GM needs to stop yapping and build it!
That definitely looks like one hot ride and i'm sure it warmed things up too since it is so dang cold in Chi Town today. Thanks for the good reading.
It is an attractive ride, but Jeff is correct in his comments about plug-ins not being as green as they proclaim. Somebody's burning fuel somewhere to make and transmit that electricity.
Since Chevy is trying gloss on the Corvette/Camaro body stylings, would it not be worth publishing performance specifications? Does it go zero to sixty in under 5 seconds; in either electric or gas mode? How does it corner (i.e. sway & roll)? Looks can be deceiving. And don't forget how upset Chevy customers got in the late 80's when they put a V6 engine in a Camaro. Taking the muscle out of a muscle car rarely increases sales.
On a side note, the 4-door Silverado is a sweet pick-up. It comes standard with a compact V8 under the hood that averages 18+ mpg, four family friendly doors, great seats, and just enough towing & payload capacity to satisfy the non-farm/non-ranch user. And it sure looks better than a mini-van.
Of course, not all electricity comes from burning fuel (though most of it does)...
Okay, you got me on that (what is it now) other 5%. 
Of course, one could easily recharge his Volt by keeping a solar collector the size of a football field folded up in the trunk and deploying it at every stop. NASA seems to do a good job of deploying solar panels in space. Of course, the absence of gravity may be useful in those instances. Oh! I know! We could use the wind turbines in Nantucket Sound to generate the electricity. Oh wait, the green politicians and celebrities are blocking that project. Geothermal is not transportable, so it's out. Nuclear fission is feared and Mr. Fusion has yet to be invented. What's keeping Dr. Brown (it's a movie reference) from bringing that gem to the market? It's a darn good thing I believe in clean coal.
Just having a little fun here and not trying to be overly offensive. I hope all is well with you and your readers. Later.
Oh, I know... part of what I had stuck in my head was hydroelectric power, too... I'd written a piece for TH on Washington state, which gets most of its power from dams. Environmental issues exist, of course, but if people in places powered by hydro started driving plug-ins, that's a net benefit.
Geothermal isn't transportable, but it can be used to generate electricity -- pardon the shameless plug, but check out our entry in the Green Life Guide.
If Chevy made one of these I'd trade in my Scion tC for one. Being from Washington, I wouldn't feel so bad about the elctricity issue, but I do understand the pollution issue of coal fired plants. The key to this, IMHO, is that it's far easier to clean up one pollution source (the generation plant) than it is to clean up hundreds of thousands of sources (cars). As for nuclear, I'm all for it. The people who are against it have to realize that all of the incidents that occurred happened before the age of the cell phone. The systems designed these days are a million times safer because of the technologies they employ (a relative works at one). He even says that they are working on ways to recycle the used fuel rods into new fuel rods.
I'll be waiting for more info on the Volt. Keep up the good work Jeff.
"The key to this, IMHO, is that it's far easier to clean up one pollution source (the generation plant) than it is to clean up hundreds of thousands of sources (cars)."
Is it really? Every step in getting the electricity to a car like the Volt involves a cascading series of losses in efficiency. An efficient utility plant converts something like 50% of the fuel's energy into electricity. Transmission across power lines involves efficiency losses through line resistance. Step-up and step-down transformers also yield energy losses. It takes a lot of energy to get a little energy to the wall socket that the Volt will plug into. Multiply that by millions of automobiles increasing demand on the utility and you have to ask if you are really making the “positive” impact on the environment that you so desire. You will experience what “South Park” referred to as “smug” (feeling like you’re doing more than your neighbor), but will your Volt really be saving the planet?
And cleaning up an existing utility is not really that easy. The scrubbers are already in place to clean up the NOx and SOx that result from existing combustion methods. However, creating clean coal/coke via gasification requires additional energy to drive the useful combustibles out of the "rock". That adds a few more links of loss in the energy conversion chain. To make clean coal/coke, you essentially have to use fuel to scavenge fuel to burn at a factory that makes electricity.
So, what’s the best way? People way smarter than me are constantly trying to come up with that answer. Manufacturers have already cleaned up the automobile’s exhaust stream something like 500% when compared with what was available in the 1960’s. The cleaner exhaust stream and improved safety features have had a negative impact on efficiency, but few would argue that such moves were not a good trade off. Conventional cars are still not perfect, but they are much improved (a point the greenies like to ignore). Much of the improvements to existing automobiles are in no small part to the oil companies’ ability to reformulate fuels to burn cleaner (another point that gets ignored). I agree that nuclear needs to be on the alternative energy list as does hydroelectric, but good luck getting the BIG GREEN groups to buy into either. Maybe we will one day tap those deep earth hydrogen reserves that the geologists believe exist for them there fuel cell cars.
Drive a lot less, a lot more slowly and change your car a lot less often.
All the rest is window-dressing to avoid confronting the issue of personal responsibility.
Cars don't design, buy, maintain or drive themselves.
The only true gas-guzzlers on THIS planet are you and me.
"The cleaner exhaust stream and improved safety features have had a negative impact on efficiency..."
Huh? That seems at the least counter-intuitive. I would think that a 1960s gas-guzzler would be terrifically less efficient on a fuel-per-mile basis; I mean, going simply by mpg. You could probably include loss of horsepower in the calculation and see a loss, but I'm not in favor of pandering to American cultural proclivities in discussions of efficiency! But, yes, the trade-off was certainly worthwhile if there was one.
I agree with the comment that "it's far easier to clean up one pollution source (the generation plant) than it is to clean up hundreds of thousands of sources (cars)". First accepting that it's silly to argue a single solution to the complex problem of converting our fuel economy from fossils to renewables, it's clear we need to work on many fronts. Yes, centralized, distributed electricity generation is intrinsically wasteful, but even if we converted the US auto fleet to electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles, and chose to power it using the old grid, we'd be better off--- not because that's a goal we should shoot for, but because it would constitute one step toward the goal (the next step being how to clean up the power plants).
The obvious point about going toward hybrid/electric vehicles is that we're bringing online better electricity generation technologies (PV, wind) that also the benefits of distributed generation. So, yes, folks can put a bunch of PV on their home rooftops to offset their auto's (and home's) electricity usage. These are all steps we can and should be taking, since the BEST thing we could do--- change the wasteful American lifestyle--- seems unlikely to happen anytime soon.
It would be nice to see them make this an assembly line car. I think it would do well.
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