GXT

Eagerly awaiting...

Wiping it down should be easy, which is good because I assume one would have to do that a lot. What I am interested to know is how hard it will be to find buttons. Things could get really messy if you have to slide your hand all over it for lack of button outlines.

Because it is impractical in terms of maintenance and looks horrible? I'd prefer that "glossy black piano" finish for looks if I was going to have to suffer with keeping something clean.

Yes, the Volt starts the gas engine when the battery is at 30%. However the picture in question actually says 82 degrees F, not 82%, so I don't think we can read a lot into this. Also, if you look at the screen behind the wheel the battery indicator shows ~3/4 full. GM apparently confirmed today that the 40 mile range quoted is for city. Based on the mitsu electric vehicle city/highway range that is know, we can expect the Volt's highway range to be 30 or less. I also suspect that these ranges are with the AC and heater off and with a warm start.

Exterior looks pretty good. Not as edgy as the concept but I think better overall. The interior is horrible. It looks like an iPod threw up in a cheap version of the Malibu.

Question for you. If you take $100 to the casino, lose $90, and then make $10 on your last $10 (so you leave with $20) did you: a) Double your money? b) Lose 80%? I ask because if you've been buying for four months then you have been buying at $15+. If you've had stock for years then that may have come at $20, $30, $40, or even $50. The stock closed at 11.45 today. So did you sell in time or did you lose a "small fortune" today?

I suspect you need to be a relatively large shareholder to have any say. "According to a statement, 98.8 percent of EDS common stock was voted for the HP deal–that equates to 72.4 percent of the outstanding shares." http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=9511 Considering EDS shares were at $16 in April, $25 ain't that bad. It could have been worse.

As long as my brand new $15,000 battery isn't swapped for someone's old one Plus switching 400lbs of batteries for every 25-40 miles range is going to be an issue. "Fill 'er up with 2 tons of li-ion please! And check the battery coolant levels while you are at it."

There is a lot more <reality> coming to this vehicle. Reality is that the Volt is horribly flawed due the PR/Exec-picked prius-envy-inspired range and timing. Reality is that this is why the Volt needs such a large and expensive battery and a range extender. Reality is that this is why the Volt is going to be so expensive. Reality is that this is why the Volt is going to remain low volume (both in terms of demand and production). Reality is that even at a price that most consumers won't pay GM will lose money with each Volt sold. Reality is that GM picked a range to try to satisfy 80% of the US driver's needs and ended up with a car that is economically good for 0%, feasible for only a few percent more, and available for only <0.08% of US buyers in the first year and <0.4% of US buyers from 2010 to 2015. Honestly, given all of the above, they may as well have tacked $2K onto the car and made it something good to look at. They better hope they get some halo wins out of this. Because they may be able to direct people to the Cruze (which may get 40 MPG highway but will almost certainly be mid to low 30's in the city) for $18K but if those people want a 45-50 MPG city car for sub $20K then they are going to head straight to the Honda Insight. It really seems to me that GM is trying to create a market that only their competitors can satisfy. That seems really stupid to me. But then I don't have the experience and results of Wagoner.

It looks like Harper just lost his chance to get hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars back from GM before things get really bad. I think we should save time and write if off now. Planning for the future, Ottawa would be wise to try to lure Honda/Toyota/Nissan jobs instead of wasting money on GM/Ford in exchange for fluffy new product that will likely never materialize.

Based on Bob's comments, yes. Or at least much closer than it is. Luckily the public has a short memory and will likely never connect the 2011 Volt to the concept Volt in the commercials GM has been airing.

I'm getting all hot and bothered, and not because of the goofy looking concept or the bland production car. Oh Bobby... I think the production car looks fine, but then I haven't spent the last year advertising the concept, bad-mouthing the Prius' shape, or hoping the Volt would have some sort of definitive styling edge. The Volt HAS to be all about the drivetrain now; there is no other way to justify paying $40,000 for a car that is the size of a cobalt and looks like that come 2011-2015. But I think that was always the way it was going to be. The faithful sure are disappointed over at gm-volt.com: http://gm-volt.com/2008/09/08/breaking-new...ictures-leaked/

I don't know if Chrysler has the money or the balls, but it would be beyond funny if they beat GM at their own PR game. Just claim a range, cost and volume is no object, and then advertise the heck out of it. Chrysler has just leap-frogged GM technologically. The Volt is still years from production and it is already virtually medieval. (I'd put "sarcasm" tags around that last paragraph, but for some reason it wasn't sarcasm when the same claim was made about Toyota/GM.)

Actually, you wrote: "I ask you, where's the others plug in's @? I don't see any being tested on the roads...." And apparently Toyota is testing them on the road. Since 2007. GM? I think they are shooting for the end of this year or early next year. Regarding the range, that is a trade off for price. If it is appropriate to up the range then I imagine Toyota will. GM's process for deciding on the 40 mile range was questionable (that is me being overly generous) and the cause of much of the expected pricing and availability issues. Hopefully Toyota will do better.

How hard did you look? Apparently Toyota has had them on the road since 2007: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19952006/ I'm not saying Toyota MIGHT be able to use the aftermarket system. I'm saying that if someone can make an aftermarket system to do it then how hard would it be for Toyota to do it?

I would appreciate if you would read my post more closely before you accuse me of having "major flaws". I wrote: "The hymotion pack is apparently $9,995 including installation. It is 5KWh and uses A123 cells (one of the two companies in the running for the Volt). So either Toyota could make a 5KWh pack for a fraction of that price or GM's 16KWh pack is going to keep the volt price well north of $40,000. I didn't state which I believed to be the case, so I don't know you can say that I had "major flaws". Since you asked so nicely, I do think you are right. But my point was that either way Toyota has GM beat in cost effectiveness due to the limitations in the Volt design. If you don't believe me, ask GM themselves. How long did they argue against hybrids because of the battery cost? Now what do they do? Design a car that has a battery 7 to 8 times larger but only with 4 times the usable power. And then they slapped an engine on it to negate major cost/weight benefit that their series design had.

There are already plug-in Priuses on the road using the Hymotion pack. Google has 4 of their own that they've been driving for about a year now: http://www.google.org/recharge/index.html The hymotion pack is apparently $9,995 including installation. It is 5KWh and uses A123 cells (one of the two companies in the running for the Volt). So either Toyota could make a 5KWh pack for a fraction of that price or GM's 16KWh pack is going to keep the volt price well north of $40,000. Either way, it shows that the Prius can already do pretty much what the Volt hopes to do in 2011ish. And because of the limitations of the Volt's design GM needs a lot more battery than the Prius and therefore Toyota should be able to do it for much less money. The only real questions are whether it makes sense to do it, whether Toyota wants to do it and whether they have the capacity to create the batteries to do it. Regarding that capacity, I don't think it is clear that either company is ahead of the other. The only meaningful advantage the Volt could claim (even in this era where GM gets to make up all the other specs at will) was the aggressive styling. And that apparently is gone. The fact is (even according to GM) that you just won't be able to get a Volt. And compared to a $40,000 volt that you can't get a $20,000 Prius or an 18,000 Honda GSH looks pretty darn good.

actualized = watered down... especially when you have been running commercials for a year(?) now and Lutz has been "leaking" such gems as: “He (Lutz) noted that the exterior design is 90% complete but that the final product will likely have a more subdued or less aggressive front-end” http://gm-volt.com/2007/07/04/bob-lutz-interview-on-design/ 90% finalized and the only change worth mentioning is a less aggressive front-end? What is a person to think? So GM's plan is to get people excited about a Volt concept years in advance of release and then only deliver 250,000 by 2015 (GM's numbers, not mine), almost a decade after they aired the first TV spots, and charge $40,000 or more for an "actualized" version of what was promised? While Honda/Toyota etc. will offer perhaps 1,000,000 affordably priced (20,000 or less) hybrids/year? And in the meantime GM has trouble selling even 1,000 hybrids/Q (http://wot.motortrend.com/6239143/green/gm-hybrid-sales-starting-off-slow/index.html). Building up demand for a product that you can't deliver and thereby encourage people to buy your competitor's products seems like a bad business strategy to me. But then I don't have the track record of Wagoner. I don't think this "changes everything". It looks like management incompetence as usual to me.

I may yet eat crow, but it isn't quite the time. All I am saying is that it looks like an average and bland, small car with some ugly side mirrors attempting to over-emphasize some non-existent charging ports (hopefully that is just for transformers and will be removed from the production vehicle). Some of the adjectives being thrown around here seem silly to me. "Average" comes to mind, not "Hot" or "Fantastic". The Toyota Matrix, Honda City, Honda Fit, etc. all look as good (if not better) and they are budget cars. 2011 is a long way off for the first year of a car that looks like that... especially after over a year of GM advertising the concept.

This looks pretty much nothing like the concept and doesn't look markedly better than what we have seen of the next Prius or the Honda GSH. I bet if it had a Toyota badge on it then everyone would be calling it ugly. The watering down continues.

Just like the price of our cars...

Well the looks have won me over and the timing of the MT should be perfect for me. Hopefully it will be an option with the SH-AWD. Now is it just a matter of whether or not Honda Canada has price-gouged themselves out a sale.

Heh... where I live if you park outside in the Winter then you have to plug in the car or it won't start the next morning. And the "forgot to unplug" (especially on groggy mornings) can be an issue. You can identify those people by the extension cords (or at least part of them) dragging behind them. I have to assume that it will not be possible to start the Volt when it is plugged in. But fear not! You will have the motivation of having paid 100% more than a Prius or a GSH as incentive to plug and un-plug!

But how much will they be willing to pay for that feature? The Volt will not make much sense until battery prices drop radically. If you drive a lot, then you will be doing most of the driving on gas in which case there is little point to the cost and weight of the electric drive components of the Volt. You may as well pocket the extra $25,000 and just drive a Civic (or pocket the ~$22,000 and get even better MPG with the GSH). If you drive very little then you should be able to do it all-electric with the Volt. But if you are driving so little then you wouldn't have been using much gas in which case you have paid a huge premium to save a few bucks a day. Again, you should pocket the extra $25,000 and just drive a Civic. The Volt won't pay off economically for anyone, but there are very few people for which it even comes close to being the correct solution. I guess that is why GM has said it will be a niche vehicle until at least 2015. In the meantime the few dealerships that happen to get a Volt or two will have to sell it to someone who is so rich they don't care about economics. It has already been reported that the second gas tank has been removed, so the range is down to the 300-something miles. It was a good move on GM's part. Why haul so much gas if the point of the vehicle is not to use it? Like much else about the Volt, I am pretty sure the huge range was a PR-vestige in an attempt to allay range-anxiety and to spin "X Miles per tank" for those who aren't smart enough to realize it is pretty much a meaningless number.

I looked into this a little more. Here is some more information: http://gm-volt.com/2007/08/29/latest-chevy...clarifications/ So to clarify the 50% number, the car will only charge the battery to 80% when plugged in and the generator will kick in at 30%. So 50% of the battery is not used (well, technically it is saved as a reserve and as potential room for storing energy from regenerative braking). As I understand it, there are two major reasons for this: 1) It is one of the downsides of the series design. Apparently when on the generator the Volt is not able to put as much energy to the wheels as it would when running off battery alone (IIRC, the shortfall is fairly significant when under load). Therefore the 30% is required as a reserve in case you want to have the AC on and go up a hill (for example), accelerate rapidly, etc. The Prius or an IMA design could rely entirely on the gas engine and therefore does not need to keep this reserve. 2) Apparently it is needed to get the 10 year battery life expectancy.