With all the talk that everyone has been involved in about global warming, the soon to be oil crisis and the general fact that our current transportation system is unsustainable, I thought I would like to make a comment about one type of transportation that seems to be heading in the right direction, the Chevrolet Volt.
For those of you who don't know the Chevy Volt is a combination electric and gasoline powered car. The Volt is the most fuel efficient car with a gasoline engine in America as rated by the EPA. The mileage rating is slightly confusing because of the system that it runs on. It is officially rated at 93 miles per gallon equivalent which takes into consideration both the gas and electric engine. How it works is initially the electric battery runs the engine until the power is drained, then the gas engine kicks in have and helps the electric until the destination is reached. One can simply plug in the car anywhere they go to recharge the battery. I even saw one this past weekend plug into a normal outlet with a special adapter at parking lot at a farm.
The question now is, is this helping us? Is it leading us in the right direction? I think it is. Most cars in the US have fuel mileage int he 20's and 30's and SUV's are in the teens. So to see a car with an almost triple digit MPG rating is exciting to me. Now I know that this is not the final solution and I know that this is actually not really making a dent. We still need transportation modes that are independent of oil entirely and ones that can run on electricity not generated by fossil fuels. But it is certainly a step in the right direction.
What are your thoughts?
For further reading please check out these websites:
http://www.chevrolet.com/volt-electric-car/faq.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Volt#Fuel_economy
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| Image courtesy of Wikipedia (wiki/Chevrolet_Volt) |
For those of you who don't know the Chevy Volt is a combination electric and gasoline powered car. The Volt is the most fuel efficient car with a gasoline engine in America as rated by the EPA. The mileage rating is slightly confusing because of the system that it runs on. It is officially rated at 93 miles per gallon equivalent which takes into consideration both the gas and electric engine. How it works is initially the electric battery runs the engine until the power is drained, then the gas engine kicks in have and helps the electric until the destination is reached. One can simply plug in the car anywhere they go to recharge the battery. I even saw one this past weekend plug into a normal outlet with a special adapter at parking lot at a farm.
The question now is, is this helping us? Is it leading us in the right direction? I think it is. Most cars in the US have fuel mileage int he 20's and 30's and SUV's are in the teens. So to see a car with an almost triple digit MPG rating is exciting to me. Now I know that this is not the final solution and I know that this is actually not really making a dent. We still need transportation modes that are independent of oil entirely and ones that can run on electricity not generated by fossil fuels. But it is certainly a step in the right direction.
What are your thoughts?
For further reading please check out these websites:
http://www.chevrolet.com/volt-electric-car/faq.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Volt#Fuel_economy
With a mileage rating 3 times greater than most cars on the road today the Volt sounds like a very encouraging example of sustainable transportation technology. Were you able to find any reviews made by owners of the Volt? Is it a hassle to re-charge the electricity-driven portion of the engine? Also, I imagine it must be fairly expensive because although I've seen one or two Volts total in recent times, you don't see too many of them on the roads. There must be some reason for this. I agree about the fact that cars of this type are certainly a step in the right direction, perhaps they will begin to catch on with greater intensity in the near future as the world's oil reserves continue to drain.
ReplyDeleteThe reviews for the Volt so far have been great according to what I have found. As for charging, you can use any normal 120V outlet, it just can take up to 10 hours to do so, but only 4 hours on a 240V outlet which are quite easy to install in a house or garage (many appliances need them.) The cost is a bit higher. They cost around $33,000 after a federal tax cut for buying one, which is not too bad, but is not as cheap as other sedans can be.
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