General Motors plans to have its revolutionary Volt electric car on the road by November 2010.
General Motors plans to have its revolutionary Volt electric car on the road by November 2010.
By Kristin Wright
Nov 22, 2007 16:33 PM GMT
General Motors officially declared the date for its Chevy Volt rollout to be November 2010. There is also talk of a new Walt Disney theme park in Epcot which will feature the advanced Volt electric car.
Chevy Volt was first introduced in Detroit last January with hopes it will leapfrog the advantage Toyota hybrids have given on the road. However, the new production model the drivetrain will look different from the famous model GM publicly revealed in Detroit. Volt has plug-in capability for recharging from households electrical currents and a small gasoline engine to keep the batteries charged on trips longer than 40 miles. GM and Toyota are still speaking with war of words on whether lithium-ion batteries will be ready for production cars by 2010. Toyota has postponed using lithium-ion batteries as a result of problems it had with developing them. GM is to begin testing the nifty system with lithium-ion batteries late in the first quarter of 2008, slipping the revolutionary powerplant into customized versions of its 2007 Chevrolet Malibu midsize sedan. The company has been working with battery development partners A123 and LG Chem to produce safe, reliable lithium-ion batteries. The Volt would not use any gasoline to go 40 miles or less, and the combination of battery power and the efficient small engine to generate electricity could give it fuel economy ranging from 50 mpg to 150 mpg on longer trips. Actual fuel economy and the amount of time the gasoline-powered generator running would depend on the length of the trip.
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