Chevy Volt’s 230 MPG too good to be true

Posted by Mark Rollins Categories: Design, Transportation

Maybe I’m just getting sick of seeing those ads with the smiley-faced electrical outlet, but I figured that the 230 MPG touted for the Volt seemed a little too good to be true. 

As it turns out, someone at Chevrolet is playing with numbers.  According to DVICE:

Essentially, the Volt can drive 40 miles on battery power before kicking in the gas engine. So if you drive 10 miles, you’ll get infinite miles per gallon. If you drive 50 miles, you’ll get 250 miles per gallon. But if you drive 300 miles, you’ll be down to 62.5 miles per gallon.

This is hardly 230 MPG.  Would the electrical outlet be frowning if it knew the real truth? 

Read More | CNN

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U.S. Government Orders Hybrid Vehicles

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Transportation

The government will be spending about $285 million by June 1 in Detroit by trading in their older gas guzzlers to purchase about 17,600 new vehicles from GM, Ford and Chrysler. Part of the stimulus bill, it couldn’t have come at a better time for the beleaguered industry. About 2,500 hybrid sedans like the Chevy Malibu, Saturn Aura and Ford Hybrid Fusion have been ordered. Now if we could just get our local governments to follow suit.

Read More | Freep

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Hybrids To Be Sold at Wally World

Posted by Sheila Franklin Categories: Corporate News, Editorial, Transportation

Hybrid Technologies removes internal combustion engines from cars and turns them into electric vehicles. Founder Richard Griffiths is trying to convince people to think of battery power as a high-end option. High-end indeed. Griffiths takes such cars as the Chrysler Crossfire, the PT Cruiser, and MINI Cooper and makes them hybrid. The result will be a $65,000 MAXI Cooper, which can run 120 miles on a charge and go from 0 to 60 mph in 6 seconds.

Here’s the rub. Griffiths plans on initially selling his electric cars through Wal-mart at a starting price of ~$35,000.00. We are not sure what that means unless he believes that the shopping place of the “everyman” will convince us to spend twice the cost. We have two questions. If the cars do not sell at that inflated price, will Wal-mart roll back their prices? And if so, will the cars be made in sweat shops like most of their clothing?

Read More | MSN

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