So hybrids have been pretty popular lately, and the price of gas has everyone worried and we're all concerned about dependency on oil and all the problems that entails and yadda yadda yadda.
Anyway, you may have noticed during the Olympics coverage that there's been a fair number of GM ads touting the Chevy Volt, a new concept car. Basically the spiel is thus - whereas hybrids these days are gas-powered but use a battery to augment gas mileage, the Volt is a "plug-in" car. It's a hybrid just like the Prius, but the difference is that the combustion engine powers the battery. You get a good 40 miles out of an overnight charge, and during that time no gasoline is burnt. After that 40 miles the motor starts up and you'll get a good 40 miles per gallon from there on in. The thing is, most people don't travel more than 40 miles in a day.
If it happens (optimistically, it's out by 2010) it'll be pretty huge, or at least as huge as a car that likely will cost a lot of money can be. GM came out with a fully battery-operated car years ago, and those of you familiar with the fantastic documentary
Who Killed the Electric Car? (if you haven't seen it, do so) will remember how that turned out. But as outlined in
this pretty good Atlantic article, GM is pretty desperate these days. They ignored the hybrid market in its infancy and got thoroughly shamed by Toyota. Their acquisition and promotion of the Hummer (with Jimmy Fallon, no less) was the cherry on top of years of blunders and loss of consumer confidence. So maybe they're just desperate enough to actually try this, and perhaps kick start a new phase of progress in the automotive industry. Like the article says, Apple was in a bad way before the Ipod and it rejuvenated the entire company. GM, being in worse shape than Apple ever was, wants to make that kind of impact.
Or maybe it's all smoke, like
this guy assumes. There are a lot of maybes with this. The kind of lithium-ion batteries needed to run these cars are thoroughly untested and pretty much entirely theoretical at this point. They don't know how long they'll last. They don't know how much they'll cost. They're being invented at the same time the car is being developed. Toyota's on record as saying they don't think it can be done.
So do you think this car (or something like it) is something we'll see? Will it have any sort of effect on the marketplace, or the way that we drive and consume energy? Or is it just technological optimism, a belief that
in theory we can solve our problems with some new breakthrough in the future? Or is it going to be the new Segway, a breathlessly awaited gadget that ultimately lands with a thud? I'd like to think it's a real thing that's going to happen and the auto industry will eventually tip this way in a big and permanent way, but... 2010 seems pretty damn liberal as an estimate for that sort of thing. I'd give it a few more years than that.
The title of the thread says "other plug-in cars" but I'm not aware of any, other than conventional hybrids. If anyone could provide info on any I'd appreciate it personally, and I'm sure more reading will be beneficial to others.