Being an enthusiastic car lover, I always dreamt of driving around the city without shelling out much on the fuel. Well here comes a car from the General Motors that not only breaks the 100 mark barrier in fuel economy rating but does so by a large margin. The Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid car is estimated to get a whopping 230 miles per gallon. It basically consists of an electric engine with Lithium batteries & a internal combustion engine. You can charge its batteries by plugging in to your household electricity when you're home. It operates as an electric car until its batteries start to get low, and then it starts running a small gas motor to power a generator and knowing that Google helped develop this technology makes it even more interesting.
A dream car to own right? Not exactly, as it carries a not too attractive sticker price of ~ $40,000 largely due to high manufacturing costs. Its battery itself costing $8000.
Expected to roll out in 2011, it seems to have got competition even before hitting the roads. Nissan recently announced the 2010 Nissan LEAF dubbed as the possible "Volt killer" claiming 367 mpg - wow!. As a consumer, its great to see competition growing towards greener technology & helping the environment.
So would you go for it? Well analysts say that you'd have to drive at least 200,000 miles—or 158,000 miles before you start saving money. Huh! probably you would be having a different car by then. Or if you dont wont to spend so much of moolah on this new super machine just wait for the technology to improve over the years which could eventually bring its price down.
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