One of the more interesting discussions I had over the holidays was with a couple friends of mine who work at Ford. As usual (to my wife’s good-natured annoyance) the topic eventually turned to cars. What I’ve been really curious about these days is figuring out what our long-term replacement for traditional gasoline engines will be. There seems to be little doubt even among the average citizen that we can’t depend on oil forever, and that some day we’re going to have to get off the teat of the middle east. Of course, no one knows for sure what exactly our savior will be, but there’s plenty of speculation to go around.
Currently the two main candidates are pure electric cars and hydrogen fuel-cell cars. Both of these types of automobiles actually exist and can be bought (sort of) right now; if you’ve got about $100,000 you can grab a blisteringly fast all-electric Tesla Roadster, and for $600 a month and a lot of luck you can get on Honda’s list to lease the family-friendly hydrogen powered FCX Clarity — provided you live in southern California where they’ve installed some hydrogen filling stations, that is. (No, you can’t buy the FCX Clarity — some estimates value the vehicles at $10 million each, given the R&D costs Honda has put into them.) Neither of these vehicles emits anything harmful; the Tesla just gives off a little heat, and the only thing that comes out of the FCX Clarity’s tailpipe is pure water vapor.
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Just yesterday, GM finally revealed the production version of one of the most anticipated cars of the decade, perhaps several decades — the Chevy Volt. Some information about the Volt has been available for a long time, but yesterday was the first time anyone outside of GM’s iron curtain laid eyes on what many hope will be the auto giant’s messiah.
The Volt will be different from popular hybrids available today (like the Prius) in that it will be a series hybrid instead of a parallel hybrid (read more about that distinction at Wikipedia, if you care). It’s quite simple: in parallel hybrids like the Prius, Civic hybrid, Camry hybrid, etc, a small electric motor and the traditional gas motor can both drive the wheels. In a series hybrid, only the electric motor can drive the wheels, and the gas engine is there purely as a backup generator to charge the batteries that drive the electric motor. This gives the series hybrid the ability to go a decent distance without burning a single drop of gasoline — in the Volt’s case, GM claims it will be 40 miles.
So 40 miles on just electricity, and since you can plug it into any electrical outlet to charge it (with a cost estimated at around $0.80 for a full charge) this thing will no doubt be very cheap to operate. Imagine how great it would be, if you live less than 20 miles from where you work, to be able to go to and from work all week without ever using any gas. Good for your wallet, good for the environment, everybody wins, right? This thing will be a revolution, won’t it? Ah, but you must be wondering what the Volt will cost.
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