Michigan wllz

Cristi Landy, Volt Product Marketing Manager

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Make no mistake, General Motors officials believe the Chevy Volt will change the world when it goes on sale late this year.

“There is a strong desire to go to electrically driven transportation,” said Cristi Landy, GM’s marketing manager for the Volt, speaking to Michigan wllz via Skype from the floor of the Washington Auto Show.
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The driver of a UPS truck flashes a "Hey Good Looking" sign at the pre-production Chevrolet Volt during an engineering test drive along I-80 near Toledo, Ohio, Oc 13. (Photo by Jeffrey Sauger for General Motors)

DETROIT — General Motors wants everyone to know the Chevy Volt won’t suffer any loss of performance when it switches from battery power to its gasoline engine.

GM expects the Volt to accelerate from 0-60 mph in 8.5 seconds. But Car and Driver magazine’s Tony Quiroga wrote in April that the Volt would not be as quick after its battey was depleted.

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Technology has advanced at a dizzying pace and there’s no sign of it letting up anytime soon. Here are a four technologies that will change the face of automotive transportation in the coming decade.

Click here to read the full story on MLive.

2011 Chevrolet Volt

FLINT — Cynics all over the Web wonder if the Chevy Volt will be able to deliver on the incredible promises General Motors has made about the technology.

But company officials believe they are creating the technology that will power the vehicles of the future.
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Karl Brauer, editor in chief of Edmunds.com raises an interesting point here.

Time for a do-over on how we show energy use in vehicles. MPG was never perfect, but with alternative energy coming it’s officially useless.

The upcoming Chevy Volt will be the first to essentially mock fuel economy standards which have been a staple of new car marketing for decades. GM expects the Volt to carry a fuel mileage sticker of 230 mpg. How is it possible to reconcile that number with other cars, none of which can muster even a quarter of that number? Is it really possible that the Volt is more than four times as efficient as a Toyota Prius?

It will get even harder in the near future. How do you quantify the mileage of a hydrogen-powered car? Pure electric? If ethanol requires more energy to produce than it provides as a fuel, should it be penalized?

So what’s the answer? That’s for people smarter than me to figure out.