“Green Car of the Year” at the closing ceremonies of the New York Auto Show may just be the boost the Volt needs.
The Volt is a surprisingly good domestic model, although it does tend to feature the US auto industry's fascination with plastic, plastic and more plastic, it's something you can easily learn to live with – our family Chevy sedan is all-plastic and bright-work and we don't even notice it – and so the Volt has been a vastly overlooked vehicle by many buyers who consider it little more than a hybrid and a domestic, to boot. (I still haven't had a chance to do a topnotch review of the Volt just yet so one will be coming along soon. I have had a chance to look at their market-leading technology and I can say that the Volt is a good piece of work!)
Maybe it's the $30,000-plus price-tag is a turn-off for many potential buyers. Normally, if you were to tell a buyer that he or she could run a car today for an investment of as little as $1.50 per day, they would be champing at the bit waiting to sign up. However, when you wave the $30,000 price-tag under their collective noses the mood begins to turn away from the expensive option to lower-priced options.
This could be turning, though, because even at this price, though, with gasoline prices climbing, it seems, almost hourly, there's hope that the Volt could get the kind of attention it deserves. Until this NYC Show award and its being named “Car of the Year” by Motor Trend, sales of the Volt were very slow.
Perhaps the real sticking point for many buyers is the second one mentioned earlier. They believe it is little more than a hybrid like the Prius or Honda Insight, when it is so much more. The Prius and Insight are parallel hybrids meaning they are sometimes all-electrics, but most of the time are more gas-powered than electric. The Volt, on the other hand, is a series electric, meaning that the 1.4-liter engine that's used in the Volt has only one purpose, keeping the battery charged.
The Volt, which normally charges overnight at home when the electrical grid is little-used, has a 40-mile all-electric range. Chevy's research has shown that most drivers use their cars 40 miles a day or less and so they would be running under electric mode at all times. If you exceed the 40-mile mark, the 1.4-liter engine comes on to recharge the batteries and that's it. When it has finished its chore, it shuts down and you're on electric again. This gives the Volt a total 415-mile range and if you don't exceed the 40-mile mark, you really never have to fill the tank, either.
Admittedly, the pipeline has been slow to fill with Volts because they've wanted to take their time and do things right. They have done that and now they have to wait for the market to provide its rewards.
If speculators have their way and gas hits $5-a-gallon, you'll see that the patience of Nissan and Volt will have been rewarded and so will those who are still sitting on waiting lists waiting for their Volts (or Leafs) to appear.