CSpec

It was a beautiful sunny day at GM's proving ground in Milford, Michigan in mid-May when GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz invited me to watch him test the E-Flex system behind the new Chevy Volt. Given the enthusiasm surrounding the Volt, I jumped at the opportunity. Would E-Flex deliver on the promise that's been built up surrounding GM's electric car? The answer: Yes. We taped Bob driving the Volt E-Flex system for our CNBC documentary "Saving GM" which airs tomorrow night. The Volt's "guts" were in a Chevy Malibu "mule" car for the Lutz run. We didn't care. We wanted to see for ourselves how the Volt's battery-powered engine ran. Lutz was only supposed to do a lap at the Milford proving ground. But he loved the experience and performance so much, he kept going, and going. With our cameras mounted in the car, he showed the pleasure of driving a car where the acceleration was smooth and the only thing he could hear was wind noise because the electric drive train is so quiet. After Lutz finished his ride he talked about this being the most exciting test drive of his career. I can see why. If the Volt delivers the performance that GM is promising, it WILL be a revolutionary vehicle. But there are still many hurdles to overcome before we see the Volt in showrooms in late 2010. When we met with GM engineer's at the Volt lab, they showed a quiet confidence that they will be able to conquer the challenges facing the Volt. Tomorrow night on "Saving GM" you can see Bob's test drive, and the latest on GM's hopes for the Volt. Judge for yourself if you think this electric car will be the "electrifying" game changer GM needs.

Ding ding ding!

Looks very nice. Let's see if GM can get the timing and details right.

Thanks! They look better, but still not amazing or anything. Should stay reasonably fresh for a few years.

Can't you just rehost the images on imageshack?

This is GM's problem--waiting for someone else to do it first. Just put in the turbo 4 (gas and diesel) already!

Someone's been looking at the GT-R too much.

Oil should continue its downward trend for the remainder of the year provided Iran doesn't blow something up. I like how the news is full of articles like "gas prices are here to stay" and "this oil shock is different because no relief is in site" just as oil is tanking.

Didn't GM just encourage Hummer dealers to spend a lot of money renovating the showrooms to a common design?

The longer I work in a cube farm, I recognize its genius more and more.

What? Quoting the Economist here: Both candidates take the framework of the Bush tax cuts as given. And both measure the effects of their tax and spending plans not against current law (which has Mr Bush’s tax cuts expiring by the start of 2011) but against a world in which the cuts are all extended. Compared with that “baseline”, Mr Obama's scheme raises some $800 billion over the next decade--all of which he then spends on health care, infrastructure and other programmes. To pay for this largesse, and for his long spending wish-list, Mr Obama promises to raise huge sums from closing tax loopholes. He also pushes up tax rates at the top. America’s top rate of income tax will rise from 35% to 39.5%, its level at the end of the Clinton era. The capital-gains tax rate will rise from 15% to between 20% and 28%. Mr Obama also wants to keep many of the Bush tax cuts that primarily benefit the 98% of households that make less than $250,000 a year. He then adds an array of new tax cuts for those at the bottom and middle.

Bush means well, but he is shockingly disinterested in world and national topics that escape his narrow scope of the Axis of Evil. His biggest failing is his complete and utter inability to admit mistakes and change course in anything, that is until very recently. We'll see if his new talk of Iraq withdrawal timelines and Iran negotiations go anywhere.

Unhappy America If America can learn from its problems, instead of blaming others, it will come back stronger http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaySt...ory_ID=11791539 NATIONS, like people, occasionally get the blues; and right now the United States, normally the world’s most self-confident place, is glum. Eight out of ten Americans think their country is heading in the wrong direction. The hapless George Bush is partly to blame for this: his approval ratings are now sub-Nixonian. But many are concerned not so much about a failed president as about a flailing nation. One source of angst is the sorry state of American capitalism. The "Washington consensus" told the world that open markets and deregulation would solve its problems. Yet American house prices are falling faster than during the Depression, petrol is more expensive than in the 1970s, banks are collapsing, the euro is kicking sand in the dollar’s face, credit is scarce, recession and inflation both threaten the economy, consumer confidence is an oxymoron and Belgians have just bought Budweiser, "America's beer". And it's not just the downturn that has caused this discontent. Many Americans feel as if they missed the boom. Between 2002 and 2006 the incomes of 99% rose by an average of 1% a year in real terms, while those of the top 1% rose by 11% a year; three-quarters of the economic gains during Mr Bush's presidency went to that top 1%. Economic envy, once seen as a European vice, is now rife. The rich appear in Barack Obama's speeches not as entrepreneurial role models but as modern versions of the "malefactors of great wealth" denounced by Teddy Roosevelt a century ago: this lot, rather than building trusts, avoid taxes and ship jobs to Mexico. Globalisation is under fire: free trade is less popular in the United States than in any other developed country, and a nation built on immigrants is building a fence to keep them out. People mutter about nation-building beginning at home: why, many wonder, should American children do worse at reading than Polish ones and at maths than Lithuanians? The dragon’s breath on your shoulder Abroad, America has spent vast amounts of blood and treasure, to little purpose. In Iraq, finding an acceptable exit will look like success; Afghanistan is slipping. America's claim to be a beacon of freedom in a dark world has been dimmed by Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and the flouting of the Geneva Conventions amid the panicky "unipolar" posturing in the aftermath of September 11th. Now the world seems very multipolar. Europeans no longer worry about American ascendancy. The French, some say, understood the Arab world rather better than the neoconservatives did. Russia, the Gulf Arabs and the rising powers of Asia scoff openly at the Washington consensus. China in particular spooks America--and may do so even more over the next few weeks of Olympic medal-gathering. Americans are discussing the rise of China and their consequent relative decline; measuring when China's economy will be bigger and counting its missiles and submarines has become a popular pastime in Washington. A few years ago, no politician would have been seen with a book called "The Post-American World". Mr Obama has been conspicuously reading Fareed Zakaria's recent volume. America has got into funks before now. In the 1950s it went into a Sputnik-driven spin about Soviet power; in the 1970s there was Watergate, Vietnam and the oil shocks; in the late 1980s Japan seemed to be buying up America. Each time, the United States rebounded, because the country is good at fixing itself. Just as American capitalism allows companies to die, and to be created, quickly, so its political system reacts fast. In Europe, political leaders emerge slowly, through party hierarchies; in America, the primaries permit inspirational unknowns to burst into the public consciousness from nowhere. Still, countries, like people, behave dangerously when their mood turns dark. If America fails to distinguish between what it needs to change and what it needs to accept, it risks hurting not just allies and trading partners, but also itself. The Asian scapegoat There are certainly areas where change is needed. The credit crunch is in part the consequence of a flawed regulatory system. Lax monetary policy allowed Americans to build up debts and fuelled a housing bubble that had to burst eventually. Lessons need to be learnt from both of those mistakes; as they do from widespread concerns about the state of education and health care. Over-unionised and unaccountable, America's school system needs the same sort of competition that makes its universities the envy of the world. American health care, which manages to be the most expensive on the planet even though it fails properly to care for the tens of millions of people, badly needs reform. There have been plenty of mistakes abroad, too. Waging a war on terror was always going to be like pinning jelly to a wall. As for Guantánamo Bay, it is the most profoundly un-American place on the planet: rejoice when it is shut. In such areas America is already showing its genius for reinvention. Both the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates promise to close Guantánamo. As his second term ticks down, even Mr Bush has begun to see the limits of unilateralism. Instead of just denouncing and threatening the "axis of evil" he is working more closely with allies (and non-allies) in Asia to calm down North Korea. For the first time he has just let American officials join in the negotiations with Iran about its fishy nuclear programme. That America is beginning to correct its mistakes is good; and there's plenty more of that to be done. But one source of angst demands a change in attitude rather than a drive to restore the status quo: America’s relative decline, especially compared with Asia in general and China in particular. The economic gap between America and a rising Asia has certainly narrowed; but worrying about it is wrong for two reasons. First, even at its present growth rate, China's GDP will take a quarter of a century to catch up with America's; and the internal tensions that China's rapidly changing economy has caused may well lead it to stumble before then. Second, even if Asia's rise continues unabated, it is wrong--and profoundly unAmerican--to regard this as a problem. Economic growth, like trade, is not a zero-sum game. The faster China and India grow, the more American goods they buy. And they are booming largely because they have adopted America's ideas. America should regard their success as a tribute, not a threat, and celebrate in it. Many Americans, unfortunately, are unwilling to do so. Politicians seeking a scapegoat for America's self-made problems too often point the finger at the growing power of once-poor countries, accusing them of stealing American jobs and objecting when they try to buy American companies. But if America reacts by turning in on itself--raising trade barriers and rejecting foreign investors--it risks exacerbating the economic troubles that lie behind its current funk. Everybody goes through bad times. Some learn from the problems they have caused themselves, and come back stronger. Some blame others, lash out and damage themselves further. America has had the wisdom to take the first course many times before. Let's hope it does so again.

Only 1,000? Chrysler is in deep doo-doo.

I believe there is a $10,000 fine if you're caught using one.

This is a new development, isn't it? I would imagine the new Aura is now much delayed. Unless he means it will be different in the same way that the Vue and Antara have slightly different trim and interiors.

Wow, harsh.

Yeah I dunno about this, since SWB Epsilon isn't exactly huge. A Gamma-based 9-1 is going to be really tiny. I hope they offer a SportCombi of the new 9-3.

Amazing! A much more useful technology than radar guided cruise control IMO.

Cool! GM needs all the talent it can get right now.

Honda doensn't cheap out randomly like that. If I remember correctly, it had to do with rearward visibility from the cabin.

Try it now...

Looks like the Dahaitsu Copen.

Um, that rear end is straight from the Civic coupe. And the grill is horrible.

Still ugly. Why do they bother trying to make it look like a Cadillac?