![]() Despite a steering wheel taken directly from the GM parts bin, the rest of the interior was entirely unique to the Volt. Up front, the Volt looked like a car decades ahead of its time. Using both its energy stores, the Volt can travel well over 300 miles (400+ KMs) and can be refueled at any gas station with 91+ octane. It'll drive pure-electric for as long as it can, and when the battery is near empty, the gas engine kicks on to charge it and maintain enough energy to drive the wheels. The Volt will do around 40 miles (~ 60 KM) on its battery alone, only feeding in gasoline power if you demand full throttle under load. What this creates is a car that produces energy from gasoline far more efficiently than one which drives its wheels through a gearbox. Like a diesel-electric locomotive, you can park in your driveway. It relies on internal combustion to generate the electricity that feeds the electric motor, which drives the wheels. It used its gasoline engine primarily to extend its driving range beyond the limitations of its battery pack without needing to recharge. Unlike a Toyota Prius or a Volkswagen Jetta Hybrid, which uses an electric motor in constant pairing with a gas engine, the Volt was the first range-extender. It was a gasoline-electric hybrid, but it was unlike any hybrid which had come before. However, as yet another decade has passed since GM’s recalcitrant launch of the Volt, sold here as a Chevrolet and in other markets as a Holden Volt or as an Opel/Vauxhall Ampera, the car has proven itself to be a plug-in pioneer and a car which, as it ages and becomes more affordable, makes more sense for more people.ĭespite its name and lightning bolt badging, the Chevy Volt was not a pure-electric EV. ![]() It’s a car worthy of its own story that we’ll save for another occasion, but in 2010, when GM announced it would be returning to the EV market with an advanced plug-in hybrid called “Volt,” the buying public’s opinion of GM as a purveyor of electric vehicles was skeptical, at best. It would be another twenty years before the next serious electric project from The General: the infamous, mythical tragedy of the late-1990s EV1. GM seized on this opportunity with the Electro-Vette an EV-swapped Chevette hatchback, a “family auxiliary car for shopping, neighborhood errands or short-trip transportation.” It was such a success that you probably thought “Electro-Vette” was some kind of one-off electric Corvette project. ![]()
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