Can the Volt Help Power GM to Profitability?
Appearing in showrooms next year: Chevrolet's Volt, the first mass-produced electric vehicle from a major U.S. automaker. It's one of the auto industry's bright spots. One key question: Will people who are too lazy to regularly charge their cell phones be moved to buy a car that, if plugged-in overnight, can run on electricity alone for up to 40 miles? In the video below, GM executives talk about the Volt.
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The beauty of the Volt is that it has an on-board generator for when the battery is low, so it's not entirely plug-in dependent, unlike the Tesla plug-ins which will be rendered obsolete as soon as the Volt starts rolling off the line. Most likely the generator can also charge the battery when the vehicle is not being driven (and I've heard that, with some ingenuity, the generator can be adapted for use as a standard household generator, though I'm sure GM would never officially sanction that).
BTW, GM doesn't expect to make money on the Volt for a number of years just as Toyota lost money on the Prius for many years.
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[...] Source: detroit.blogs.time.com [...]
- TheDetroitHouse After a year of learning, observing and understanding, TIME says goodbye to Detroit. Podcast: All Good Things... http://shar.es/0V3I7 - 1 year ago
- TheDetroitHouse Our Donation to Detroit http://shar.es/0FX2T - 1 year ago
- TheDetroitHouse Read Kristy Erdodi's "How Detroit Became My Sexy City" http://bit.ly/9zG13z - 1 year ago
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