In fact, Chevrolet showed the first Volt concept in 2007, and the company made the decision to build it well before Obama was elected.įollowing GM's 2009 bankruptcy, in fact, the White House Auto Task Force tried hard to kill the project during the restructuring process, since it wouldn't make money for several years-if ever. This is one GM likely doesn't want to touch-but that doesn't make it any less wrong. (4) President Barack Obama forced General Motors to build the Volt and then subsidized each one with $7,500 of Federal tax credits.
They say the effect of electric cars will be far less disruptive to the grid than was the quick adoption of cheap home air-conditioning in the 1960s and 1970s. MORE: PG+E Data: Electric Cars Have Almost No Grid Impact So FarĢ011 Chevrolet Volt plugged into Coulomb Technologies 240V wall charging unitĪnd electric utilities are quite confident in their ability to handle the slowly increasing draw from electric cars, especially if they're recharged overnight when power demand is lowest. household pays 12 cents per kilowatt-hour, so recharging a Volt battery costs less than about $2 to go 35 or 40 miles-the equivalent of an 80-mpg car if gas costs $4 a gallon. (3) Recharging the battery costs the same as filling a gas tank-but every night-and will bring down the electric grid. They also equipped it with liquid cooling, a step that adds expense and some complication but probably offers the best possible way to keep the battery at the optimal temperature for long life. It's worth noting here that GM's Voltec engineers took a very, very conservative approach to the battery, using less of its total capacity than in almost any other plug-in car. (2) Owners have to replace the battery every three or four years.Ĭhevy warrants the Volt battery for 8 years/100,000 miles or 10 years/150,000 miles (depending on the state it was sold in), and early indications seem to be that battery-capacity loss has been almost nonexistent. 2013 Chevrolet Volt - Driven, December 2012