Its a good looking car but the design will probably change a few times before it reaches the market.

Any knowlegde as yet on what one would pay for the Volt?

Ok, in the US this car makes sense from a greenhouse gases point of view. They have lots of ‘clean’ nuclear plants there (forget about the toxis waste, irrelevant). If this vehicle was ever sold in Australia, you’d be kidding yourself if you ever thought that you’re saving the planet. Sure, plugging it into your power outlet makes you think you are not polluting, and the car is clean with no emissions. But where would the power be coming from? Coal. I don’t think this will come to Aus…

But Dan, even taking into account transmission losses and other reductions in efficiency, the pollution caused by plugging a Volt into a powerpoint is overall less than what a car would create.

An internal combustion engine is at most 35% efficient, even an average coal fired power station is around 45% efficient.

And if enough people buy electric cars,m it will put pressure on the government to find new sources of energy, some will be renewable, the rest might be nuclear.

Sounds like GM have got hold of the “Microsoft Marketing Manual”.

Supercujo, if there are renewable resources, by all means, good idea. At the moment not even 5% of energy is created from reneable sources. For that to change, it will take time. We don’t need electric cars to justify renewable energy at this stage. I don’t think we are ready for electric cars, yet. If for example we were all of a sudden going to change from combustion to electric cars, you’ll simply be shifting the demand from one resource (oil) to another (coal). Coal price would go through the roof. Electricity price would go through the roof. Prices of most energy intesive products/services would go through the roof. Etc etc…

And in my own personal view, I don’t like nuclear. Mainly because you are stuck with nuclear waste for generations. And the safety aspect, no doubt a lot better than 30 years ago (think Chernobyl), but still potentially dangerous.

Dan, I’ve already done some basic sums comparing the E-Mini and the petrol clubman. All things considered you’ll still be reducing emissions by about 10% even with coal fired electricity. The charge power required by the Mini E could be offset completely with a PV solar array of just 1KW (based on 15kms per year). Australia is in the perfect position to introduce this kind of technology. Then after all that, you need to consider the huge amounts of Co2 created in retrieving each barrel of oil, way higher than coal.

Even if your calculation is correct and electricity does go up. It inturn makes PV Solar more cost effective. Not to mention the energy companies are already starting to move to alternatives electric cars could be the push it needs to get things going.

But yes the 64k limit needs to be increased for the aussie market.

Holden have already confirmed they will sell it in Australia by 2012.
Because it can be charged from home, any future greener energy source than coal, would automatically assist in charging the Volt.
If in the future your home was “off grid” & powered exclusively by solar & wind generators, then all those arguements are covered.

JasonP, the future you are referring to is quite distant still. It will take way more than a decade to change to renewablwe energy, while in the meantime, we have electric cars using coal and still produicing emissions. I’m guessing by the time renewable energy is more dominant source of energy, the Volt will be at the wreckers rusting away. Hence my comment above, it’s not the right time for one yet. Think beyond the square people.

Every bit helps? It won’t help one bit! Not when you have coal substituting oil. You are swapping one ‘evil’ for another. At a great disadvantage of 60 kays a day range lol! Only muppets who think electricity flows freely out of the wall socket will believe it. It’s just a bad timing for this car. In the future it will probably be the norm, but at the moment, it’s just a load of bullcrap.

Unless that car costs under 10K, I’m not spending more on one that only does 60 odd kays a day. Electric cars have been around for decades. They’re nothing new. In fact the hybrid vehicles are much more hi-tech than the Volt.

All of us old enough to have a driving license will be dead before pure electric cars are economically and practically viable.

Volt can be run on battery alone, & then kept charged by the petrol motor. Same overall result as an Insight or prius.

You don’t have to charge it at home using coal as the source.
Therefore it is at least as good as the prius.

Cars don’t have to be high tech for the sake of it.
Corolla is a good example.
Wasn’t available with high-tech stability control until recently, yet still sold very well.

Don’t really care if a hybrid is more high-tech than the Volt, as long as it gets the job done.

And toyota is planning on releasing a plug-in prius, though, possibly not here.

JasonP, where does it say it has a combustion engine??

Dan, I don’t follow?
Do you mean the Volt?

Volt can run batteries for approx 64km.
It also has a petrol fueled small 4 cyl that only re-charges the batteries.

It doesn’t drive the wheels at all; Volt only uses the electric motor to drive the wheels.

Volt is really an extended range vehicle.

In that regard, using a petrol motor as a backup, it’s really not much different to a hybrid, except the hybrid uses the petrol motor to drive the wheels directly. Volt doesn’t.

Ah ok, yeah, don’t know too much about the Volt, just saw no mention of a generator motor in this article… I suppose you can’t run it with the batteries flat, and generator powering the electric motors can you?

As I understand it, the petrol motor kicks in to keep the batteries at a certain minimum charge level.
if it didn’t, then it would really only have a range of 64km.

At least running cars on coal fired power reduces Australia’s massive reliance on imported petroleum and diesel products.

That is certainly a major positive for the current account deficit that everyone conveniently has forgotten about.

Both are finite resources. Stupid idea, as you’d be going nowhere in terms of progress.

Doesn’t Australia have enough oil and gas to sustain itself? Only that the govt introduced parity pricing on petrol long time ago so our prices match the world’s prices? Something I heard or read long time ago…

Haha, time will tell

CPI indexing of the fuel excise stopped in 2000.

Yeah around that time. Still paying the excise though.

Way to go Swann! Give hand outs with one hand, tax it with another. *sigh*

I just hope he leaves company cars and FBT alone. Pretty much the only perk/benefit I get from the government.

“and not much saving in emissions, it’s hardly worth it if it runs off coal power”

With regen braking alone and the fact that petrol cars can only use about 25% of the available energy stored in the fuel. Your electic car, even running via coal fired electricity will product less emissions that its petrol cousin. But yes more homes with PV solar will help the problem, and more pressure on move power to renewables.

There was BBC report in 2007 i think which claimed the emissions from gas flaring alone (required when retrieving oil) was more that the Kyoto agreement was ever going to save. I did have the exact annual figure and its huge. So its not just the tail pipe emissions. Then with 40% of the worlds oil we stick it on boat and send it half way around the world.

As for Co2 from manufacturing in general, this is a moving target. Manufacturing will slowly improve and become more efficient as time goes on. We’ve already seen this with some major chip manufactures. Even with the hybrid favourite “what to do with the batteries” is apparently being addressed. What makes me laugh, is you put a big battery in a car with a 10 year life, and everyone’s a greenie concerned about its recycling. Put it in a laptop/mobile/personal device with a shelf life of 3 years and no-one gives a toss!

“Hydrogen would be my prefered option, as long as they solve the energy problem of making it in the first place.”

Guess what, no electric car means no hydrogen. We need to get the ball rolling first before a Hydrogen car (which is electric in most cases) can prevail.

As Dan pointed out, 5% energy from renewables is appauling! I still see new homes going up with GAS Hot Water services and no Solar anything!! All this in a country which gets so much free energy. The problem is not the technology its the will and investment.

Lazybones
not many people opt for solar because it is still quite expensive.
it still takes quite a while to pay off the expense of a solar hotwater system, and at the end of the day the $$$ rule in the consumers world no matter how much any of us try and convince others that we actually care

I find it Ironic that in the auto industry they are pushing away from gas and towards electric,
yet in the construction industry they are pushing away from electrics and towards Gas.
You are not allowed to install a conventional electric hot water system in your house anymore.
You can only install solar, Gas or a heat pump in your house, and when you factor in the extra cost of a heat pump, it will take you near on 20 years to start actually saving, and by that time it will be well over due for replacement

I think the setups that allow you to feed back into the grid and “earn” money on your power make it more attractive now purely because you will start saving a little quicker

Andrew, it’s a bit of a sad story on the grid “bonus” schemes.
The SA premiser, Media mike Rann, makes a big deal about “double” the value for every KW returned to the grid, but forgets to mention that it only applies to “excess” that you put back, which effectively rules out EVERY household with solar panels, because very few can generate more than they use.

Gas might be good for making heat, but using heat to make motion is far less efficient than using electricity to make motion.

“Guess what, no electric car means no hydrogen. We need to get the ball rolling first before a Hydrogen car (which is electric in most cases) can prevail.”

I don’t understand, why is that? Hydrogen technology is already there, mostly/fully developed. All that is missing is the easy and economical way of exctracting and supplying hydrogen, and the infrastructure. Perth did a short trial with hydrogen public buses a while ago. The company I work for actually supplied the hydrogen for the trial (a bi product from one of our coal carbonizing projects). It worked fine, other than the extra costs involved with maintenance etc. which would obviously be less if the technology was more widespread. Electric cars are a waste of time compared to the hydrogen vehicles. They have a shorter range, are slower, and are less practical. I would rather be able to travel 1000 kays in my hydrogen car, and stopping to refuel with hydrogen in a matter of minutes, than only able to travel 100 kays, and wait 12 hours to recharge. And since all that electric and hydrogen cars need to be economically (and environmentally) viable is clean renewable power, once you accomplish that, hydrogen is a more logical choice.

“All this in a country which gets so much free energy. The problem is not the technology its the will and investment.”

It’s not as simple. Renewable energy is actually a lot more expensive than coal and others. Unfortunately the way the market is at the moment, people do not want to pay triple or quadruple more for electricity. With the way green technology is at the moment, it costs a lot to implement. My company has built a windfarm not so long ago. It’s a similar issue to when you build hybrid vehicles. THose turbines have a useful life of 25 years, after which they need to be replaced. Believe it or not, for the amount of power they produce in their life time, large portion will cover the initial power needed to produce them in the first place. There is not enough efficiency in green power production at the moment, to make it economically viable for it to produce 100% of our electricity supplies. The energy is there, but we cannot capture it economically enough as yet unfortunately.

“To all the nay-sayers like Dan, you do realise that most power utility companies offer green electricity for purchase. Some even offer 100% green.”

Mate, I work for one. We offer ’100% environmentally friendly’ electricity as an option, out of the windfarm. But we also have two coal fired power stations. I’ll probably be repeating what I wrote above, but coal power is actually cheaper. The ones who offer 100% green, are the ones who only have a windfarm or tidal or whatever plant, which mind you, don’t operate 24/7 due to varying weather conditions. What’s ironic is that, all that power is mixed into the grid anyway, but you just pay bills to your provider, and the provider buys any deficient electricity from other providers if necessary. Don’t believe you are always getting 100% green power mate

Think about it, if it was as easy and as viable as just chucking a few windfarms and solar panels all over the place and get away from coal and gas, it would have been done by now. Lots of work still needs to be done unfortunately.

Yeah I guess there are two ways to go about it. I was referring to hydrogen cars with combustion engines, that’s what the buses had here in Perth. The steam coming out of it looked cool! I’m not gonna go into which one is better as I’m not an expert at it haha. Electric motors and cars have been around for a long time though, so I’d imagine all work is done in that regard. What’s the point doing further work on it at this stage? The biggest problem is the power source, as shown with this miserable range of 60 odd kays lol. Anyway, this Volt car is good 30 years too early imo They should focus on source power.

Yes, green energy will cost money, people need to be prepared to fork out more, however they are not. And that’s the problem.

Steam coming out of bus tail pipes, that does sound kinda cool

Expert Cupid? Ex sounds like a “has been” and spert is a drip under pressure

I’d buy one tomorrow too, just to ensure Opec build less gold palaces with their oil revenue!!

Who knows, 30 years from now the volt will probably be fart powered. Behold the bio-volt, gets 100kms out of a single curry…fantastic!

Here’s a crackpot idea……What if they fitted small wind power generators, to the front of the car which charged the battery while you drove extending the distance?

(Imagine tubes bout an Inch or so wide, long enough with a fan inside it fitted through the grill)

Would that be feasible??