I log my miles for tax purposes, when I looked at last years mileage, I would have bought about 2.5 gallons of gasoline a month. This car would be amazing, room for my clients, energy independence cool, fairly sporty for a green car, and incredibly cheap to operate. Time to buy a wind generator for the backyard...
If they could get the price down to $30,000 I might actually buy one. It is a $16,000 car, plus an $8,000 battery, plus the electric power steering, electric heat pump, etc. How did they get to $40,000? It seems like it would be a $32-34,000 car, unless the advertised price is including a battery pack replacement midlife of the car.

The price of the Volt is probably inflated for GM to get the highest return on its investment at possible while it can. Once Ford & Chrysler start competing with cheaper models & the EV market gets very crowded like the SUV market did years ago, prices should come down. By that time GM should have a much cheaper version available...probably named something like the Watt.

GM has commented on why they are having to price the Volt much higher than they expected.
Originally Lutz just did a back of the envelope thing and added the extra costs of the battery and motor to the standard car.
This is new technology though, and in practise they found that they were going to have to throw out a lot of the old parts, such as the transmission, and move from mechanical to electric.
On top of that they are going to have to amortise the cost across what is projected to be a fairly small-selling line.
For a hybrid you have all the complexity of an ICE car, and then put on top of that you have an electric car if you are going to a full plug-in hybrid, and then the cost of integrating the two.
'The amazing thing about a dancing bear...'
Pure electric cars, or fuel cell cars, are much simpler.

Well now we know what GM's 230 campaign refers to.

Ralph

USBseawolf...

Have you considered the purchase of a BYD F6-DM PHEV or a 2010/11 Hyundai Sonata PHEV?

Both will sell under $30K and as low as $25K for The BYD F6-DM. If you have an oldy to trade in + incentives you may even get a deal for around $20K.

Worldwide competition will force Volt's price down in 2 to 3 years unless the USD is devalued by 30% to 50% or Asian currencies are revalued upwards by 30% to 50% or a bit of both....

Let's don't forget that, as I understand, a tax rebate of $7,500, can be applied toward a purchase of a plug-in hybrid. Which should bring the price of the Volt down significantly.

In such case, considering the savings from the very limited gas, oil, brake pads and rotors, and other lower maintenance which hybrids and electrics generate, owning a Volt might make economic sense.

Let's don't forget that if one drives around 15000 miles a year his spending on gas alone is around $2000. If the lifetime of your car is 10 years this will make it $20000.

Art, point taken. My comment was about my lack of enthusiasm about the appearance of the Insight and the Prius, which are the only green cars I have personally driven. I have only read about the instant torque an electric drive provides, but I am looking forward to experiencing it firsthand. I think the production Volt will not be dis-similar in appearance to the Insight/Prius, but the design cues look a bit better, and it sounds like GM is working to give it better handling and a sportier feel, as they should for $40,000.
USBSeawolf is right about the numbers not making a compelling case for the purchase of the Volt at $40,000. But when you throw in the $7500 credit, the sportier look and the ability to live nearly gasoline free, it does give the Volt an allure that the Prius just doesn't have. But the first generation Volt won't make economic sense for most people until the price starts to come down.

Thank you, Mr. Goracle, for the warning on the impending hike in electrical rates. It's about time! Electrical cost has been far too cheap considering the environmental damages caused by coal buring and the unforeseen perils from nukes.

The Government should also do the same, warn the people heavily and much in advance, before exacting the Carbon Tax, in a gradual manner, so that people can take proper conservation measures. By carbon taxes, gasoline, and fossil-fuel-based electricity will gradually see a gradual increase in tax rates that will be announced much in advance.

Renewable energy providers such as wind electricity and waste biomass fuels will be given a tax rebate equal the amount taxed, so that it won't be taxed at all!
It's time for a New Direction, everyone. (New Deal was for the last century, New Direction is for this century)

@Henry G.,
Your persistent insistence on Nuclear energy is admirable. But please be reminded that there are safer alternatives to nuclear. You can't blow up the world, nor kill millions of people in one bright flash using solar, wind and waste biomass energy technology.

Nuclear plants may be safe, but the knowledge and skills required to design, build and service these radio-active materials can also turn around to be an instrument of utter evil and destruction the world has never seen before.

The fewer the number of people with nuclear knowledge and skills there will be, the less the risk of nuclear proliferation. The smaller amount of enriched nuclear fuel or waste materials around, the lesser the risk of diverting these toward evil usage. Can't you see that N. Korea and Iran are giving the world headaches? Where are they getting their nuclear materials from? From the nuclear power plants, of course.

Play it safe. Stick to harmless Solar, Wind and waste biomass...throw in it some hydro and geothermal and tidal and wave energy...there you go, inexhaustible energy souces til the end of time. We have a lot of these harmless energy all around...the cost will come down rapidly.

Even if renewable energy is more expensive than fossil or nuclear, the extra money spent on renewable energy will help employ more of our fellow human beings...look around you...How many among us highly trained and qualified people are out of a job? This is unreal! We have human skills and labor ready to get us to adapt to a 100% renewable energy economy TODAY. What it will take is good leadership and understanding and support from everyone.

Plus it would take 20 years to get new nukes online and by that time we'll all be driving ultra efficient EV's with solar panels in the paneling to power them 30 km a sunny day for free. And we'll have covered every roof and parking lot with solar panels, and wind turbines will be more prevalent so we won't have much need for nukes anyways.

Henry Gibson:

"Per unit energy delivered, windturbines have killed more people than nuclear powerplants including Chernobyl and Three mile Island."

I would like you to support that claim with evidence.

According to this list the total number of fatalities stands at 61 of which:

• 44 were wind industry or support workers (maintenance/engineers, etc) and one farmer attempting to maintain his own turbine. Most common cause - falls from turbines. Included is one apparent suicide.

• 17 were public fatalities, of which three were from road accidents attributed to "driver distraction of turbines" by police, two were from road accidents involving turbine component transport, one was in a transport accident in which the road collapsed and the driver drowned, one was in a transport accident in which a transport worker lost his leg when loading a trailer and later died, one was from an aircraft accident which hit a new and unmarked anemometer, four were from an further aircraft accident which flew into a turbine in fog (one incident killing four people), one was a 16-year old boy strangled after his necktie became tangled around an unprotected turbine shaft, one was suicide, one was electrocuted, and the remaining accident was the collision of a parachutist with a turbine.

As you can see, wind turbines do not kill innocent people as you try to suggest. All fatalities were people that were willingly and knowingly in the turbine or simply didn't look where they were driving/flying.

Henry, can you produce a similar list of ALL nuclear fatalities including accidents during construction, maintenance and operation of nuclear power plants, fuel enrichment facilities, nuclear fuel transport and processing, uranium mining, and aeroplanes flying into nuclear installations? Then we have a basis to see if your claim is true.

@The Goracle (or as I like to think of him; the goral = a little goat :-)

"Off-peak charging: According to a DOE study, If all of the nation's 220 million vehicles were converted to PHEVs using electricity for their everyday driving, 84% of their electricity needs would already be able to be met with our existing infrastructure, thanks to the fact that most would use off-peak charging (via timers). Pure BEV stats should be similar. Not that building new power plants and transmission infrastructure is somehow harder than developing new oilfields."