Why yes, I was actually thinking about, well, someday, buying one of those new all-electric Chevy Volts. Then I began to see glimmerings of government hype and then I suddenly realized, whoops, it’s not all-electric.
It’s another hybrid—albeit a mere four-seater at $41,000 (minus a federal deficit-increasing tax subsidy of $7,500) built with the usual clunky Detroit engineering. In other words, it’s an Obamalot boondoggle.
UPDATE: Car Of The Year, eh? Someone paid big bucks for these.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
What I can’t figure out is the pricing. One would expect lower price for something that carries relatively simple electric engine, but no – all manufacturers of purely electric cars are going overboard with pricing…
The Volt is not a purely electric car. It is a hybrid, so it has a gas engine and an electric one. Also Chevy has featherbedded unions to pay and bureaucrats to satisfy.
As long as the Feds are bribing buyers with humongous tax credits, the automakers have no incentive to get the price down. Then again, I suspect the Volt is intended purely as a halo car, not as any sort of game-changer.
How could another hybrid change the game? Only an all-electric could do that. Wonder how much you have to pay to get Car of The Year?
Evidently more than Nissan was willing to fork out, since it will have a mass-market pure-EV on the streets in ’11.
Thanks for the tip. My wife, who has driven Nissans since I met her twenty years ago, and has paid off her last one, may be standing in line for it.
Uh, nevermind. You mean the Leaf, the two-seater toy car with no trunk space. I doubt she’ll want to be driving that on I-35 to Fort Worth to see her mother.
On the other hand she might like this 5-seat compact hatchback version:
http://green.autoblog.com/2010/11/12/at-witz-end-the-more-i-drive-it-the-more-the-nissan-leaf-is-a/