100 MPG ?? HAH PLEASE STFU…
HERE WE GO AGAIN GM…. ANOTHER PROMISE WHICH YOU PROBABLY CANNOT OR WILL NOT DELIVER… DECEPTIVE ADVERTISING… HPYE HYPE HYPE…. HONDA, TOYOTA, VW, NISSAN, EVEN FORD AND CHRYSLER DO MUCH LESS IF ANY OF THIS.. YOU NEED TO DELIVER THEN HYPE… DONT HYPE AND BARELY DELIVER.. WITH THIS BUSINESS MODEL, GM WILL CONTINUE TO LOSE MARKETSHARE AND GET INTO THE RED…. GOOD LUCK… GET BACK TO WORK CLOWNS…

Is electricity free in Detoit?

If I may be so bold as to use a Chris Farlyism: ‘ I’ll put a piece of crap in a box and mark it guaranteed- I’ve got spare time- but then all you’ve got is a guaranteed piece of crap’.

The Volt will put Toyota and Honda in deep sh1t. Americans are going to be lining up in droves to buy the Volt and the once successful Prius and Insight will pale in comparison. Americans will buy GM and anyone who doesn’t believe that is delusional. Go GM.

I didn’t realize that CARB sets the fuel economy standard for the country. And of course automakers get to lobby for their respective products. Hummer should put in a bid for a 200 MPG H2!

Plug in Hybrids are not the answer people! I don’t want to have to pay more per kwh for my electricity just so Mr & Mrs Jones can plug their freakin car in every night. We aren’t solving anything… just merely moving demand from one form of energy to another. The US power grid cannot take the extra strain… especially with the govt. unwilling to devote any money to help build infrastructure. People want all these electric cars but they don’t realise that the majority of power in the US comes from old fashioned dirty coal, oil, and natural gas. This isn’t going to end our dependance on anything.

My town is mostly hydro. Woohoo!!

RaineMan, have you done any reading on grid testing and the development of smart grids in response to the issues you just sited? Ok, well, you should try that. There are a lot of people WAY ahead of you on that. What they’re seeing so far is that you have nothing to worry about.

RaineMan you are spot on with your comments. I work in the power realm every day as an engineer, and the amount of time it will take our power grid structure to thoroughly modernize is on the order of decades. Oldraven read an article on a developmental technology and thinks that it will be implemented in a matter of weeks. He doesn’t consider the time and cost it takes from a materials, R&D, and legal stand point. Not to mention the amount of man hours involved. Just because you read about a promising technology doesn’t mean it is already in widespread use…

Just buy a long extension cord and plug it into your neighbors house!

Global_Lightning…
It’s not that CARB sets the fuel economy standard for the country, it’s just that CARB has the “toughest” emissions regulations in the country, base of that they set MPG for vihicels sold in California, good example is the 1997 Toyota Supra, the dealers culd not sell you a “NEW” 6 speed manuel with the turbos it did not pass CARB standers. Just like that the auto industry tock note and now they all try to make the cut. I know it’s B.S. that a hand full of band wagon tree huggers try to tell you and me what we can and can not do with our money, I under stand that being GREEN is being COOL, YA-I-UNDER-STAND!!!…. but for me as long as i can I will drive what I want. and if thing get real bad I’ll just get “Fast & Furious” with a 4bannger…… 100 mpg…..YA-I-UNDER-STAND!!!…

sorry for the spelling, my bad…

well that was a very well thought out and CAPS-****ED post by nickkop
how are they going to not deliver on something that is already made?
i dont see toyota priuses delivering their 60mpgs on the window sticker, yet i see VW Jetta TDIs delivering more than a prius with practically half the EPA rating. If it comes anything close to 100mpg, i say GM has damn well earned it with all the time and effort they put into this car.

Damn right, A4! You speak the truth! Put ‘em in his place!

The GM’s 100MPG is so B.S….and if the CARB let GM get away with it, what is the credibility of the organization?? MPG=mile per gallon. If you don’t use the “gallon of gasoline”, how can you count it as mile per gallon??? What a bunch morons.

exactly elviososa , and A4, I drive a TDI

MPG won’t means jack s#$t when electricity from the grid is powering the car for the first (hypothetical) 40 miles. Therefore the new measurement shall be…”drum roll” the MPW, also known as Miles Per Watt, but even that’s an imperfect measurement. The sad truth is, as some have mentioned, we’re not even close to having the grid capacity to support 2-3 million cars like these. In addition, people would all plug them at the same time (roughly 6PM give or take). Now the grid can evolve, but please, we’re bailing out Wall St. right now and it’ll take years to recover the funds if ever. I doubt the grid is even on the top 30 spending priorities for the government anytime soon.

I say…F#@K Wall Street….I rather drain my money down to a hole. Where are those people who were making big bucks in last couple years?? If we have to bail out the Wall Street, we should also get the refund from the people who had made big profits from us.

“Oldraven read an article on a developmental technology and thinks that it will be implemented in a matter of weeks. He doesn’t consider the time and cost it takes from a materials, R&D, and legal stand point.”

I do? I don’t? Weeks? When did I even mention a time frame?

Funny how you can tell that when I said no such thing. What I was pointing out is that these issues are being taken into consideration when working on a vehicle that is to be plugged into a power grid on mass. Also remember that other parts of the world are setting up an infrastructure right now for plug-in vehicles, and in some cases that infrastructure is already operational as the need continues to grow. Street-side charging stations, time managed charging, EVs and PHEVs acting as a supporting part of the grid when the grid is at its peak output. As for me not taking ” time and cost it takes from a materials, R&D, and legal” into consideration, I still can’t find where you got that from. But I’ll address it. I have a job. I get paid to design and detail concrete reinforcement in bridges, schools, hotels, etc. Those people working on the Smart Grid projects get paid to take those factors into consideration. I’ll leave that figuring up to them. I’m sure the people doing the work could point out the bits you’ve just left out of your comment.

It was a lot more than ‘an’ article.

What kind of voodoo math does GM propose the EPA use to come up with 100 mpg? Assuming the car can actually go 40 miles on a full charge without using any gasoline (which is now in question based on the recent admission by GM that the generator engine fires up when the battery is down to a 30% charge), does GM want the EPA to measure the gas used at mile 41? Is GM claiming this car carrying a 400 lb battery pack will use only a gallon to go 60 miles after the battery poops out? At what distance will this car achieve the claimed 100 mpg? I want to know how many gallons the car would use on an 850 mile trip (my Insight Classic can sometimes do 850 miles on a 10 gallon tankful). I believe the upcoming Honda Insight Nouveau and probably the next Prius will trounce the real-world mileage of the Volt for people who drive more than 40 miles a day and do it at half the price.

Well, insightman, that’s the thing. The Volt is marketed toward those who don’t exceed 40 miles in one day. Beyond that, it’s just a very fuel efficient car for road trips.

Because of the nature of this vehicle, there will need to be some adjustments made in the current “system”. Much like the Smart car (not that it’s the same thing, but some adjustments were made to the system for the Smart) where you can only register it with the DMV as Black or Silver due to the changeable body panels, the Volt will need a different type of system for its information. I think Aexcorp came close to the target with the MPW statement, but it will be MPKW instead, as it’s measured in Miles per Kilowatt. Watts are just too small. We may see a couple of ratings on the Volt when it comes down to it. We may have a MPKW rating, and an MPG rating. Who knows? But if it gets 60 MPG while running the gas engine, and 40 miles on electricity alone, that DOES NOT equal 100 MPG. That equals 40 miles on electricity, and 60 MPG. They are apples and oranges, and cannot be combined. Lumping both together as a “bag of fruit” will be very misleading, and could possibly detract from sales. I believe GM will see this, and both GM and CARB will make the appropriate adjustments.

As far as the Volt itself, what I’ve seen so far has me very satisfied. I love the interior. I just wish it wasn’t so pricey. But I’m sure after some time the price will come down. I won’t be a 1st Generation buyer, but I may be a 2nd or 3rd Generation buyer, or maybe even a used buyer. I also see this drivetrain popping up in other vehicles, like the Malibu, the Cruze, an SUV or two, who knows? This drivetrain will make waves.

As far as the grid, well, GM isn’t going to sell 3,000,000 of these things in a year. The Prius has been out for ten years now, and they just sold 1,000,000… Worldwide… And it’s a top seller. Don’t expect to see 3,000,000 Volts all over the streets by 2013. If the Volt were to sell as quickly as the Prius has been, then I wouldn’t expect to see 3,000,000 Volts (that’s a funny little combination of words) until 2040. We have time to “figure it out”. And we will. Even with the other plug in cars coming, we have time.

Also, keep in mind that there are 300,000,000 people in the U.S. 3,000,000 is only 1% of the U.S. population. The grid impact will not be all that huge, even at 3,000,000 Volts (still funny, even here).