GM's Volt - or should I say the Peoples Car

[LEaSH]

Voltless wonder.

The Volkswagen was a smashing success for various reasons. Design, simplicity, reliability, econo cost, are a few. It was sold all over the world.

The Volt? Predictably, none of the above. In fact, it's what happens when you pump $250,000+ in taxpayer subsidies for a car that stickers at around $40,000.

Design doesn't matter, reliability doesn't matter, sales don't even matter. Why should it? Dude!!! The Prez just gave us money to steal your money!!!

If you were a GM executive and thought things were looking up, look again.

 

[ftwphilly]

Not to flame an American icon but their stock value is in the toilet. Offered at $33 a share and its at roughly $20. I thought IPO's were supposed to go up. Also, an interesting movie, rhetoric aside, is Who Killed The Electric Car.

 

[indykid]

The electric car was DOA because of the size of this country. Even with a good day range of 100 miles, an electric car barely qualifies as an in-city commuter.

For instance, when I visit my daughter at her college in Chicago to drop something off that she needs, it is 360 mile round trip. It would take five days with four nights of charging to make the trip. With gasoline, it can be done in 7 hours.

With a city the size of Indianapolis, the electric car might eek out a trip to the airport from my house north of the city, but I might not make it back.

The cost of electric is also a killer at this time as materials for batteries and motors are expensive and not likely to come down until a major break-through is made in battery design.

And yes, the oil companies have a vested interest in keeping us in combustion engines, but until someone comes up with better, and they have been trying for over 100 years, internal combustion is really not bad.

 

[Liberty's Teeth]

Electric cars will NEVER work. It is just simple math. One gallon of gas has 36kW/hours of energy. You are aware of the physical size of a gallon of liquid (imagine a gallon of milk) as well as it's weight (6lbs). Of this about 12Kw/hrs actually gets put down to the ground. Most of the rest is wasted as heat.

The volt has a 16kw battery which takes up about 100 liters of space or 26 Gallons worth of space. This battery weighs 435lbs.

So, in a space where you could store 26 gallons of gasoline you are actually storing a lithium ion battery with enough energy to move a vehicle the size and weight of the Volt about 40 miles.

With current technology, cost aside, to get an electric car with a 400 mile range (like most cars on the road) you would need a 4,350lb battery that would take up approximately 100 cubic feet. The volume of the whole car isn't 100 cubic feet.

Electric cars are a pipe dream. All of the greenies have to get over it or get busy using one of the most efficient modes of transportation of all times...the bicycle. The average human gets 900 miles to the gallon on a bicycle. Simply speaking, a gallon of gas has 31,000 calories. The average person burns 34 calories per mile. If one could drink a gallon of gas and convert it into mechanical energy that is how far they could take it.

 

[SSGSAD]

Voltless wonder.

The Volkswagen was a smashing success for various reasons. Design, simplicity, reliability, econo cost, are a few. It was sold all over the world.

The Volt? Predictably, none of the above. In fact, it's what happens when you pump $250,000+ in taxpayer subsidies for a car that stickers at around $40,000.

Design doesn't matter, reliability doesn't matter, sales don't even matter. Why should it? Dude!!! The Prez just gave us money to steal your money!!!

If you were a GM executive and thought things were looking up, look again.

And they catch FIRE, too... They, ( Chevy, or govt. ) don't know which, covers it up .....

 

[shibumiseeker]

Electric cars will NEVER work.

This is not correct. Storage battery cars will not work beyond a niche application for the reasons you state, but electric motor cars have enormous potential. Using an electric motor gives a wide flexibility in the power source from IC engines to fuel cells.

 

[rugertoter]

Voltless wonder.

The Volkswagen was a smashing success for various reasons. Design, simplicity, reliability, econo cost, are a few. It was sold all over the world.

The Volt? Predictably, none of the above. In fact, it's what happens when you pump $250,000+ in taxpayer subsidies for a car that stickers at around $40,000.

Design doesn't matter, reliability doesn't matter, sales don't even matter. Why should it? Dude!!! The Prez just gave us money to steal your money!!!

If you were a GM executive and thought things were looking up, look again.

The Volt is what happens when a left-wing, Liberal, tree-hugging bunch of idiots start making industry decisions. Crap that is overpriced and does not work.

 

[Whosyer]

And don't forget the irony. If you live in Indiana , every time you plug your electric car in to be charged, there's a 98% chance that the electricity comes from a coal fired power plant.

 

[LEGENw84itDARY]

just an FYI, it stickers for $40k but it probably costs them about $80k+ to make each one

 

[rugertoter]

And don't forget the irony. If you live in Indiana , every time you plug your electric car in to be charged, there's a 98% chance that the electricity comes from a coal fired power plant.

Very good point! This whole "green" initiative is soooooooo much BS! Just a bunch of old hippies, who are now a part of the money making system that they hated so much "back in the day", going around forcing everybody else to do what they want. They are not so much different than Hitler or Mussilini.

 

[hornadylnl]

I wonder how many idiots buy these cars and then pass out when they open their next electric bill.

 

[Liberty's Teeth]

This is not correct. Storage battery cars will not work beyond a niche application for the reasons you state, but electric motor cars have enormous potential. Using an electric motor gives a wide flexibility in the power source from IC engines to fuel cells.

You are correct in a sense. My statement should have been "Electric cars will never work with batteries".

 

[TRWXXA]

The Chevy Volt has a maximum range of 40 miles on battery power (GM claims 50, but I have yet to hear of an independent test that even came close to that).

In 1914, the Rauch & Lang Electric Car Company built this little gem:

It had a battery powered range of, guess what...

40 miles!

So in 98 years, we have advance the range of electric vehicles exactly ZERO miles.

Way to go, Government Motors!

 

[IndyGunner]

Lets not forget about the guy who made a car run off water, that was "mysteriously" poisoned soon after only to have his invention and all documentation "stolen".

 

[TRWXXA]

Lets not forget about the guy who made a car run off water, that was "mysteriously" poisoned soon after only to have his invention and all documentation "stolen".

And the tin chapeau crowd chimes in.

Would you be referring to the guy who never submitted his "invention" to any peer or independent reviews? The same guy who was found guilty of fraud for his claims?

Perhaps you should spend less time studying conspiracy theory websites, and more time reading up on the fundamental laws of thermodynamics.

 

[IndyGunner]

And the tin chapeau crowd chimes in.

Would you be referring to the guy who never submitted his "invention" to any peer or independent reviews? The same guy who was found guilty of fraud for his claims?

Perhaps you should spend less time studying conspiracy theory websites, and more time reading up on the fundamental laws of thermodynamics.

I find that ironic coming from a guy with a mention of god in his signature.

Also, I dont see how I (an individual) could be a crowd.

Finally, I posted that for the lolz, here is a patent of your "fundamental laws of thermodynamics" Professor Asshat. I shouldnt have to use pink every time I type anything. http://www.google.com/patents?id=fP...ey+meyer"#v=onepage&q="stanley meyer"&f=false

 

[J_Wales]

My sister-in-law was going to buy one of these government motors products.

I suggested she just put a bumper sticker on her old car that read "Yes, I am a dumb ass".

That way she could make the statement about what a dumb ass she is without spending the $40K.

 

[IndyGunner]

My sister-in-law was going to buy one of these government motors products.

I suggested she just put a bumper sticker on her old car that read "Yes, I am a dumb ass".

That way she could make the statement about what a dumb ass she is without spending the $40K.

She could just save some time and get one of these...

 

[J_Wales]

The Chevy Volt has a maximum range of 40 miles on battery power (GM claims 50, but I have yet to hear of an independent test that even came close to that).

In 1914, the Rauch & Lang Electric Car Company built this little gem:

It had a battery powered range of, guess what...

40 miles!

So in 98 years, we have advance the range of electric vehicles exactly ZERO miles.

Way to go, Government Motors!

At least Raunch and Lang and their investors put up their own money to develop and build their car.

GM used the force of government to strip property from others to build its car.

GM can go to Hell... and take fearless leader and his henchmen with him.

 

[John Galt]

As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. The word derives from fasces, the Roman symbol of collectivism and power: a tied bundle of rods with a protruding ax. In its day (the 1920s and 1930s), fascism was seen as the happy medium between boom-and-bust-prone liberal capitalism, with its alleged class conflict, wasteful competition, and profit-oriented egoism, and revolutionary Marxism, with its violent and socially divisive persecution of the bourgeoisie. Fascism substituted the particularity of nationalism and racialism—“blood and soil”—for the internationalism of both classical liberalism and Marxism.
Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”—that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. - Fascism: The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics | Library of Economics and Liberty

Government Motors is one of the many examples showing that we have the government our Founding Fathers tried to protect us from. We get what we tolerate, so get involved in 2012!