In a mostly empty parking lot in a run down mall in Austin, Texas, we may have just seen the future of cars. If not the future, we at least saw something really cool. It’s the Chevy Volt and it has the potential to be the first successful fully electric vehicle.
It works like this: on a fully charged battery you can go up to 40 miles. There is a gas tank and an engine, but this is NOT a hybrid – the engine is actually designed to just charge the battery. On a full tank of gas you can drive up to 300 miles. I’m no car expert (no, I don’t know why they asked me to write this either) but that seems pretty damn good to me.
GM hasn’t announced yet what the size of the gas tank will be, but the GM rep we spoke with assured us that it will be much smaller than the tank of regular gas-powered cars of the same size. If it’s even half the size of that of a standard car, drivers are looking at serious savings at the pump.
As one would expect in a car without a combustion engine, this thing is quiet. Ridiculously quiet. It’s so quiet, in fact, that Chevy has installed a manually controlled audio warning (not nearly as loud or abrasive as a horn) to warn pedestrians who may be visually impaired (or just not paying attention) that you’re in the area. I am certain that if this car takes off, popularity-wise, this feature will not be abused by anyone. Oh no, not at all.
So, how’s it look? Well, see for yourself:
Four doors plus a hatchback trunk in a multitude of colors.
How’s the inside? Well, the start with, it only seats four. The back two are bucket seats with a tray and a couple of cupholders in the middle. While that prevents you from cramming the back seat with your buddies, it also means that everyone in the car has a comfortable ride.
The front console comes with a touch screen display, which lets you change radio stations (AM and FM as well as an optional XM radio subscription) and adjust A/C and other options. Like most cars these days, it comes with built-in Bluetooth, allowing you to talk hands free on your phone without having a Bluetooth headset shoved in your ear.
The display also comes with an optional GPS feature, as well.
The Volt will be available later this year in both Austin and New York City. The rest of Texas and New York state, as well as New Jersey and Connecticut (“sorry Tennessee!”) will find themselves able to purchase one if they so desire in early 2011.
GM hasn’t announced a price at the time of this article, so we’re going to do a little speculating. It seems, to us anyway, that GM wouldn’t be releasing a car like this unless they intended it to be a mass market vehicle. Thus, we’re not expecting them to release the car unless they can sell it at a competitive price with other gas-run vehicles. We’re going to guess it’ll sell around the $25k mark. Again, that’s not official, that’s just our guess (we’ll update this article once GM announces the price).
Now, owners can charge the car with their own home outlet, but if you purchase a Volt, you may get even luckier. Thanks to a government grant intended to encourage the purchase of electric cars, GM will be offering almost 4,500 free home charging stations. This will allow owners a 240-volt option (instead of the 120-volts you get from your home outlet) saving you time and money.
So, we finally have an electric car. An electric car that actually looks and drives like a regular car. We’ll see how it takes.
What are your thoughts? We encourage your comments below.
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