendly internal combustion engine available. If I owned one of these, the gasoline would go bad. But if it is what they claim - I'll buy one.

They have GREAT plans for this thing. Using a variety of fuels. All kinds of EV distance. Gosh... they just need batteries and several years. Man, in "several years" the whole automotive industry will be dancing a different tune. This is a moon shot by GM. And I applaud them for making the effort and getting an EV buzz going. Now... if we could just have some product. You've seen what GM has called "hybrids" so far? Ug.

Looking at the concept rendering... is this thing gonna have a periscope? Not sure I'll be able to see out of those window slits!

What if, just what if Toyota relases the Prius plug in first? GM will look like fools in the EV world, again...

Darell said:

<Snip> My favorite line is that it'll be the first, blah, blah... but no production date of course. Tough to claim to be first at anything when you aren't making them! First to announce a "concept" yes. But that doesn't do much for us!

Click to expand...

Maybe they're working closely with AWR.

Edited for spelling.

GM's Will bring back Electric Cars When Toyota Licenses The Technology.

The MSNBC article is just a reprint of some public relations mans fantasy. Note this point:

GM officials stressed that development of the battery pack is critical to the concept vehicle reaching showrooms, and the technology likely won't be available until 2010 or 2012.


Extreme Summary of Article: GM 2012 = Toyota 2001

Seems like a step in the right direction even if it's still a concept. I do like the idea of having both electric and internal combustion as it would eliminate the need for having two different vehicles (one for around town and another for longer trips).

The looks remind me of a Chrysler Crossfire to me.




(2001 Concept, disenoart)

Toyota's plug-in hybrid, which is what this category is, will get 180 mpg in the first 60 miles of driving. GM is notorious for killing the electric car. It had an EV1 on the market, an all-electric car loved by its owners and a backlist of buyers, but GM led the fight to get California to drop its requirement to make every maker offer a certain percentage of its fleet as all-electric vehicles. Once GM killed that mandate, it pulled its EV1 off the market and crushed all the EV1 cars.

And it gets worse. After sucking up billions in taxpayer subsidies to finance development of the hybrid, the Bush administration, at the urging of the auto industry (Andy Card, Bush's former chief of staff, is former president of the auto makers group), dropped hybrid requirements and and instead promoted the hydrogen-car concept, which is a phony concept. Both the oil industry and car makers have successfully fought off common-sense regulations to increase fuel economy. Car makers like the internal combustion engine because it is extremely expensive to maintain and thus generates huge after-sale service income. The oil industry likes the IE car for obvious reasons: There is 1 trillion or so barrels of oil left in the earth's crust -- which works out to $100 trillion at $100 per barrel average and the price will probably go up now that we are at/near/past the half way point of oil supply.

GM is notorious for PR campaigns the promote its electric-car/hybrid efforts, while working behind the scenes to ensure that the public's only real choice is gas-guzzling, polluting vehicles.

Cool, it looks sporty, and if its not small as a sardine can (comfortable) then I like it! 150mph top speed, hmm if it does the 1/4 in 15secs or less than it can be driven in hectic highway merge traffic. Looking good! li-ion, hydrogen, eh just hope it doesn't go up in flames! hehe. I wonder if they will make them lease only if they do make them like the ev1?

I really like that GM Jay Leno turbine bio-diesel car though. Over 600 hp jet engine powered car!

Xrunner:
Seems like a step in the right direction even if it's still a concept.

Dude, I have one parked outside. Toyota went to them with their hat in hand after the oil embargo, asked to jointly research something better. Detroit had the chance to get in on the ground floor twenty years ago when it really was just a concept. I won't print their response here, 'cause this is a family forum. Now that they're getting their, ah, bumpers handed to them, their big response is some fantasy art and a press release. I will give them that the art is pretty.

I do like the idea of having both electric and internal combustion as it would eliminate the need for having two different vehicles (one for around town and another for longer trips).

I gotta show you what's in my driveway sometime. It's not as sexy as the fantasy art, and its performance doesn't fully match their fantasy, but you can buy it now, it burns clean, and it starts and runs every single time.

IsaacHayes:
Cool, it looks sporty, and if its not small as a sardine can (comfortable) then I like it!

That they could build a car that looked like that, and not have it be tiny, is perfectly achievable. That's just a question of bending sheet metal, and they are still very good at that. They could start now and have them out by 2009 or so.


150mph top speed, hmm if it does the 1/4 in 15secs or less than it can be driven in hectic highway merge traffic.

Er, does anything they build, anything you can actually order, have that kind of performance? If they know how to actually do this part, within all the usual real world constraints, they should be doing it now. Talking about what they would someday like to do (somehow?) is the easy part. Me, I'm still waiting on that affordable flying car that Popular Mechanics promised me.


Looking good! li-ion, hydrogen, eh just hope it doesn't go up in flames! hehe.

Heh. It's the Mark II Pinto. Gentlemen, start your fire engines...

Well it would have to do at least 15sec 1/4 mile to top out at 150mph unless was super duper duper aerodynamic. Lots of cars they build are in the 15's. The Z06 Corvette they build can do 200mph or more. I think the standard C6 does close to 200.

I'm sure they have the ability to build a electric/hybrid that goes faster to 0-60 than 1 minute, and is bigger than a file cabinet. They may have to take a hit in mpg/range or use light weight materials. Give me a mid-size/full-size car that isn't a dog and I don't care what what powers it.

The main worry here in Texas is;
How long would the air conditioner take to drain the batteries?
A car without good air conditioning here in Texas usually ends up not selling.

Ken: I was meaning that more hybrids is a step in the right direction. In regards to my comment on electric and internal combustion, this was also refering to Darell's stating that all he would prefer all electric.

I'm aware of the current technology and have looked extensively at hybrids. Personally I like the hybrid Honday Accords best (even if they aren't the most efficient) but would like to see more hybrid choices out there.

IC engine would supply power to drive compressor. engine coolant would run heater. There really is a dual role for IC. be better yet if IC was a diesel.

Volt's design is similar to folks modding Toyota hybrids, adding batteries to allow 25-35 mile range on electric alone.

3rd_shift said:

The main worry here in Texas is;
How long would the air conditioner take to drain the batteries?
A car without good air conditioning here in Texas usually ends up not selling.

Click to expand...