Chevy Volt

autopar3000 said
This is the kind of healthy debate I was looking for.

Was that sarcasm? :-D

Here's my take: I drive about 7 miles to work every day, which takes me about 15 minutes. I'd love to take the bus, but that would take me over an hour (maybe that's the real problem - unless you're downtown public transit sucks!)

Another infrastructure problem. Even though Denver was touted in one of the links I posted, if you don't live in Denver proper it takes at least an hour to get anywhere.

A Volt would be perfect for me; I wouldn't even be putting too much load on the grid when I charge it thanks to my 14 mile round trip.

Don't get me wrong, they will have their place and I think if you could afford one, it would work out well for you with the following exceptions:

I noticed you're from Canada. I wonder how well the heat works and how quick it drains the batteries.

How will the batteries deal with extreme cold weather?

How will it work in the snow with little hard mileage tires and instant torque?

Here's the problem: my daily driver is a 1991 Honda Accord. It cost me $1500 3 years ago, it runs like a champ and hasn't had any issues in the time that I've owned it. Who's going to hook me up with a Volt for $1500? I think it will be quite a while before I'm driving a plug in electric car.

I'll bet a replacement battery pack costs more than 5 of your Hondas. I'd also like to know how much it will truly cost on someones power bill on a monthly basis.

camd64 said
I think its great that the electric cars are coming along but I think we are getting the electricity the wrong way. why not use the hydrogen technology like in the clarity? some people will argue the safety factor but the same concerns came up when gas cars first showed up. also what about compact diesels? 75+ mpg compact diesels cars are already here and its a crop that american farms can grow tons of! putting many americans back to work. my 2 cents.

Agreed camd64, there's got to be a better way. I'm a big fan of photovoltaic cells and I have done quite a bit of research on it. Free electricity from sunshine? How cool is that, lol. No moving parts to wear out and zero maintenance. Anyway, aside from their cost, the biggest problem is storing that energy. Again, we're back to the battery issue. If someone could design a battery that would give back even 90%-95% percent of the energy that was used to charge it, store it for a month and not be affected by cold weather they'd be multimillionaire. Presently, any decent size battery's capacity is only 35% @ -20F vs. room temperature.