The Chevy Volt is starting to look more and more like a GM pipe dream every day. For instance, this little bit of anecdotal evidence:

NHTSA, The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, proposed earlier this year that U.S. automakers must achieve a 25% increase in fuel economy from the 2011 to 2015 model years. When the NHTSA asked GM why they left out the Chevy Volt in their submitted plans, GM basically responded by saying the Volt was a low-volume application and would not really be widely produced in that time frame. GM spokesman Greg Martin was quoted,“We’ve been very cautious in terms of the volume, just because of the innovation and the technology associated with that vehicle. There’s a note of caution that, yes the technology is breakthrough, it is a game-changer, but as with any new game-changing technology, there needs to be a reasonable expectation set in terms of volume.”

Game-changer… Right.  If privately owned companies like Tesla are coming out with cars that travel 220 miles on a charge, than I would hardly refer to 40 miles on a charge before a gas generator has to kick in to recharge the battery as game changing.  GM has access to vast amounts of resources and this is the best they can come up with? And they continue to beat this FlexFuel ethanol horse to death, which will never take off.  We might as well run our cars on fresh produce and livestock, rather than still relatively cheap, useless in any other application, oil.  Anyways, I’m sidetracked and I’ll have to write another post on the Volt later when they give me a good reason to. But for now, I don’t have much hope for this still very much a concept vehicle. Hope they prove me wrong.