GXT

The Leaf isn't for everyone, but it will probably work for the majority of people. When one considers that the Volt production will represent well under 0.1% of the market this year and well under 1% for many years to come you start to realize how "honest" it is for GM to try to convince the majority that the Leaf won't work for them. I understand that he is spinning the Volt's strengths and I am not going to fault him for that. But we should recognize that it is more "fear mongering" than "honest". e.g. "The Leaf is a single-purpose car": I guess if a car is 'single-purpose' then satisfying 80+% of commuters daily needs is a good one. This is about as honest as me saying that the Volt is 'single-purpose' because it only has room for four people and the Leaf has room for five. GM is probably a little bit worried that Nissan is finally starting to ship the Leaf to NA and last month it outsold the Volt.

I haven't read the article, but it sounds like Consumer Reports panned it because of high cost and poor electric range and ICE MPG. I think they were seeing ~25 miles electric range due to their cold temps. I understand the main point they were trying to make is how the Volt doesn't make economic sense. I don't know where they get this stuff Perhaps it is still to early to tell, but there are hints that GM is already seeing some sales problems with the Volt. Even though they are three months into sales and still only selling 300/month, they are already pulling ahead the nation-wide rollout and the dealer demos. They've delivered ~900 Volts and the listings on autotrader.com are up to 205 (Feb saw an increase of ~65 on deliveries of 280). Even with the limited volume and market, one frequently sees dealers trolling for sales on GM-Volt.com. Even though I was never a Volt fan, I never imagined that they would have any trouble all they could make for the first year or so.

I believe we now know that an application of the brakes will stop even a Toyota which IS experiencing run-away acceleration. So therefore anyone who experienced a prolonged incident did not apply the brakes. If the floor mat was in the way then I can understand how that might happen. Other than that it was driver pedal misapplication. With all the old people buying Toyotas I don't know why this would shock us. Whenever a vehicle runs into a building or into a crowd I always 'joke' that it must have been a Buick, as that most often seems to be the case. But of course I never blamed Buick for this; it is just that Buicks tend to be driven by fossils. So the floor mat recall seems legitimate. But after that it all becomes questionable. Because contrary to your post this issue was sensationalized by the media and the US government. The accelerator pedal may not have been perfect, but it wasn't the cause. It seems that recall was mostly Toyota doing damage control for being blamed for not "doing enough". And much of that blame was for not admitting/recalling the very 'issue' for which they have been absolved by this recent finding! You might want to read this, especially the section "Media coverage and criticism": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_recall It is full of little gems which directly contradict your post, but here's a sample: "Further analysis of the NHTSA complaint database also revealed that many acceleration complaints featured multiple factors, including DUI and reckless driving, which were typically not disclosed in news reports. In July 2010, Forbes faulted the Los Angeles Times for inaccurately reporting on an alleged Toyota runaway crash by failing to mention that the involved driver was indicted for vehicular manslaughter and driving under the influence of marijuana."

Can someone correct the sub title of the thread to be "Up 1.1%"? GM's been doing this "core brand" reporting for quite some time now. Maybe they can fool the general public, but we should know better. Anyone know the overall increase/decrease for the US market? It looks like a lot of the companies were up 15-40%. It seems both GM and Toyota lost a fair amount of ground.

But can it seat 5? I know, that isn't one of the approved criteria. I think you can take the "freeway merging" out of the mix. It sounds like the Leaf will be just as fast as the Volt. Rumors are (I don't know if I believe it yet) 0-60 time of 7s. I`m having trouble finding the reference (so hopefully I`m not complete mistaken), but I believe I read that at under 15 degrees the engine would come on as soon as the car was started. I`m still trying to find confirmation that the Volt has any ability to heat or defrost the windshield without running the ICE. The information from GM that I have seen refers to heat coming form the ``on-board generator`` (i.e. ICE). So sure it will drive you around on a 10 degree day, but at that point you are essentially driving a $40K mid-30ish MPG gas car. Prius or Plug-in-Prius will do that for $10-$15K less up front and get significantly better fuel economy (and seat 5 ). You also have to ask how well that center stack is going to work trying to use the conductivity of your finger when you are wearing big winter gloves. A Leaf won`t have as good a range when it gets cold. But if the range is sufficient then a driver can drive the Leaf with no gas whereas the Volt is essentially a gas powered electric generator at cold temps.

I don't know if you have noticed yet, but they REALLY didn't build the car they claimed they would. We've already talked about how they missed on style, price, volume, ICE MPG, etc... but now we can add the fundamental nature of the vehicle (i.e. ICE driving the wheels) to the mix. I suspect that to you these are minor details, but they are significant in discussing what exactly GM built in the Volt. But yes, for the zillionth time, I didn't think they would bother building this car. Perhaps I gave GM management too much credit. I certainly failed to see the extent of how Prius-Envy controlled their lives. At least it sounds like they have realized their mistake and are moving on to plan B (their first mainstream real hybrid car) and C (full EV).

Lifetime: 2284 miles 38.6 MPG

The inefficiency issue would exist whenever the Volt is on the ICE and the ICE isn't assisting. At the risk of once again being labelled a TROLL, as I have been saying for years, the ICE driving the wheels will tend to be more efficient than the ICE generating elec to drive the motor. It appears to just be that much worse over 70 because of the way the volt's "transmission" works. That's why it makes sense to drive the wheels with the ICE even under 70. And that is yet another reason why the Prius is more efficient on the ICE. Go figure that after years of GM misleading (if not lying... but I won't go there) about this issue that there is confusion now. However I think the real reason that there is confusion is because GM is still doing their best to minimize/gloss over this issue.

It CAN, but more importantly, it DOESN'T. So if the Prius was given a significantly more powerful electric motor would it no longer be a hybrid? Not true, the ICE does provide assist to the Volt's wheels. So each needs one form of power to operate and can utilize the other, and that makes one a hybrid and the other not a hybrid? For future reference, exactly how much ICE assist does it take before it "counts"? Personally, I don't understand this argument. GM has indicated that both the ICE and the motor will power the wheels. Case closed. Why the semantics to try to cast it as something else? I have to assume it is because so many people decided it was necessary to define the Volt as being a success based on how much it was unlike the Prius. It is a bad stand to take, because Volt 2.0 is going to be even more like the Prius (they may even hit the magical 80% ICE assist that is recognized as the Intergalactic Hybrid Cutoff).

You'll have to forgive Toyota for believing that their PIP solution (which offers 1/3 of the Volt range for 1/5 of the battery capacity, ~65% better ICE fuel efficiency, and at a significantly lower price) is the better solution. They've probably got a leg to stand on. Also, pots and kettles and all that, GM seems to have gone more the Prius route than they had initially claimed in order to improve efficiency. The Volt could charge the battery (as they do with mountain mode), but pretty much any charging of a plug-in's battery is inefficient. That is why they don't.

They already did open it up to ~9kWh. Although some of the reviewers are managing to put the Volt into limp mode with very aggressive driving (probably for extended periods) and they had to add the mountain mode. It doesn't sound like this would be a problem day-to-day, but I'm not sure how much farther they want to push it for the reasons Oldsmoboi gave. This is just one of the limitation of the Volt design.

I haven't read any of the "outrage" stories, but as someone who has followed the Volt I can say that it does appear that GM was intentionally misleading. Here is the quote from the GM-Volt.com article "Combustion Engine Does Not and Will Not Turn the Volt’s Driveshaft Ever. Got it?": "Finally to put this all to rest, I asked Volt vehicle line director Tony Posawatz if any of this rumor was true, if the ICE ever drives the wheels. “No.” said Posawatz. “I don’t know how those folks got so confused.” Got it?" http://gm-volt.com/2010/06/30/combustion-engine-does-not-and-will-not-turn-the-volts-driveshaft-ever-got-it/ The original source of this information was smeared as a "know nothing". When Hybridcars.com reported this from Rob Peterson, a "General Motors spokesperson": "“Efficiency is the Volt’s mantra,” Peterson said. “We will take whatever method we have to get there.” Asked if Volt engineers would use the gas engine to power the wheels—a signature of a parallel hybrid system—if it meant greater efficiency, Peterson replied, “You could do it. Absolutely. It’s a matter of software.” He added, “You have some motors, a planetary gear box, there’s a variety of things we can do in there.”" http://www.hybridcars.com/news/exclusive-chevy-volt-more-hybrid-previously-thought-28162.html GM claimed that he was being quoted out of context. Of course we now know that the Volt's ICE does drive the Volt's wheels in some instances. (I wouldn't argue that my ICE doesn't actually drive my wheels because if is connected via various diffs and clutches, would you? And to say that the Volt only uses the ICE sometimes is to miss the point.) On Oct. 12, GM-Volt.com posted: "There has been considerable blogospheric controversy over this as this appears to contradict GM’s previous statements that the engine never drives the wheels. Nitz said GM had to be coy about this element due to intellectual property reasons, and now that the patent has been awarded can finally be more transparent." It probably wouldn't have been such a big deal if GM hadn't made such a show of being so open and transparent. I do find it amusing that GM was intentionally being misleading and then denied the whole situation by pretending that they couldn't understand why people were so confused.

Hey pow, Thanks for being so honest, earnest, reasonable and well informed. We may differ on some things but at least we can argue our sides in an informed manner without resorting to name calling.

I'd suggest you read this MT review: http://www.motortrend.com/roadtests/alternative/1009_2010_toyota_prius_plug_in_hybrid_electric_vehicle_prototype_test/index.html Because the numbers you are using are all incorrect. Plus they all incorrectly favor the Volt and incorrectly hamper the PIP. For example: We now know the Volt uses ~9kWh of battery, not 8. C&D indicates that it takes ~13.4kWh to fully charge the Volt. As per MT, 1.3 is the size of the stock Prius batter, PIP uses a 3.0 which takes 3.5 to charge. MT got an average of 11.7 miles electric, not 8 (Prius is more efficient than Volt). MT averaged 57.5 MPG with their PIP when they did not charge the battery. Plus picking 40 miles is almost as aribtrary as 70. My numbers are correct based on the facts at hand. PIP is less expensive to drive at all ranged except 34 and 35 miles. MT estimates the price of the PIP at $26,500 before rebate.

So you bought an ugly vehicle because of something beyond the appearance? I don't even know how to respond to the "irrelevant" comment. I guess you missed my point while you were in the process of making it.