Tag Archives | Volt

First Drive: 2011 Nissan Leaf SL

By on December 21, 2010 in Features

By Roger Boylan

GM’s short-lived electric car of the ‘90s, the EV1, was available in limited quantities as a lease-only proposition, so the 2011 Nissan Leaf is the first all-electric car the general public can buy. Its price is reasonable for such cutting-edge technology: around $25K, once Uncle Sam’s tax credit of $7500 is applied.  Is it worth it? It certainly has great promise, and it’s a well-conceived little car. I spent a short while behind the wheel of Leaf a couple of days ago–a very short while, unfortunately, the actual drive time  having been eaten into by a high-energy sales presentation from Nissan’s own Seinfeld-wannabe; I didn’t catch his name, and I ducked his pitch. I was there merely as an Autosavant, desirous of completing my trifecta of electric-car tests (read about the Toyota PHV Prius here and the Chevrolet Volt here).

The Leaf is powered by a lithium-ion battery pack of the type familiar to me from the Prius Plug-In and Volt. Lithium-ion batteries offer quicker acceleration and a longer range than your common or garden nickel-metal hydride battery, but unfortunately, they’re still at a fairly rudimentary stage of development, with limited range and—in the Leaf—a dead weight of about 500 lbs. We were shown cutouts and diagrams by the comedian. But I was reassured to note that, notwithstanding the futuristic technology, the Leaf is a fairly normal-looking car, a four-door hatchback with that cloyingly cute Pokémon face so typical of small Japanese cars.

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Volt, LEAF Powertrains Among Ward’s 2011 “10 Best Engines”

By on December 8, 2010 in News

By Charles Krome

The Chevrolet Volt and Nissan LEAF continue to rack up the awards, with the propulsion systems from both being named to the annual “10 Best Engines” list put together by Ward’s.

Per the editor’s, the former’s “‘Voltec’ propulsion system is brilliant—a technological masterpiece,” with editor-in-chief Drew Winter adding that “General Motors engineers have changed the course of history by creating an electric vehicle with true mass appeal.” But is it really an EV? Well, Ward’s says “Some consider it a glorified hybrid while others just don’t understand it.” Make of that what you will.

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The Great Hill Country Volt Jamboree

By on December 7, 2010 in Features

By Roger Boylan

That isn’t how GM, who organized the event, billed it. It’s just me being cute. Not quite as cute, mind you, as the herd of little Chevy Volts I found tethered to their battery-charging stations at 8 a.m. last Friday, when I arrived to participate in the Texas leg of the nationwide “Volt Unplugged” media event.  About a dozen automotive writers convened at The Crossings, a plush resort hotel west of Austin, with stunning views of Lake Travis and adjoining hills and bluffs in autumnal shades that reminded me—and a German-born colleague—of the Rhine and Mosel valleys. “Wunderbar,” we exclaimed, jointly. “Jawohl.”  Tears welled; thoughts of beer came, and sparkling Riesling. Then we pulled ourselves together and the drive got underway.

Coincidentally, I’d just reviewed a Plug-In Prius, which impressed me so much that I was unprepared to be equally or more impressed by the much-hyped, perhaps overly hyped, Volt, Motor Trend’s 2011 Car of the Year. And indeed, there are undeniable superficial similarities between the two futuremobiles: a starter button instead of a key; a Star Trek instrument panel; winking displays of electronic arcana on the display screens; otherworldly clicks and faint moans at ignition. But as soon as I moved onto the two-lane blacktop, the Volt came into its own. Even on uphill spurts and cruising at 70+, my power source was all electric, and I made sure that some of those spurts were fast. GM claims 0-60 in 9 seconds, but I estimate that my heavy boot application shaved nearly a half second off that figure.

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GM, Chrysler Each Set to Add 1,000 Engineering Jobs

By on December 1, 2010 in News

By Chris Haak

GM and Chrysler – yes, the same two companies that shed tens of thousands of white-collar and production employees over the past few years as both firms stumbled into bankruptcy in 2009 – announced separately today that they plan to hire a considerable number of engineers.  Most of the new jobs will be located in Michigan, where it seems likely that there is a large number of out-of-work, qualified engineers with automotive experience ready to start working again on a moment’s notice.

For Chrysler, which saw its US-based employment fall from 64,750 in 2006 to just 32,250 in June 2009, the new hires will come in large part from stepped-up campus recruiting efforts at 35 schools, but the company also wants to hire a mix of new grads and experienced hires.  Since exiting bankruptcy in June 2009, the company has already hired some 5,000 workers, of whom at least 500 are engineers.  Of the 1,000 projected new hires, about 600 will actually be on Chrysler’s payroll, and 400 will likely be contract employees.  Chrysler expects to fill the openings within the next four months.

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Volt Rated at 93 MPGe, Leaf at 99 MPGe

By on November 25, 2010 in News

By Chris Haak

This past week, the EPA released the long-awaited official mileage estimates for the two newest kids on the block, the Nissan Leaf and Chevrolet Volt.  Because both cars are capable of running without burning gasoline (in fact, the Leaf cannot use gasoline at all), many were curious as to how the Monroney stickers would turn out for these two trendsetting automobiles.  So now we have the answers, and they are probably more realistic and more relevant when comparing against other cars than some of the initial claims that had been thrown out by both GM and Nissan.

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Review: 2012 Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid

By on November 24, 2010 in Reviews

By Roger Boylan

When a representative from Toyota asked me if I’d be interested in having the plug-in version of the Toyota Prius hybrid to myself for a couple of days, I of course said yes, knowing that relatively few drivers have had that privilege. And a privilege it has been. Rarely do I consider myself a trendsetter, a go-getter, or on the cutting edge of anything, but I felt like all three at the wheel of this Jetsonmobile.

The name “Prius,” of course, is as synonymous with “hybrid” as the name “Bill Clinton” is with “ego,” and Toyota has sold well over two million copies since its worldwide introduction in 2001, so Priuses tend to be among the more ubiquitous vehicles on the road. Not the Plug-In, though, which Toyota calls the PHV, for “Plug-In Hybrid Vehicle.” This variant first appeared at the 2009 Frankfurt Auto Show, and only about 150 are currently being test-driven in the U.S.  These cars are not “mules” or prototypes, but fully finished cars that look and perform pretty much like regular Priuses, the main difference being that the PHV boasts a larger-capacity battery pack consisting of 3.6-volt lithium-ion cells rather than the nickel-metal hydride cells in the standard Prius. This allows for rapid charging via household current and a short electric-only driving range at speeds up to 62 m.p.h.

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2011 Chevrolet Volt is Motor Trend’s Car of the Year

By on November 17, 2010 in Editorials, News

By Chris Haak

The 2011 Chevrolet Volt has been christened the 2011 Motor Trend Car of the Year.  The award comes as no surprise to many, considering the moonshot that the effort to develop the Volt, meet timelines, and deliver on the program’s objectives – primarily, to allow for about 40 miles of gasoline-free travel between charges, and allow drivers to travel infinitely further beyond 40 miles using the car’s onboard gasoline engine to generate power.

This year, the editors of Motor Trend evaluated 21 new or heavily-updated contenders, but none of the other models in the competition were non-hybrid, non-EV, conventional vehicles.  By their nature, conventional internal combustion-only vehicles are not as complex or sophisticated as a hybrid, and certainly do not require the resources to develop that the Volt consumed.

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Chevy Runs Deep—Maybe Too Deep

By on October 27, 2010 in Editorials

By Charles Krome

While I’m not sure how many people realize this, the FOX network will be hosting a double dose of history in the making tonight: Not only are the Texas Rangers slated to play their very first World Series game, but Chevrolet is debuting its first significant TV spots since Joel Ewanick enlisted with the General as its vice president for U.S. marketing.

The World Series is, of course, an ideal launching pad for Chevy’s new pitch to reach customers, as baseball—along with hotdogs and apple pie—has a strong association with Chevrolet. Well, at least in the minds of folks who were alive in the 1970s to remember that classic bit of marketing. The thing is, many of the division’s potential customers weren’t, and therein lies a possible problem for Chevrolet’s new “Chevy Runs Deep” campaign.

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Who Killed the Electric Car? Economics.

By on October 27, 2010 in News

Chris Haak

In spite of the relentless hype that the electrification of the automobile has generated over the past few years, culminating in the nearly-simultaneous launches of both the Nissan Leaf EV and the Chevrolet Volt extended-range EV, a new report by J.D. Power and Associates (via CNNMoney) seems to drop a wet blanket on the EV’s prospects for success over the next decade.  In short, the notion that the mix of new-vehicles will be anything other than very heavily weighted toward internal combustion is little more than a pipe dream.

Power projects that hybrids and plug-in vehicles of any kind will make up just 7.3 percent of global automotive passenger-vehicle sales in 2010.  Even more dramatic, though, is the fact that the majority of that number is comprised of hybrids like the Prius, Camry Hybrid, Fusion Hybrid, et al – in other words, cars that aren’t plugged in ever.  If you take those non-plug-in hybrids out of the mix, it drops to between one and two percent of the US market.

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Chevrolet Volt: The Big Lie?

By on October 13, 2010 in News

By Charles Krome

According to my handy-dandy New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary—and by “shorter,” they mean it comes in just two volumes, as opposed to the 20 that make up the full OED—a “coupé” is “an enclosed two-door motor car.” Yet Mercedes insists on marketing the CLS-Class as a “four-door coupe”—does that mean the folks at M-B are lying?

I bring this up because of the recent hubbub over the Chevrolet Volt: It turns out that under certain, relatively uncommon circumstances, the car’s 1.3-liter internal combustion engine will actually contribute some amount of mechanical driving force to its wheels. And if that doesn’t seem like a big deal to you, you either haven’t been paying attention to the automotive blogosphere or you need to update your membership in the Official He-Man GM-Haters’ Club.

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