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GM's announced due to the Carpocalypse , it will halt construction on the new 552,000 square foot Flint Engine Plant responsible for the 1.4-liter inline four destined for the Chevy Volt and Chevy Cruze . Back in September GM announced it would construct an all-new plant in Flint, Michigan to produce the 1.4 liter direct injection inline four cylinder engine planned to act as a generator in the Chevy Volt and main power in the Chevy Cruze. GM Spokeswoman Sharon Basel would not say when construction might resume if government loans are made available, but asserted there is time in both programs to accommodate the delay, and GM currently builds the engine in Austria, so they "...have lots of options. The construction of the new plant is not going to interrupt our plans for the Volt or Cruze." Due to a tightening cash situation GM is immediately halting construction of the plant in an effort to stay afloat over the sea of bankruptcy. A delay in the production timing for both...
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We reported back in July the European version of the Chevy Volt could be built in the UK. Now we're hearing that those rumors are in fact true. The European Volt ( Opel Volt perhaps?) will be built in the UK at the Ellesmere Port plant, home of the current Vauxhall Astra, and not imported from the Hamtramck plant in the U.S. GM sources say that the project has caught the interest of UK business secretary, Lord Mandelson and that he is interested in seeing the plug-in electric car manufactured locally in the UK. GM Europe President, Carl-Peter Forster said, “We would look at assembling Volt at Ellesmere Port if super-credits were included in the EU CO2 legislation - because this would encourage automakers to provide more ultra-low CO2 vehicles earlier and in greater volume. While the CO2 policy is close to finalisation, we will wait to see the final policy before making any further decisions." It is expected that within the next couple months GM will release a business plan before...
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Edmunds Inside Line stirred up kind of a hornets nest yesterday when they made the claim the Chevy Volt won't use the engine to recharge the battery. Turns out they weren't exactly right. GM's VP for Global Program Management, John Lauckner, rebuffed Edmunds' claims and stated, in no uncertain terms, that the engine can recharge the battery, but recharging the battery is not its objective. Engines are most efficient when operated at a steady state — tons of tricks can be implemented to optimize performance at a constant RPM, and that's the plan for the Volt. As with any steady-state output, sometimes there will be surpluses. Those surpluses of electricity not used by the electric motor, as might occur during light loads, will be dumped into the battery so that energy isn't wasted. But recharging the battery is not the objective of running the engine. In addition to extra electricity from the engine/generator, energy reclaimed from regenerative braking will...
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When Chrysler dropped its bevy of extended-range electric vehicles in our laps today as part of the company's new ENVI program, we wondered how coincidental it was that Chrysler was claiming the same all-electric range as the much ballyhooed Chevy Volt . The Volt makes concessions to seating and obsessively maximizes aerodynamics to get its 40 mile range, but the Chrysler EV and the Jeep EV both claim 40 miles as well. No funny-shaped center consoles, no wacky aero-trickery, just batteries and electric motors. So what's the deal? Not surprisingly, it's mainly the batteries that make the difference here. Battery storage capacity is measured in watt-hours, more or less the total amount of energy used over time. A kilowatt-hour (kWh) is simply a thousand watt-hours and this is what's used to measure big batteries, the kind used in modern hybrids.The Chevy Volt uses a 16 kWh battery and only really functions within a range of 50-80% charge in order to extend battery life. In...
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Thanks to the folks at GM-Volt.com , you can now not only see the Chevy Volt slowly moving on a GM road course, you can see it with a soundtrack! Yes friends, a spaceship-like sedan apparently deserves Coldplay, as its spacey sprocket of an unofficial musical accompaniment. Check it out below the jump and tell us in the comments how long you were able to watch before the music became too annoying to bear any longer. We made it nine seconds. [via GM-Volt ]
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As everyone in the automotive media was crawling over the production Volt yesterday, Automotive News reports that Toyota was complaining to congressional leaders about the vehicle. Namely, about pending legislation that seems to benefit the new Chevy plug-in to the detriment of others, particularly the upcoming Prius plug-in . At issue is a tax package that would make tax credits available to plug-ins with at least 6 kilowatt-hours of stored electric power — a level the Volt would reportedly reach but other plug-in hybrids currently planned would not. Jalopnik Snap Judgment: Since credits could reach as high as $7,500 for light-duty vehicles, the potential impact of the legislation is significant; however, if Toyota brings in a competitive product for less money than the Volt would cost, even with tax breaks figured in, we'd imagine the impact on their bottom line would be minimal. Knowing Toyota, that's exactly what they plan to do, but we certainly can't blame them for...
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Yesterday's reveal of the production Chevy Volt got us thinking we should take a closer look at the design features, both inside and out, that make GM's plug-in hybrid unique. We've picked out what we think are the five exterior and an equal number of interior design elements we feel are most important, and taken a little deeper look at each. Without further ado, hit the jump for our top ten key design elements that make the Volt so...eclectically electric.
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At GM's "blogger town hall" at the end of yesterday's Chevy Volt unveil , the General's Vice Chairman and product czar, "Maximum" Bob Lutz , made mention to a Volt feature we hadn't yet heard about, and is even more techie-cool than the iPod-like interface on the center stack. Apparently, the Volt will "know how far you are from home" using what we're assuming is an on-board GPS system. The plug-in electric extended range hybrid's computer will then use that distance, along with route information, to determine how long the car needs to run the gas engine to charge the on-board battery pack, allowing the vehicle to truly maximize fuel economy. Even if you're not drinking the GM Kool-Aid, you've got to be wow'ed by a system like that — as long as it actually works. Read the full quote from "The" Bob after the galleries and the jump below. "with the Volt, you never have to worry you use the full 40 (mile...
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If you're a GM fan-boy, you're probably a pretty happy camper this week. GM's celebrating its centennial and you've seen the live reveals of both the upcoming Chevy Cruze , the 40 MPG+ econobox you can't ignore yesterday , and today , the Chevy Volt , GM's resuscitation of the electric car. One of these two will save GM, the other will not. If you can't tell from the headline, let's make it clear again: Keep your fancy-pants electric cars, GM — you won't be saved by the Chevy Volt. No, instead, it's the little Chevy Cruze that should get the savior-like halo. galleryPost('2011VoltNotSavior', 9, 'Chevy Volt - Mass Market MPG'); galleryPost('2010ChevyCruzeLiveD', 9, 'Chevy Cruze - MPG For The Masses'); Despite the hype, and as I laid out in a piece today for Popular Mechanics , the Volt, Tesla Roadster, the upcoming plug-in Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight will not be what I'd call mass-market game-changers...
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If you're a GM fan-boy, you're probably a pretty happy camper this week. GM's celebrating its centennial and you've seen the live reveals of both the upcoming Chevy Cruze , the 40 MPG+ econobox you can't ignore yesterday , and today , the Chevy Volt , GM's resuscitation of the electric car. One of these two will save GM, the other will not. If you can't tell from the headline, let's make it clear again: Keep your fancy-pants electric cars, GM — you won't be saved by the Chevy Volt. No, instead, it's the little Chevy Cruze that should get the savior-like halo. galleryPost('2011VoltNotSavior', 9, 'Chevy Volt - Mass Market MPG'); galleryPost('2010ChevyCruzeLiveD', 9, 'Chevy Cruze - MPG For The Masses'); Despite the hype, and as I laid out in a piece today for Popular Mechanics , the Volt, Tesla Roadster, the upcoming plug-in Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight will not be what I'd call mass-market game-changers...
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newVideoPlayer("/ChevyVoltReveal.flv", 494, 400,""); As the production-ready 2011 Chevy Volt drove onto the turntable for all to see, as much electricity was in the air as was in the Volt's batteries. GM clearly hopes this will be the start of a revolution for the company, and if the Volt lives up to the hype, it very well may be. As for how it looks? Well, judge for yourself from the video. The proportions are pretty sleek, though vaguely similar to the 2010 Honda Insight and Toyota Prius , but at the same time more distinctive than either.
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You saw the live shots of the Chevy Volt already, but now here it is, folks: the long-awaited Chevy Volt press photos — without engineers covering up all the important bits of the car . As we've already said, the plug-in hybrid should achieve a 40-mile all-electric range, after which point a 1.4-liter inline four-cylinder will be doing the electricity-generating duties. Just don't call the gasoline mill an engine: In Volt parlance it's a "range extender." More importantly, a full charge on the batteries will take just three hours from a 240-volt socket — eight on a standard 120-volt outlet. But our favorite number has to be the 273 ft-lb of torque from zero RPM. If everything (and by everything, we mean the batteries) comes together, expect the Volt to start rolling out of GM's Hamtramck assembly plant toward the end of 2010. Full press release and details are below the jump. galleryPost('voltpresshots', 12, 'Production Chevy Volt');...
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GM's 100th birthday celebration kicks off in a few short hours featuring their revival of the semi-electric car in just a few hours with the official unveil of the Chevy Volt on a very MTV Unplugged-like stage. Click here to get electric with us tomorrow at 8:30 AM EST as we watch Chevy's exercise in generating buzz both under the hood and with the worldwide apparatus collectively known as the "media." For the moment, hit the jump to see our past coverage of the excitement — but whatever you do, wake up early tomorrow here at our Chevy Volt Live-Blog ! (10:10 PM EST) UPDATE: We've got shots of the Renaissance Center Wintergarden stage taken this evening in the gallery below. galleryPost('VoltGMNextEarly', 6, 'GM Gets Ready To Rock Down To Electric Avenue'); The Chevy Volt, A Jalopnik History An Electric Sled Through Time Edmunds Thinks Chevy Volt Design Is "Huge Disappointment," "Completely Unacceptable" First Full Picture...
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Remember when the first shots of the Chevy Volt dropped yesterday? It was like a pinup calendar of hunky GM engineers ; you could barely see the car itself for their chiseled features and toothy grins. Well here’s the Volt de-hunkified, courtesy of Edmunds Inside Line . We’re still waiting for Edmunds to call us back, so we don’t know if GM slid them this shot under the table or if they spent hours photoshopping all the man-on-Volt action out. Either way, this is the Volt as it will be when it’s officially unveiled later this week. galleryPost('chevyvoltdehunk', 3, 'Chevy Volt'); [via Edmunds ]
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The video and images of a Chevy Volt on the set of Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen showed a car very similar to the Volt that GM has been lifting the skirt on . But now GM is saying the dark-blue car is "not the final version at this stage." GM spokesman Rob Peterson told Inside Line that it is "representative of the production vehicle," which makes sense as we've now learned that this prop is just a re-bodied Malibu. Though it should be noted that he wasn't even aware the car was out in California on the movie set. galleryPost('voltsneakpreview', 3, 'Chevy Volt On The Transformers 2 Set'); "I've never seen that vehicle and I've never seen that color... You can tell it caught me off guard. I didn't even realize it (the Volt) was out of the state of Michigan." Jalopnik Snap Judgment: Of course this isn't exactly what the production Volt will look like. The production model likely won't have the big showoff rims...
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