Oh well that’s fine.

When I read the title, I was thinking they cut the electric only 40 miles down to 20…

People will line up if they can fillup on only 7 gallons.
MSRP however is what is going to kill this car.

I’m starting to wonder if the price is going to hurt this car too. But more over they should continue to offer a larger tank. I can see some companies wanting to use this car as a gopher and the longer range would be useful.

On one of the half million or so previous Volt articles I brought up the concern about how long the fuel could remain in the tank if the gas engine is used only sporadically. This helps this issue somewhat, but as another LLN contributor pointed out a couple cans of STA-BIL might be a good investment.

Man, they fixed their mistake fast, and then deleted my post. That’s impressive.

That’s fine, I’ll probably be running most of the week with no gas anyway, just to maximize the cars MPG. I plan on getting at least 1,000 MPG. Smart move by GM since they’ll be able to market it as “the car that only takes $28 to fill, just like the good ole days.”

“…only takes $28 to fill, just like the good ole days.” Yeah, right…people are that stupid to believe that nonsense…

Reduce it’s price tag? How does it increase it’s price tag by much more than a few dollars and cents, excuse me, sense.

Not a big deal, but why? Just because most other vehicles get around 360 miles on a single gallon? I can understand gas sitting in there, but even then it’s not going to do much unless it’s in freezing temperatures… which it’s going to do the same as it would in a normal, gasoline vehicle.

Yeah, LLN, the choice of words for the title is VERY misleading. The Volt is an electrically-driven vehicle. When you use the word “range” without specifying electricity or petrol, you lead people to think you’re talking about electric range.

Wow, so many Volt stories. The Volt is the new Camaro.

And the feature cuts begin…

No, Inline6, the unbridled truth has no place in headlines. It’s called journalism.

They’ll make up for the smaller tank with a trunk-mounted fan blowing into a roof-mounted sail.

LOL at people trying to spin this as some major feature cut…

@ THawkoo,

For the proposed $40,000, half-range cut IS a major feature. The price needs to drop at least another $15,000. The Li-On is what’s making it expensive and at this point, I don’t see the use of the technology as a positive. There are nickel based batteries that could do the same job, at a lighter weight and a lower cost, but if this car can come in at $25K-30K, it will do quite well in the urban areas, a very good thing considering the congestion in those areas.

@rds130

You DID read the article didn’t you? It isn’t the 40 mile battery only thing that got cut. Its the TOTAL distance with the gas kicked in…. How many times do you drive 300+ miles without seeing a gas station?

If you aren’t going more than 40 miles a day — which would cover my drive and I consider myself in the country from the city I travel to (17 miles to and from)
— you can get even more than 300 miles on a tank of gas.

So where’s the major feature cut? You MIGHT have to stop at the gas station twice a week rather than once? You might have to make two stops on your summer trip rather than one?

Its not a major feature if you aren’t too lazy to get out of your car and pump gas every now and then…

====>>running thru all kinds of different numbers in my head, I say for that little modification drop the MSRP at LEAST $12,000…

But they could add capacity to the washer tank to bring it back up a few grand

====>>LOL monte! sounds like GM!

I just odn’t see how $40,000.00 for this car will entice many buyers to consider purchasning one of this. For the price they are shooting for it makes more sense 9at least to me to over this as a Caddy or a higher end Buick.

The issue I have with the Volt is that it steals publicity from the Camaro. That’s my issue, and my issue needs to be handled in an appropriate manner and brought to a satisfactory resolution.

Dumb-a$$es. What’s more annoying than having to stop for fuel twice as often as necessary.
Don’t make me buy a VW TDI !

“Its not a major feature if you aren’t too lazy to get out of your car and pump gas every now and then”

THE ENTIRE FREAKING POINT OF THE CAR IS TO USE LESS GAS, LESS OFTEN. If you do hit stop-and-go driving, in which case the gas motor WILL kick in, then 7 gallons is going to go a lot faster than people think. Go look at all the “real world” hybrid tests out there, you can find magazine reviews of the Civic Hybrid which show it in the mid-20s MPGs when driven in certain cities. Guess what — Honda didn’t shrink the gas tank.

You’re falling behind, HowsMyDriving. The Volt is the NEW Camaro.

The point of the car is to consume less gas, therefore saving money and using less nonrenewable resources. You still fill up about as often as you would in your average car. The difference is how much money you’ll have to pull out your wallet. So if you want range,02wrxpsm, go buy yourself a nice dual tank truck

“Hitting stop and go driving” doesn’t make the Volt run on gasoline like other hybrids out there today. The Volt runs EXCLUSIVELY on battery at ALL speeds. The gasoline motor is there only to provide a charge to the battery when it runs out of juice. No particular type of driving is going to make the gasoline motor kick in. It would kick in SOONER in certain types of driving because you’d run the battery down quicker if you’re doing a lot of hard accelerating and stopping over and over, but it’s entirely possible and actually LIKELY that most people will NEVER run this thing on gasoline.

If it holds true to its 40-mile range claims, that’s actually about 25% further than the average American drives in a day. So, MOST of the time, for MOST of the people, the motor won’t run. Your average person might go weeks before some out of the ordinary thing causes them to drive further than their average 30-mile-a-day of driving. For those people that 7 gallons will last a HELL of a long time.

In fact, that’s one added benefit to the smaller tank — when your car is meant to only run on gasoline as the EXCEPTION, not the norm, you don’t want a lot of gasoline sitting around in your car for weeks or months on end. Gasoline doesn’t do well sitting in your tank for 3 months or more — it’ll still work, but it’s not the greatest you can do for your engine or the longevity of the tank. One of the concerns with the Volt is what do you do about those people that will only use it for their commute, won’t use it on any of that “out of the ordinary” stuff, and will therefore virtually never run the thing on gasoline. That 15 gallons could EASILY be sitting around for many, many months before it’s all used. That’s not very good. A smaller tank ensures that the problem of old gasoline will effect a smaller number of people than it otherwise might.

Besides, the car still uses less gas, less often. Just because you have a smaller tank doesn’t mean you go more often. Someone with a motorcycle that only holds a few gallons will use less gas and pump it less often than my car, despite my 18-gallon tank. They just get THAT MUCH better mileage. If the Volt gets the “100mpg+” that GM claims it will get (which purely depends on how often you drain the battery, it could conceivably be HUNDREDS of mpg) than a 15mpg tank is WHOLLY UNNECESSARY — that’s a range of 1500 miles. It’s completely needed, particularly in a time where people are wanting LOWER curbweight. The most obvious thing to reduce is the fuel tank.

As far as shrinking the gas tank, there’s another real place where it will affect the range. Here it goes:

You take a road trip with the family. Everyone piles into your brand new Volt, you unplug it, and you go. You get out of town, and just then, the gas motor kicks in. 340 miles and several hours later, you have to pull over for gas. You fill up, take a rest, eat, and get back in. You get back on the road, and guess what? DTE now reads only 300 miles. WTF happened? You didn’t charge your car for eight hours while you were parked. Of course, you didn’t stop for eight hours, either.

But 340 miles is a long distance, and a lot of time. The best thing to do after that is to stay the night. I’m investing my money in the first hotel that has plug-in parking spaces.

SigmaHyperion,

“MOST of the time, for MOST of the people, the motor won’t run”

That’s an unproven claim. No hybrid made so far runs the engine as rarely as they claim (on paper) they will. I’m willing to bet that if you have the A/C on and you put the pedal down, even with a full charge in the batteries from an overnight charge, that motor is going to fire up. Even the Prius models that have been “modded” to be plug-in hybrids still use the motor in situations where the car’s computer senses a need for more power or speed.

WTF…so the 7 gal tank will save “a lot” of the cost from the 12 gal tank??? Am I the only one that who is so dumb to believe that??

I think the real reason for the range-cut is not the fuel tank. The weight savings from having less gasoline are not the key here.
Remember that the Volt uses electricity for power, so it required batteries to store electricity which are very heavy.
My opinion is that they are cutting the range because of the batteries. Installing a smaller number of cells would lower weight and improve mileage relative to each battery. Having less batteries and therefore less weight means you don’t need that much gas to charge them, hence the smaller gas tank.

@ THawkoo,

I read the article just fine but you missed my point. If efficiency in a $40,000 NON-luxury vehicle the size of a Toyota Matrix, then what exactly is? You’re not selling to the city dwellers, at least not in larger cities primarily because most of those customers don’t have a place to park the car in the first place (parking spaces from Boston to New York and DC range from $70K-$200K…it’s ridiculous).

Then again, I speak from an entirely different perspective, so perhaps I wouldn’t expect others to see how this doesn’t look as appealing business-wise (that’s not intended to be an insult btw). Another manufacturer is working on an electric vehicle with three times the efficiency, at a lower price point but around the same size, lower estimated weight and a bit more luxury than what we’re hearing about the Volt. Even if the consumer never NEEDS more efficiency, the fact that it’s there at a lower price is very appealing. However, as I said, different perspective. Nonetheless, I’m having a hard time swallowing the $40,000 pill when Lutz could’ve pushed this vehicle’s production back to January, and even that would’ve given the development team time to bring the car in at $30K. $10K in this climate is quite a difference, even if you don’t have to fill up but once a week. Really, only up until the point that the vehicle has paid for itself, do you actually begin to save because you’re finally out of the hole. I just don’t see why the hole had to be so deep, all factors considered, because Lutz is asking people to pay the amount Chevy HAS to charge on a product that COULD have been developed further to bring all associated costs down. My point was not GM cutting the gas range in half. It was the price of the vehicle.

so if the gas engine dosen’t power the vehicle what happens on the road when you run out of juice? does the gas engine charge at the amount of energy required to run the car continually with nothing gained or lost, or does it charge them while the batteries power the car down the road up until the point they are fully charged and then the gas engine shuts off. if thats the case you wont have to charge 8 hours on a long trip.

Now all they need to do is raise the price by fifty percent to balance thigs out again.

Guys, the small tank will cost GM more not less. 10-25 gallons car tanks are pretty standard to produce and they passed all kinds of test. I am not aware of anything with 7 gallon tank on the road. It means crash tests scrutiny and specialized manufacturing. I don’t see any savings here, just another excuse for new R&D “unknowns” when crap will hit the fan (and it will).

Sigh…

Elviososa, no, you’re not. None of us believe it, either.

I usually need to piss by 350 miles anyways.

Nice one Shaver. I suppose GM could include a free pack of Depends, or a hose and a funnel. But seriously… my concern with having 12 gallons of gasoline in the Volt was how long it would last during weekly commutes.
I typically drive about 30 miles per day… which would consume little to no gas in the Volt. So the fuel in the tank is just going to sit. Gasoline starts to go bad after about 2 weeks… which is why it’s never good to leave a car parked for that long. 12 gallons in a daily-driver Volt would last months.

anyone who is complaining that a 400 mile range isn’t enough because you’ll have to fill up with gas all the time is a dumbass.

The only time you’d have to fill up every 400 miles is on a road trip where you can never plug it in since you’re always driving. If you drive 60 miles a day and plug your car in every night, you’ll drive 20 miles a day using gasoline and 40 miles a day on electricity. Since the car’s gasoline operating range is 360 miles, that means you can drive your 60 miles a day for 18 days before you need gas.

18 days x 60 miles = 1,080 FREAKIN MILES BETWEEN FILLUPS!

And remember that most people don’t drive 60 miles a day. Most people drive closer to 40 miles a day, meaning they would go even more miles between fillups.

Do the freakin math before you spout off a bunch of BS… dumbasses