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The Atlantic on the Chevrolet Volt |
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Pretty nice overview and insight into the Chevy Volt over on the Atlantic Online. Most of this will be old news for anyone following the development of this plug-in series hybrid, but there are some good nuggets in there for everyone.
One of the things the article does very simply, is clearly define what the Volt is. This is important since a lot of the mainstream media get in wrong when describing the Volt. As the author defines it, the Volt "if it meets specifications, will charge up overnight from any standard electrical socket. It will go 40 miles on a charge. Then a small gasoline engine will ignite. The engine’s sole job will be to drive a generator, whose sole job will be to maintain the battery’s charge—not to drive the wheels, which will never see anything but electricity. In generator mode, the car will drive hundreds of miles on a tank of gas, at about 50 miles per gallon."
The author's take, after meeting with several key players in the development of the Volt is that "battery glitches have reduced the odds of GM’s having the Volt in showrooms by late 2010, but advances in the underlying technology have increased the odds of its producing the Volt early in the decade. In other words, delay on the order of months is looking more likely, but delay on the order of years is looking less likely. I’d also guess that the car’s sticker price will be higher than GM initially hoped, maybe north of $35,000."
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Prognog Blog 
