It’s simply wrong to claim this thing’s especially good for the environment —
Advertised as an all-electric car that could drive 50 miles on its lithium battery, GM addressed concerns about where you plug the thing in en route to grandmas house by adding a small gasoline engine to help maintain the charge on the battery as it starts to run down. It was still an electric car, we were told, and not a hybrid on steroids.
That’s not quite true. The gasoline engine has been found to be more than a range-extender for the battery. Volt engineers are now admitting that when the vehicles lithium-ion battery pack runs down and at speeds near or above 70 mph, the Volts gasoline engine will directly drive the front wheels along with the electric motors. That’s not charging the battery — thats driving the car.
So its not an all-electric car, but rather a pricey $41,000 hybrid that requires a taxpayer-funded $7,500 subsidy to get car shoppers to look at it.
We heard GM’s then-CEO Fritz Henderson claim the Volt would get 230 miles per gallon in city conditions. Popular Mechanics found the Volt to get about 37.5 mpg in city driving, and Motor Trend reports: “Without any plugging in, a weeklong trip to Grandmas house should return fuel economy in the high 30s to low 40s.”
