They try to make them look futuristic or something. They just look ugly, I agree. Maybe there is some reason behind it that I don't know about.
My first thoughts about this car when I first saw it was a) That thing looks like a squashed bug b) A 100-mile range isn't going to cut it for me I'd buy a Volt before this. At least it looks like a car and I can take a trip in it. I'll be hitting 140k on my current car within a week or so, so I'm keeping my eye out for cars to buy. I'd love to buy a Volt, but I'm scared to death of GM, and the fact it's new tech by GM makes it worse. lol. I'll wait to see how others receive it. This country is so behind in terms of switching to non-dino fuel vehicles... or at least some hybrid version of a dino fuel vehicle. I mean seriously, Pakistan, Iran, Argentina, and Brazil have the most natgas-powered vehicles. That's just messed up.
Over 6600 were "claimed" the first 3 days they went up for pre-order from what I read a few days ago. They're targeting 25,000 orders by the time it goes on sale.
The fact that the Volt's Lithium-Ion battery costs about $14,000 (vs. about $3000-$5000 for a NiMH in the Prius/Insight/etc.) should scare the crud out of alot of folks. The Volt has the potential to save GM or bury them. Will be interesting to see what happens.
Few concepts make it to production as-is. The concept Volt looked like some kind of squatty, hardtop dune buggy. lol.
If it won't make the trip from Austin to Houston on a charge, I'm not interested. While I certainly could use one around town, I need the flexibility to be able to go anywhere in either one of my vehicles.
lol. I was trying to make two points at once and ended up being confusing. I think the fact we still rely so much on Middle East oil needs to be broken. Secondly, the fact so many smaller, and in many cases, less advanced countries, rely on alternative fuels while we're sitting here chugging gas is pathetic. Ultimately, I'd rather be electric or something. The only exception to dino fuel would be nat gas because it gets us away from so much ME reliance.
At current rates a full charge will cost you over 4 bucks and get you 100 miles. At 15 cents per kw-hr it will be like 4.30. This translates to 61 mpg. However, even if you look past the initial cost of the car you still have to look at cost of charging station and the cost of battery replacement. This type of battery is a Li-Ion which CAN last 100K miles with awesome conditions, but it's life is based on the number or charging cycles. If you commute 30 miles a day and charge it every night it will not last 100K. I am not sure if the battery cost has been released but this is a 24kw-hr Li-Ion battery which is WAY larger and newer tech than the Prius NiMH battery (~1.7 kw-Hr) and it costs 4k dollars. So figure a conservative cost of 10K and a best case senario of 100K miles for using up the battery, your milage is down to 18mpg for 100K miles. My V8 beats that.
True enough. For that reason alone I would recommend their 36 month lease for $349/mo with $1999 down. Depending on how many miles annually the lease gets you of course - if it's one of those 10k or 12k annual leases, then that's worthless in Houston - it would need to be at least 18k for any reasonable commute. If you think about it, the option to lease early-adopter technology is actually pretty nice, much wiser than actually investing in something that will rapidly lose value and cost a ton to maintain.
I do view time spent at the pump as value, too. Going to the gas station is a hassle, to me, but plugging in my car at night wouldn't be. Zero emissions is also a nice aspect of it too, but then we can get into a whole global warming debate on whether there's value in that or not, so let's not consider that. It really is a niche car at this point. It could easily be the future, or it could simply continue being a novelty. Personally, I think as the technology grows, it will become more usable, less expensive, and more mainstream. I'm not gettin' one 'til it is (and I get a house).
if you want to talk about hassle consider that every year you will lose capacity and therefore range. It might go 110 miles on a charge the first year, but that will go down significantly over the life of the battery.
The battery will never be run all the way down, so a full charge will be between two to three dollars at .15 per kWh. Also, when you do replace your battery, it will be significant upgrade
