# Shocker: Conservative Fox News Guest Tears Up Conservative Lies About Chevy Volt



## Eugene_C (Mar 15, 2012)

Since the Cruze and Volt Hybrid would likely share a lot of the same platform technology, I thought it might be interesting to post this here for discussion. Apparently, someone got some face time on FOX News to defend the Volt. I can't help but suspect GM threatened to pull its lucrative advertising dollars from other FOX TV shows if they didn't get some equal time. 

The concerns aired by GM also raise the question of whether the Cruze Plug-in is a plan by GM to replace the Volt name, since it's been dragged through the mud so much:



> It’s one of the most remarkable interviews ever seen on Fox News. Yesterday, a conservative guest debunked all the destructive myths their pundits having been perpetuating, decrying their “fetish for demonizing the Volt.”... FOX News , have been pushing a variety of lies about the Chevy Volt. They’ve falsely asserted that it is unsafe and a creation of the Obama administration, using absurd terms to discourage sales like, “ exploding Obamamobiles.”
> 
> 
> This relentless partisan campaign against American products and American jobs has been so successful that GM CEO Dan Akerson suggested it contributed to lower than expected demand, “We did not design the Volt to become a political punching bag and that’s what it’s become.”​




Chevrolet Volt - Obtained from Dave Pinter on Flickr.
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Source: Clean Technica (Shocker: Conservative Fox News Guest Tears Up Conservative Lies About Chevy Volt - CleanTechnica)

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## iKermit (Dec 13, 2010)

As soon as i read FOX News, i stopped reading. This always happens, and they blow everything so out of proportion in such a way that you can't even speak about it amongst friends without being taken serious.


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## Eugene_C (Mar 15, 2012)

I agree but this article wasn't from FOX. It was from CleanTechnica. 

The comments by GM do make me suspect that the Cruze Plug-in Hybrid may be an attempt by GM to get around all the Volt bashing. The Cruze Hybrid will be a "Volt-light". They'll trim the range a little and release it at a lower price and it won't suffer from the false, negative hype around the Volt.


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## doc03 (May 18, 2011)

I accidently ran into that interveiw myself. GM has become the whipping boy for the rightwing nutjobs
(Obama Motors) . Faux News just cant get over the fact Obama saved hundres of thousands of Amercan jobs.


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## Eugene_C (Mar 15, 2012)

doc03 said:


> I accidently ran into that interveiw myself. GM has become the whipping boy for the rightwing nutjobs
> (Obama Motors) . Faux News just cant get over the fact Obama saved hundres of thousands of Amercan jobs.


I have family members who work at both Ford and Honda and even they were afraid of what a simultaneous GM & Chrysler bankruptcy would do to the supply chain. They had to save at least one of them (Have family members who work for GM also). 


I think we should be proud that an American company got the Volt to market first. We haven't had a lot of "firsts" lately. The comeback has to start someplace.


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## 70x7 (Apr 24, 2011)

doc03 said:


> I accidently ran into that interveiw myself. GM has become the whipping boy for the rightwing nutjobs
> (Obama Motors) . Faux News just cant get over the fact Obama saved hundres of thousands of Amercan jobs.


sorry, i just laughed so hard reading your post I forgot what i was going to write!!!!!
LOL


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## obermd (Mar 3, 2012)

I wonder how much FOX News' attitude change is a result of their paton saint (President Bush) purchasing a Volt for his son.


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## Aeroscout977 (Nov 25, 2010)

The Volt is a flop on it's own merits not because Fox News said it was a flop. American consumers care little about the medias opinion of a brand. Toyota made it past their debacle with unattended acceleration and *ALL* news sources were covering it like crazy. When the NHTSA released their co investigation with NASA that showed "victims" were by and large not hitting the brakes at all and some were even accelerating themselves. Which by the way, was extremely hard to find on all the major networks home page. Americans are smart enough to know that a 40,000 dollar car getting good gas mileage is not at the same value as a sub 20K Prius or even an older Geo metro. The Volt was a niche car at a price range for people whom don't have to worry about the cost of gas. People that have to worry about the price of gas don't have the money to spend 40K on an over priced eco-box.


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## coinneach (Apr 10, 2012)

This gun-toting veteran has zero respect for Faux Noise; they're constitutionally (heh) incapable of reporting anything without bias. Even their anchors' snide, smug tone of voice angers me.

That said, I'd love to have an all-electric Volt, except that I live in an apartment (so can't charge it overnight), sometimes drive way past its range, and can't do $40K. A hybrid wouldn't bump the fuel economy enough to offset the price increase.


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## Diretoy (Feb 4, 2011)

Aeroscout977 said:


> The Volt is a flop on it's own merits not because Fox News said it was a flop. American consumers care little about the medias opinion of a brand. Toyota made it past their debacle with unattended acceleration and *ALL* news sources were covering it like crazy. When the NHTSA released their co investigation with NASA that showed "victims" were by and large not hitting the brakes at all and some were even accelerating themselves. Which by the way, was extremely hard to find on all the major networks home page. Americans are smart enough to know that a 40,000 dollar car getting good gas mileage is not at the same value as a sub 20K Prius or even an older Geo metro. The Volt was a niche car at a price range for people whom don't have to worry about the cost of gas. People that have to worry about the price of gas don't have the money to spend 40K on an over priced eco-box.


What Aeroscout977 said!!!


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## obermd (Mar 3, 2012)

Given the price of the Volt and the fact that the Cruze uses a lot of the same platform technology, I wonder if the Volt is a "concept car" that GM decided to sell to get a feel for the marketability of a pure electric drive train. Remember, GM did recall and crush almost all their EV1 cars claiming that there was no market even though people wanted to purchase that car.


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## NOONZ662 (Apr 2, 2012)

I believe the "Lundberg"? survey, (the people who do the price of gasoline surveys) stated for a Volt to be economically viable the price of gas would have to be $12.85 per gallon. I hope we never see half of that price. It is a great concept but with all the government regulations and other things, such as the price of electricity skyrocketing, just wait until all of the coal fired plants shut down, then plug your car in and see how much $$ you save. It will be impossible to be a success.


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## Eugene_C (Mar 15, 2012)

coinneach said:


> This gun-toting veteran has zero respect for Faux Noise; they're constitutionally (heh) incapable of reporting anything without bias. Even their anchors' snide, smug tone of voice angers me.
> 
> That said, I'd love to have an all-electric Volt, except that I live in an apartment (so can't charge it overnight), sometimes drive way past its range, and can't do $40K. A hybrid wouldn't bump the fuel economy enough to offset the price increase.


The Volt is a hybrid, with a gas engine, but it just has an extended-range battery that lets most people do most of their driving on pure electric.


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## obermd (Mar 3, 2012)

Eugene_C said:


> The Volt is a hybrid, with a gas engine, but it just has an extended-range battery that lets most people do most of their driving on pure electric.


Define hybrid. Usually "hybrid" means that the car drives on both gas and electric, depending on the speed. The Volt drives entirely on electric, regardless of speed. This doesn't meet the "classic" definition of a hybrid car. The gas engine is used soley to recharge the batteries.


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## Eugene_C (Mar 15, 2012)

obermd said:


> Define hybrid. Usually "hybrid" means that the car drives on both gas and electric, depending on the speed. The Volt drives entirely on electric, regardless of speed. This doesn't meet the "classic" definition of a hybrid car. The gas engine is used soley to recharge the batteries.


I define a hybrid as a car that can use two different kinds of primary fuels. I don't actually consider the standard Prius to be a "true hybrid". But it's all based on your own personal semantics, I guess. 

Once the volt batter is discharged, all of the energy to move the car comes from the gas in the tank. So it is both an electric and a gas vehicle, or a "hybrid" of the two.


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## coinneach (Apr 10, 2012)

Eugene_C said:


> The Volt is a hybrid, with a gas engine, but it just has an extended-range battery that lets most people do most of their driving on pure electric.


As may be. It's still twice the price of my Cruze, but doesn't seem like being twice the car.


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## XtremeRevolution (Jan 19, 2012)

obermd said:


> Define hybrid. Usually "hybrid" means that the car drives on both gas and electric, depending on the speed. The Volt drives entirely on electric, regardless of speed. This doesn't meet the "classic" definition of a hybrid car. The gas engine is used soley to recharge the batteries.


Hybrid has a pretty basic definition, and I don't think we should limit ourselves to what Toyota started "re-coining" the word for. Technically, anyone born not of a single nationality is a "hybrid." I think coinneach is correct in that given two sources of energy, the Volt is a hybrid. 



coinneach said:


> As may be. It's still twice the price of my Cruze, but doesn't seem like being twice the car.


I agree completely. I think the volt was a joke. It's a cool looking car and the concept would be great...if the car was $25k. They sold it and advertise it to a niche market and I don't think everyone understands that fact. It was designed as a status symbol from the ground up, not as a money saving machine. Leather and navigation? I personally like it, but it's way too expensive to do the masses any good. 

All of the major news reporting "agencies" can fall off the face of the planet for all I care.


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## Eugene_C (Mar 15, 2012)

XtremeRevolution said:


> ... I don't think everyone understands that fact. It was designed as a status symbol from the ground up, not as a money saving machine. Leather and navigation? I personally like it, but it's way too expensive to do the masses any good...


But doesn't every new technology start out as a status symbol? When Plasma TV's first came out they were $5,000 and $10,000.


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## XtremeRevolution (Jan 19, 2012)

Eugene_C said:


> But doesn't every new technology start out as a status symbol? When Plasma TV's first came out they were $5,000 and $10,000.


Yeah, but this is far from new technology. We've had EV cars, we've had gas cars, and now we have both in one. I wouldn't really say it's that great of a technology. The only challenge is making the car light enough to get decent FE on that gas motor and finding a way to switch power from electric to gas. The Volt is $10,000-$15,000 too expensive and ~4 years too late to the market.


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## Aeroscout977 (Nov 25, 2010)

^ That. The Volt while interesting was not the state of the art machine GM touted it to be. Other companies have done similar things over seas and charged a fraction that GM did. Many achieving better mileage. The fact of the matter is; green is hip now. GM was just trying to cash in on it. Imagine if the focused all that R&D money, man hours, and technology on a car they already planned to sell to the average American at an affordable price(Cruze). 


Interesting car. Just not a wise use of resources IMO.


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## Eugene_C (Mar 15, 2012)

XtremeRevolution said:


> Yeah, but this is far from new technology. We've had EV cars, we've had gas cars, and now we have both in one. I wouldn't really say it's that great of a technology. The only challenge is making the car light enough to get decent FE on that gas motor and finding a way to switch power from electric to gas. The Volt is $10,000-$15,000 too expensive and ~4 years too late to the market.


I don't see how you can say it's not new technology. Not only is it the first serial hybrid, it's the first car to combine usable electric range with a gasoline back-up and integrate it with a relatively advanced computer that provides real-time monitoring data to the driver.


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## Aeroscout977 (Nov 25, 2010)

The technology itself is not new. First time being implemented in a production vehicle? Maybe. The data display system is nothing new either.


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## Eugene_C (Mar 15, 2012)

I guess technically someone did try to market a serial hybrid back in the 1920s. I think it was called the.Owen Magnetic. Still it's a far cry from what we have today, technology wise, and it did not plug in.


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## DrVette (Dec 6, 2011)

Seems lile both left & right like to bash the volt fromwht I see
(Toyota)?


doc03 said:


> I accidently ran into that interveiw myself. GM has become the whipping boy for the rightwing nutjobs
> (Obama Motors) . Faux News just cant get over the fact Obama saved hundres of thousands of Amercan jobs.


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## Aeroscout977 (Nov 25, 2010)

Having driven the Volt now I gotta say I'm impressed with it initially. The cost is still very undesirable however the rear seats had me at hello. =P


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## obermd (Mar 3, 2012)

I drove a Volt while waiting for my ECO MT to be prep'd. GM got the electric/gas combination right. I drove a Camry Hybrid for a week and hated the way it switched between electric. The two biggest problems with the Volt are price and the lack of a spare tire. I'm not even sure you can add a spare tire to the Volt like I did for my ECO MT.


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## Hoon (Mar 18, 2012)

Volt leases are dirt cheap. What you save in fuel can pay for the lease in some cases. 

They have insane resale value.


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## Aeroscout977 (Nov 25, 2010)

One thing to note is that the Volt can't really be compared to the Toyota hybrids because they're not in the same category. I'll see what I can find but I'm pretty sure the Volt is in the all electric emissions category with a special note.


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## obermd (Mar 3, 2012)

Aeroscout977 said:


> One thing to note is that the Volt can't really be compared to the Toyota hybrids because they're not in the same category. I'll see what I can find but I'm pretty sure the Volt is in the all electric emissions category with a special note.


Understood. My comment was on the drivability of the two designs.


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## dfwtxpatrick (Apr 22, 2012)

I drove a Volt for 3 days while my Cruze was being repaired.

I jumped at the chance to drive one for both the novelty and real world experience.

I drive about 35 miles round trip to work. And the 1st day w/ the Volt, we made it to work and back home w/o using any gas. (It was 72 degrees that day.)

When I plugged it in to charge (at about 6pm), it showed it would be fully charged by 6:30am.
(10-12 hrs on 120v is the norm) (depending on temp- as you will see when you read further)

That night, the temps dropped to the low 30's in the morning and never got above 45 in the afternoon.

The 2nd day, the electric usage dropped from 35 miles all the way down to 16 miles just on the way to work. (temp was showing to be 38 degrees when we left the house)

Yes, that's a usage of just 19 miles, BUT that included the stop and go traffic and the regeneration of the brake system putting power back into the battery. We got to just under 1 mile from home and the gas engine kicked on to get us the rest of the way home.

I put the car on to charge from the time we got home (5:45pm) and it was still charging when we left the house the next morning at 7am. Only got to about 85%.

Same drive to work on day 3 (started out at 43 degrees) and we started with 26 miles available, got to work with 11 miles available. (the braking recharged the batteries somewhat).

On the way home, we left with 11 miles available (about 55 degrees) and by the time we went 7 miles, the engine kicked in. Now w/ the brakes regenerating the batteries, it was a back and forth thing with the mileage.

All in all, we actually only used about 1/4 of a GALLON of gas.

Our actual gas usage in the Cruze for 3 days would be about 3-4 gal of gas. So we would have used about $12-14 in gas.

I figured the electric usage was in the range of about $6-7 dollars to charge the car. 

So, while there is a significant difference in the cost of these two cars, meaning purchase price and gas price, the Volt loses because of the cost of the car.

Even with the tax rebate of $7500 for buying the volt, I could purchase a fully loaded LTZ w/ Sunroof, Navi and all the options for about $25k (msrp) and the Volt costs about $40k (msrp). So even w/ the rebate, the Volt costs another $7500 over the Cruze.

As for Gas........if the Volt needs to be driven for an extended range and time, the ability to charge it fully for the next day of driving is severely impacted and may not be available for use the next day. So that puts it back to gas VS gas w/ the Cruze.

Now the real world actually creates an even bigger divide when you consider these things:

1) If purchased with payments, $25k will cost less than $40k, so that adds to the difference.

2) Having to charge the car to advantage of the electric use basically makes it unusable for after work driving.

3) For me, the seating is not nearly as spacious as the Cruze.

4) There are ALOT of blindspots w/ the Volt.

So those are some of the things I think about when looking at the Volt.

Nice car, but I'll stick w/ my Cruze.


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## Eugene_C (Mar 15, 2012)

dfwtxpatrick said:


> I drove a Volt for 3 days while my Cruze was being repaired.
> 
> I jumped at the chance to drive one for both the novelty and real world experience.
> 
> ...



If you had the 220V fast charger the car would have been fully charged by morning on all three nights. There was and maybe still is a federal credit that basically pays for the charger installation. Also, there's a way to set it to heat it up on cold mornings while it is still plugged into the grid, which reduces your heat & battery usage on morning commute. It can also be pre-cooled while it's on the grid.


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## arsmitty86 (Feb 26, 2013)

Eugene_C said:


> If you had the 220V fast charger the car would have been fully charged by morning on all three nights. There was and maybe still is a federal credit that basically pays for the charger installation. Also, there's a way to set it to heat it up on cold mornings while it is still plugged into the grid, which reduces your heat & battery usage on morning commute. It can also be pre-cooled while it's on the grid.


And batteries are still the worst idea on the planet for powering a car. Period. They're heavy, they're inefficient they offload the pollution to the Coal plants mostly so they don't help the environment and then you have the disposal of them. It's also stupid to trade one limited resource to another... Have you looked at how rare Lithium is? Until they figure out hydrogen fuel cells or cellulosic ethanol I'm not interested in giving up my gas powerplant.


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## ChevyMgr (Oct 27, 2010)

I would like to learn more about this new technology of getting power from coal without burning it. Seems like it would be a step in the right direction. And I agree batteries are not the long run answer.


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## NickD (Dec 10, 2011)

Popular Mechanics had an article on the Chevy Volt operating in the extended range, or in other words, the batteries were dead. Could only average 36 mpg on the highway and 32 mpg in the city.

Electricity has been been an energy source, its a medium for converting one source of energy to another more convenient form. A storage battery is the same thing with losses from converting electrical energy to chemical energy and back again with plenty of losses in between.

If I go back to the 60's in Central Wisconsin, 100% of our energy was hydro generated, and was paying around 1.25 cents per KW hour, electrical resistant heat became very popular back then. But with the population expansion, not enough hydro electricity to go around. with nuclear plant closings, unsafe, natural gas generation has become popular to meet EPA emission requirements. So now the cost is over 12 cents per KWH. 

Or an increase of 960%! I like to compare this with the minimum wage increase over the same time period, $2.25 per hour to $7.25 per hour for only a increase of 322%, so the standard of living has gone to **** decreasing down to 33% of what it was.

In reality, its far worse than that 33% because people today earning minimum wage get a nice homestead credit, food stamps, energy assistance, and health care cost assistance, while I was forced to fight against socialism we sure have that today in this country People on minimum could survive on that back then, cannot today. Even get a child credit on their federal income taxes.

About the only intelligent thing I have heard from the Obama administration is to push natural gas for our vehicles. That we have a plentiful domestic supply of. While he stated a hundred year supply, heard from other sources we have 4,000 year supply, and if coupled to methane, another far cleaner burning fuel, that can go up to a 12,000 year supply. Perhaps in this time we can develop nuclear fusion. Very little is spend on this form of energy.

Energy is not the problem, have tons of it, politics is the problem, the idiots and greed we have in our leadership. Same with GM with idiots in charge, spending billions on the development of the Volt and taking the promises of a company to develop a suitable battery. If they had any brains, would have use their own resources to develop that battery first.

Even with more brains, would have realized already going through five energy conversions to get power to the wheels. But that is the way it is, big mouth small brained idiots making key decisions. Not only in politics but in our corporations as well.

We may talk about a democratic society, but with corporations, democracy doesn't exist at all, a pure dictatorship, Tell you how to dress, where to be, when you can use the restroom, who you can touch, and on and on. If you don't walk that very narrow path, find yourself on the street.


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## CW_ (Jan 31, 2013)

I don't necessarily consider "electric cars just shift pollution to the coal power plants" a valid argument. It's true that there are a lot of dirty coal-fired power plants in the US, but the useful property of them is that coal is not the only way to make electricity, and it's a lot easier to add more pollution controls to a power plant than it is to add them to a bunch of cars that have already been sold. However, a gasoline engine will only run on gasoline (or some type of synthetic gasoline-like fuel that would probably be even more expensive). Anyhow, to me the technology's still half-baked and too expensive, which was why I bought a Cruze instead of a Volt. Maybe by the time I'm looking for a new car again (hopefully 5-6 years in the future or more) that will have changed.


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## spacedout (Dec 7, 2010)

NickD said:


> Popular Mechanics had an article on the Chevy Volt operating in the extended range, or in other words, the batteries were dead. Could only average 36 mpg on the highway and 32 mpg in the city.


According to fueleconomy.gov the average 2013 vehicle gets 23mpg, so 36mpg is still pretty respectable. Driving the Volt with no change can be done but is not how its intended to be used. 

The 2013 battery's have 38mile range, so say I drive 30miles to work(round trip 60) I only need the gas engine for part of my drive home(22miles of 60). At 36mpg that 60miles would normally burn 1.6gallons a day, with the battery that is cut to just 0.6 gallons. MPG equivalent 100MPG. I also save 30gallons of fuel every month, at $3.80 that's $114 multiply by 12months that's $1368 in fuel savings every year or $6,840 in 5years. 

Now imaging if I only drive 15miles to work & can charge daily I now no longer need to buy fuel. The MPG equivalent could easily be 200MPG or more. Here is an example: 200mpg after 5,000 miles with our Chevy Volt! | Its a Chevy Volt!

The Volt is put down for the limited battery range but if one knows how to utilize it properly the sky is the limit for how much you can save. I spent $2,200 in fuel last year, I would love to be able to get some of that back!


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## NickD (Dec 10, 2011)

A small coal fired engine can be designed to meet the same emission requirements as the large plants. But the whole idea is to build these plants out in the sticks, to move those emissions someplace else. Surprised we are not building coal fired plants in China or Mexico, whole idea is not to find solutions, but to move these polluting emissions someplace else.

If innovation is the subject of this topic, the likes of the Wright's, Edison, Ford, Tesla, etc. would get nowhere today, Restrictions everywhere, if you have worked as a design engineer, spend twice the time reading regulations

If you do come up an innovative idea, need billions of dollars and a host of attorney's to even get that idea off the ground. A lot of great ideas were developed since our energy crisis, but all killed by regulations. So here we are some odd 40 years later with the same old crap.


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## arsmitty86 (Feb 26, 2013)

CW_ said:


> I don't necessarily consider "electric cars just shift pollution to the coal power plants" a valid argument. It's true that there are a lot of dirty coal-fired power plants in the US, but the useful property of them is that coal is not the only way to make electricity, and it's a lot easier to add more pollution controls to a power plant than it is to add them to a bunch of cars that have already been sold. However, a gasoline engine will only run on gasoline (or some type of synthetic gasoline-like fuel that would probably be even more expensive). Anyhow, to me the technology's still half-baked and too expensive, which was why I bought a Cruze instead of a Volt. Maybe by the time I'm looking for a new car again (hopefully 5-6 years in the future or more) that will have changed.


But it does. The power we create via power plants coal or not is not overly abundant. We have a crippled and crumpling electrical infrastructure already and almost all of that power is generated by either coal (42%) or natural gas (25%). If we were already all nuclear (we're only 19%) that way on Thorium reactors batteries might not be a bad idea. Coal has many other side effects that most folks have the priviledge of not seeing because they don't live in the hills of WV some where. The ash is radioactive (yes most people don't know that), it encourages mining companies to come in and strip mine and destroy peoples homes and drop coal fragments and other pollution behind. They leave huge pools of "slurry" behind cheap levies that can break and ruin entire areas. Their destruction allows the erosion of hill sides and other problems. The whole point of all of this? Why on earth would we off load the problem onto a grid that would need more coal to keep up with the demands? Does it cost as much to operate as a gas engine? No, it's about 2/3's as much per mile as Snopes criticism of the gentlemen that blasts it on fox news shows. snopes.com: Cost to Operate the Chevy Volt Is it even close to being a good answer for only a 4c per mile savings? Well by my calculations it would save me (a heavy distance driver) 1100 dollars a year in gas cost to shift it to my power grid. That said, the payment being more then double what my cruze payment is sort of makes it a money pit. The cost goes somewhere. Cellulosic ethanol is clean, it's made by trash parts of food and plants that we need to get rid of anyway (lawn clippings etc). It doesn't require subsidies, and it doesn't require redesigning the entire gasoline storage and distribution network we already have in place. I guess my whole point is, figuring out what else we can burn, and burn cleaner, and cheaper is a way better solution then trying to completely re-invent the wheel. At least until some major breakthroughs are made in the hydrogen arena.


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## spacedout (Dec 7, 2010)

A scooter gets better MPG than a car but we all switched from cars to scooters the pollution in this country would skyrocket. This is the same basic principal as people switching from gas powered cars to electric ones. One pollution source(a coal power plant) that is highly EPA regulated vs 100,000's of thousands of smaller pollution sources. 

There is no emission testing in Wisconsin(except a few county's by lake Michigan) & no yearly auto safety inspections. This means there's thousands of cars driving around with check engine lights lit for months dumping even dirtier emissions into the environment.


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## arsmitty86 (Feb 26, 2013)

spacedout said:


> highly EPA regulated


sigh...

I give up.


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## NickD (Dec 10, 2011)

arsmitty86 said:


> sigh...
> 
> I give up.


Ha, me too, don't consider myself a green person, but a practical side to this story. We just cannot continue to burn up our natural resources that took millions of years to develop.

In the turn of the last century, everybody was walking and going to school. Some used the railroads, can see that in any town, small homes on 30 foot lots near the railroad station. With the automobile in particular after WWII, to save on property taxes and get a little green grass. It was cheaper to commute, GM and Exxon played a strong role in that by buying up interurban railroads and closing them down. But we had anti-trust laws back then, for each railroad were hit with an excruciating 5,000 buck fine. 

Today we are all dependent on the automobile, now they have us where they want us. Just bend over and smile.


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## Epickphale (Jan 30, 2013)

Man American news always amazes me.... just the FEEL of everything is different down there. Not really sure why that is.... Maybe it's because of everyone's love of shooting each other or making garbage stories out of nothing. Every time we flick over to the American channel the first 3 stories without fail are "person x gets shot in the face" "robber shoots infant for parents money" etc.... its terrifying! Actual comment from someone I know in upstate NY when they visited was "One person kills ONE other person and this makes news? Wow that's cute" I shiver at the thought.. Totally depends on the channel though. Fox is so painfully biased it hurts, and CNN makes it look like the entire world is coming to an end. Not sure how you all handle it.


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## arsmitty86 (Feb 26, 2013)

Epickphale said:


> Man American news always amazes me.... just the FEEL of everything is different down there. Not really sure why that is.... Maybe it's because of everyone's love of shooting each other or making garbage stories out of nothing. Every time we flick over to the American channel the first 3 stories without fail are "person x gets shot in the face" "robber shoots infant for parents money" etc.... its terrifying! Actual comment from someone I know in upstate NY when they visited was "One person kills ONE other person and this makes news? Wow that's cute" I shiver at the thought.. Totally depends on the channel though. Fox is so painfully biased it hurts, and CNN makes it look like the entire world is coming to an end. Not sure how you all handle it.


If you look statistics there aren't really that many gun deaths here. 

In 2011 32000 people were killed in gun related deaths BUT: most of them weren't murders but suicdes:

Accidental discharge 851
Suicide 19,766
Homicide 11,101
Undetermined Intent 222 

In contrast alcohol related deaths numbered 75000 and about half of those were direct deaths and the other half alcohol related car crashes. Car crashes INJURED 2,000,000 YES MILLION people. The media doesn't like guns so they blow it out of proportion. As far as the rest of it goes. I hate what my country has become but as a fairly well travelled and cultured person I still can't think of a place that's better for personal freedom then right here, except for possibly Norway, or Sweden.


Also murder doesn't make it on the top 10 list:

http://www.businessinsider.com/top-causes-of-death-united-states-2011-11?op=1


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## 13Cruze (Mar 12, 2013)

I drove the Volt and loved it, unfortunately, my commute is too far for it. It was designed for people that can get by with only averaging 38 miles a day and a large segment of the driving population fit into that category. Look at the lease deals in the Sunday papers, many are for 10,000 miles a year, that is about 38 miles a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year, or 27 miles a day year round. Again, many people fall into that category. In these instances, you would theoretically never burn any gas. The beauty of its system is that if you decide to take a couple of long weekend trips, you can with the Volt's on board generator. Want to go an a long two week vacation, you can go. My neighbor has one, his commute is about 20 miles a day, the only time he used gas was on a long weekend trip from Florida to North Carolina. Need to drive from Michigan to Florida, you can be there tomorrow, you have a Leaf, the trip will take two weeks just to get there. With the incentives the volt ends up at about $32K, still a little steep but new technology cost money.


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## Epickphale (Jan 30, 2013)

arsmitty86 said:


> If you look statistics there aren't really that many gun deaths here.
> 
> In 2011 32000 people were killed in gun related deaths BUT: most of them weren't murders but suicdes:
> 
> ...


My apologies I hadn't intended to make it sound as though it was a common occurrence, I'm studying in that field and am well aware of the stats, but the media blows all way out of proportion (which I why I wonder how you all stand it if this wasnt clear) 


Sent from AutoGuide.com Free App


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## NickD (Dec 10, 2011)

Another grandkid on the way, makes three for this son, goodbye a standard four door passenger car with good fuel economy. Hate to read about this stupid mini-vans with those huge sliding doors, fixed windows, so can't even get your babies out of there with a side collision. With a fuel ignition, watch your kids burn alive.

If he needs a Yukon, will help him buy one. Not sure how the law reads on this issue with three kids regarding having one in the front seat. Read statistics that just as many kids were killed with air bags as stupid adults that were saved by not wearing their safety belts. Was in congress about adding a switch to kill the front passenger side air bags with a child, that didn't pass. Even a short friend had his neck broken with an airbag with just a fender bender type accident. But its the law!

Also regardless of price, all baby car seats use that same stupid plastic safety belt that is a b!tch to release, especially in a hurry. Perhaps just another reason why I feel we have idiots running this country.

When driving my 70 Buick, an idiot ran a red light and hit the drivers door, my only thought was getting out of there quick. Left hip was all black and blue, but could tell no bones were broken. I slid across the seat and got out the passenger side door. Try that with a console, sure they are cool, but that is the end of that and extremely difficult to find any vehicle today without one. Again, what are they thinking?

Don't even think about getting out in the rear seat of your Cruze with those child saftey locks on, can't even remove those front seat head restrains. These are things I don't even want to think about. Sure enough thought about locking us in, but nothing about getting out.


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## Eugene_C (Mar 15, 2012)

arsmitty86 said:


> And batteries are still the worst idea on the planet for powering a car. Period. They're heavy, they're inefficient they offload the pollution to the Coal plants mostly so they don't help the environment and then you have the disposal of them. It's also stupid to trade one limited resource to another... Have you looked at how rare Lithium is? Until they figure out hydrogen fuel cells or cellulosic ethanol I'm not interested in giving up my gas powerplant.


Lithium is rarer than lead, but like lead the batteries are essentially 100% recyclable. So once you get the lithium into the supply you can keep recycling it. Today's batteries are not great, but I expect we'll see much better batteries in the future. There's still a LOT of slack in the battery efficiency equation. They even think Lithium efficiency could be as much as tripled or more if they can get the materials engineering down.


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## NickD (Dec 10, 2011)

Storing any amount of energy in a small space is dangerous like 1.8 million BTU's in a gas tank. Security is getting on an interstate with a full tank of gas. But if in an accident, would prefer just having a pint left. Compacting a battery has the same problem with huge amounts of energy, more like a bomb in our vehicles.

Ever get the idea we are trading our freedom for safety. Wonder when the time will come when we are all locked up in padded cells for our safety. 

FCC has a no standing rule about any foreign corporation having anything to do with ownership of our communications industry. If the Reagan administration didn't change that, would be no Sony on all of our DVD's nor a Fox. 

Can only wonder who is supporting Fox, could be the oil companies, can buy all the gas you want for four bucks or more per gallon. Or even government contractors, we need a very strong defense to get that oil. I don't know, but do know there is a reason, and more typically, money. Wonder exactly who is getting all that money with this endless drug war, certainly has to be someone in power. Damned, I am paranoid. And this global economy BS, we worked hard to get where we were, now giving in all away. If other countries want what standard of living we worked hard for, they can work their cans off too. 

I will be happy to work for a buck a day, just lower my property taxes to five bucks per year. 

And we should certainly take a second look at external combustion engines, do have the technology today to make one that is 90% efficient as opposed to this 15% efficiency that can only be obtained with an internal combustion engine. A lot has changed in the last 200 years.


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## TopazLTZ (Mar 18, 2013)

The Volt is the biggest flop... I mean seriously, if you want a car with good gas mileage look at a Prius or Camry Hybrid, I can't believe I'm actually going to get a Cruze, I know I will probably be kicking my self a few months in, but the Cruze LTZ is the best bang for the buck since I'm used to being pampered by my current Lexus and it would be hard to go for an entry level Cruze, especially without leather or the nice things like the leather steering wheel, like many said, a lot of people like, or, fit into the category the Volt caters to, but as far as news goes, Fox News is the only news that makes sense.


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## NickD (Dec 10, 2011)

News or opinions? More like brainwashing.


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## obermd (Mar 3, 2012)

TopazLTZ said:


> The Volt is the biggest flop... I mean seriously, if you want a car with good gas mileage look at a Prius or Camry Hybrid, I can't believe I'm actually going to get a Cruze, I know I will probably be kicking my self a few months in, but the Cruze LTZ is the best bang for the buck since I'm used to being pampered by my current Lexus and it would be hard to go for an entry level Cruze, especially without leather or the nice things like the leather steering wheel, like many said, a lot of people like, or, fit into the category the Volt caters to, but as far as news goes, Fox News is the only news that makes sense.


Define "flop". If you're looking at total number of vehicles sold, it may be a flop, but that also means many revolutionary cars are flops. If you're looking at the cost of development vs. the revenue generated it's also still a flop. If you're looking at the cost of development vs. the 10 year return across the GM product line either GM will be bankrupt or these technologies will be so prevelant that no one will even think about them. From this perspective I suspect the Volt will be a resounding success. I picked 10 years because it took Toyota nearly 10 years to recoup the R&D cost of the Prius. According to FORTUNE: The Birth of the Toyota Prius - Feb. 21, 2006,


> The total cost of (Prius) development was an estimated $1 billion -- after all the anguish, about average for a new car.


 The Volt's R&D was about the same and most of it was spent before the US Government bailed out GM. And before you say Toyota didn't need a bailout, it did (Toyota Seeking Government Bailout in Japan | Fox News). Just not as much as GM needed.

On the other hand - if you look at the Volt as a R&D effort to get GM back into the electric car market without having to pay royalties to their biggest competitor (Toyota), the Volt is a major success. The Voltec drivetrain is the first real competitor to the Toyota Synergy Drive, and one that is actually in two different vehicles already. In addition to the Chevy Volt, the Fisker Karma uses the same technology. Also, the Volt is the number one selling plug-in hybrid on the market, outselling even the Prius Plug-In. (Chevy Volt Tops Prius Plug-in, Nissan Leaf in Green Car Sales Race | AutoGuide.com News). Most Prius sales are not plug-ins. By developing it's own hybrid drive system, GM not only avoided royalties to Toyota but they also developed a platform and technology that they can migrate into the rest of their vehicle line. 

Despite the up-front purchase price of the Volt, some Chevy dealerships literally cannot keep Volts on the lot for people to test drive. My mom told me yesterday that she's tried four or five times to test drive a Volt but that every Volt on the lot already had a "sold" sign on it. This is at one of the largest Chevy dealerships in southern New Hampshire. Volt sales, because of the nature of the car and the up-front cost, are very market specific. People who purchase Volts tend to be home owners with garages so they can install the 240v charging station. This means dealerships in areas with condos and apartments tend not to sell the Volt while dealerships in areas with single family homes with attached garages are having a hard time to keep them on the lot.

By the way, the Cruze ECO MT and the Volt both get better real world fuel economy than the Camry Hybrid. From Fuel Economy using 2012 model year:


MPG
Car
151.5
Volt 
55.7Prius Plug-In
49.3
Prius
40.9
Cruze ECO MT (gas only)
40.3
Camry Hybrid LE
38.2
Camry Hybrid LXE


Fuel Economy uses the same self-reporting system as Fuelly | Share and Compare Your MPG and these are pump vs. odometer numbers. I was actually surprised at the Volt's self-reported combined MPG was so high. This tells me that GM found the right electric range for the majority of drivers.


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## arsmitty86 (Feb 26, 2013)

TopazLTZ said:


> Fox News is the only news that makes sense.


If you like listening to right wing jibberish and bull crap yes. If you prefer left wing jibberish and bull crap watch NBC. If you want the actual story go out and do your own research and realize that none of them are worth a hoot.


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## obermd (Mar 3, 2012)

arsmitty86 said:


> If you like listening to right wing jibberish and bull crap yes. If you prefer left wing jibberish and bull crap watch NBC. If you want the actual story go out and do your own research and realize that none of them are worth a hoot.


Sadly - so, so true.


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## 13Cruze (Mar 12, 2013)

Just read an article this last week that stated Toyota still looses money on every Prius they sell.


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## Aeroscout977 (Nov 25, 2010)

That's why I prefer BBC. I like to watch Fox and CNN to see what the two extremes in our media are putting out. For poops and giggles...


I love reading through official DPRK (North Korean) news reports. I provides scary insight to just how brainwashed they are as well as a few good laughs.
News From KOREAN CENTRAL NEWS AGENCY of DPRK


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## obermd (Mar 3, 2012)

13Cruze said:


> Just read an article this last week that stated Toyota still looses money on every Prius they sell.


Hard to believe. Can you get us a link? I'd like to read it and make my own evaluation.


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