230 MPG!

By: JP Smith | Published: August 11, 2009

Categories: Business

If you haven't seen "Who Killed the Electric Car?", you should.  It shows how, in the late 90's, General Motors killed off its EV-1 line despite its growing popularity among those who drove them.  I often tell people that GM would not have been in the trouble we are seeing today had they continued making this line of cars.  In the late 90's, this car was getting a 100 miles to a charge.  Could you imagine, if they had kept up the development of this line and improved its efficiency, how many car they could have sold when gas was at $4/gallon?

Well, a few, short years back, GM recognized how stupid a mistake it was and started working on the Chevy Volt.  The Chevy Volt is a different breed of hybrid -- it actually runs in all-electric mode until the charge dies down and switches to gas as the battery recharges.

When I first heard about it, the concept alone sounded like a winner.  Well, next year, we'll know if it was worth the wait because that when they'll hit the market.  However, GM made an incredible claim about the proposed mileage of the Volt that is creating quite a big buzz.  GM says that the Volt will have a fuel-efficiency of some 230mpg.

Ratings like this are hard to calculate for electric vehicles.  You see, the action of braking is what recharges a battery on an electric vehicle so, the more stops you make, the better the mileage.  So, on a highway, you may actually get worse gas mileage because you stop less. Therefore, numbers such as this could potentially be very deceptive.  Nonetheless, even if your were getting, say, 100 mpg on the highway, would you really complain?

Personally, I would like to see us actually get back to more innovation in this country.  If they Volt delivers, it would put us well on our way.