Just when you thought that American car companies couldn’t get it right, a concept prototype from General Motors might just lead the way in the electric car sweepstakes for the near future.
It’s called the ‘Volt’, powered by a lithium ion battery pack, with a range of 40 miles on just electricity and a top speed near 120 miles per hour. However, the crux of this design is the small gasoline powered motor inside this neat electric vehicle. If you need to go farther than 40 miles on fully charged batteries, the motor kicks in to power a generator, which automatically keeps the batteries charged and the electric motor running.
Although this might sound like a hybrid car, it really isn’t. The gasoline powered motor never powers the drive wheels and will never come on unless you get near the 40 miles of battery range. With motor and batteries fully charged, you actually have an advanced range of 360 miles on a tank of gas. That equates to somewhere in the area of 150 miles per gallon, and that, My Green Click friends, is some outstanding mileage in anyone’s book.
The prototypes are running now, and it is set to go into production as early as 2012 as long as they can get the bugs worked out of this unique drive train and battery storage system. GM figures that they may be able to sell them between 30 and 40 thousand dollars a piece. While expensive, that’s a very reasonable price for that kind of technology.
Compared to the premier electric car of today, the Tesla, which sells for over $100,000 (every Tesla has been sold out in this year's production run, and there is already a waiting line for next year as well) $40,000 is pretty reasonable by comparison.
The most unique feature about the Volt is that it can be plugged into any outlet to recharge overnight. That makes it incredibly practical all by itself, and if you never need to use the onboard gasoline motor for charging the batteries, the Volt is essentially a zero emissions vehicle.
Over the past year General Motors, just like all the major American auto companies, have taken a huge hit in sales resulting in massive lay-offs and plant closings, because they refused to stop making big gas guzzling SUV type vehicles. That appears to have been the wake-up call for GM, and if they can pull off getting the incredibly advanced electric Volt into production, America might still lead the way in electrics and ZEVs world wide.
Let’s hope so, and I’m cheering for the Volt! Go GM!
