Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Is GM Bringing Back the Volt?”.
Gm sure, let’s talk about GM General Motors yeah, they were bound to do something right. Eventually, you know broken broken clock is right at least twice a day. It’S like it’s like. They got 10 % on a Scantron, but they figured it out. At the end, General Motors has announced that they will be bringing back their line of plug-in hybrid EVS, which they retired back in 2019 at the worst possible time, with the end of the Chevy Vault.
The company has been under significant pressure from dealerships who been struggling both to meet consumer demand for hybrids and to sell battery only EVS in the quantity that’s required by their carbon reduction quotas. How many times have I said, the volt was an amazing car. It was just ahead of its time and if, if they their problem was the lack of demand, so their dealers have apparently figured it out, they could have sold man. They could have sold this.
It’S such a cool car yeah. You only have to burn gas if you’re going plugin hybrid just makes so much sense for most people and they just couldn’t figure out how to sell it. Like man, I’d read, man anytime, I want to just be angry, I’ll, go and read like Chevy, Chevy, Volt Message, Board messages and stuff and people be like yeah. I worked at a dealership.
This guy brings his car in and uh. He brings it in for a trade in and I’m like. Oh yeah, the the like lifetime fuel economy is really high. He’S like yeah, never plugged it in like not once like the are you doing you could you could do your daily commute on battery and then anytime, you need to go far.
You just put gas in it. It’S the best of both worlds. You don’t have to strip mine entire country to get all the lithium because they just have small batteries, and you don’t have to just like put gas in every week because you just really like consuming gas cuz. The vast majority of most people’s driving is a extremely predictable and B, not super long range, but you want your car to be able to do that.
Sometimes an solution is enormous batteries, yeah and they’re, not so heavy because they don’t have gigantic batteries in so they actually end up being crazy fuel efficient and I get it they were pretty expensive to produce, but they managed to discontinue it right before car prices went Like this in general, any who other manufacturers also seem to be jumping on the plug-in hybrid electric vehicle bandw. As of now, there are 33 different phv models available in the US. Six different automakers have three or more phv models available and even Lamborghini launched a plug-in hybrid in 2023, though they don’t plan to introduce an EV until 2028. Our discussion question here is: was EV adoption pushed too hard and did Elon Musk bamboozle? All of us, when really we should have switched to hydrogen and called it a sentury.
I mean I’m not going to try to speak to the whole hydrogen fuel cell thing. I got to be be honest with you guys. It’S not a technology that I understand. Well enough to comment on all the infrastructure challenges that would have been involved in that.
But what I will say is that for most people at the time of the introduction of the model S when the Chevy Volt was still in its early days like the first gen Chevy, Volt kind of sucked um and that’s the reason that I didn’t buy. A Prius Prime back when I bought my secondhand Chevy Volt was cuz. The range wasn’t good enough. It was like 30 mil or something like that. It’S not enough. The second gen volt, though, could do. I think something like 55. I only know it in kilom.
It it’ll go anywhere from 670 to 100 km, depending on the weather um, and once that thing launched for most people, I think it made more sense than a full electric vehicle yeah. It was pretty expensive up front and I could see a lot of people looking at it going. Oh, I might as well just go full EV, but that’s the thing.
Depending on your usage, you could basically Go full EV. I did well over 80 % of my driving in that car on battery and then anytime I needed to go really far. I could yeah.
I know the sex appeal, not much. I get it, but you can make plug-in hybrid cars that have a lot. You could you they just didn’t yeah.
Actually I I think the volt was an okay looking car. I think it was fine. I think it could have.
I think there could have been things about it. It had notable family car energy – oh yeah um, but I I I I don’t think it was bad at all – definite dad energy yeah, the 2024 Prius um people have been like drooling over this thing and it finally has decent range um and it’s just Chevy is Not there to participate in a market that they practically invented, it’s just sorry, GM, so Chevy the sub brand of GM Chevy, Volt G General Motors. It’S just just mindblowing to me how at every possible turn GM can get electrification just 180 degrees from correct yeah. It’S kind of frustrating yeah, cough ev1, says uh culus in float, plane chat, 100 %, yeah new priest, Prime looks pretty nice, actually um. What’S the what’s the r on this thing, though, blah blah blah blah blah blah and that’s: oh man, see this is the other thing that people don’t realize about these plugin hybrids. Is that not only do you drive on pure electric a lot of the time, but when you are burning gas, they are just wildly efficient, yeah, 4.4, 4.6 City Highway, like what yeah that’s wild.
That’S awesome, uh specifications here we go. Okay. Show me my show me. My All Battery range, though, where, where we we at here horsepower kilowatts okay, what is this measure is horsepower? A metric uh, sorry, anyway, hold on one sec like what? What what are you even talking about any okay hold on D? Why is this Dimensions? Why is horsepower a dimension? That’S actually really weird um.
I don’t know man, I just wow. That’S odd stuff happens. You know I just I’ve decided to be less judgy. Okay, I don’t know. Maybe someone knows uh. That 4.4 is liters per 100 kilm just want to clarify that I’m on the Canadian site, kilowatts are metrics and engine power. No, I know, but how are horsepower and kilowatts the same? Are they are they, though, kilowatt versus horsepower, there’s no way that a horsepower is exactly 1,000 Watts? I don’t believe that a power level of one horsepower is approximately equivalent to 746 Watts or 0.746 Kow, okay and there’s mechanical and hydraulic horsepower.
I don’t even care anymore to convert from horsepower to Watts simply multiply by 746 Noe, I’m over it to convert from watts to horsepower, modify by uh, multiply Sorry by 0.134 yeah, so anyway, um good job, Toyota yeah missing an absolutely critical spec from the page altogether. How far it can go on battery and then also um horsepower is a dimension, yeah sure .