[see the bottom of this post for links to previous entries in my EV series]
Since I decided in late July to throw in with the Chevy Volt and placed my order with the DC-area dealer, it's basically been a waiting game. There's been a bit of drama here and there over the last 2-3 months, but in general the order has chugged along through the GM process. A couple weeks ago I got word from The Powers That Be that my car would be produced in mid-November, and so I'm hoping to have it in hand well before Christmas. December 1st seems to be the likely date that I get it and is what I'm telling everyone.
Meanwhile, on Sunday October 10th, GM lifted their press embargo on Volt test drive reports and there was a sudden crush of press coverage. A lot of it (on the internet, at least) focused on the "new" news, which had to do with how the mechanical transmission in the car actually works (which turned out was slightly different from how everyone thought it would work) and everyone went ballistic over that for about 48 hours. Eventually cooler heads prevailed, and everyone realizes now that we're still talking about a fundamentally groundbreaking car, but to an extent some damage has been done because some terribly misleading headlines went out in the press during those 48 hours. I'll say this: I know a hell of a lot more now about what a planetary gearset is and how it works.
Since that dust-up, though, the actual driving reviews have started to get published, and they are glowing. To tell the truth, I know what I know and poor reviews were not going to change my mind about this, but it's nice to see my decision endorsed by the automotive press.
Here is a good overview of them -- overwhelmingly positive.
Here are a few of my favorite specific reviews and quotes:
Seth Fletcher in Popular Science: "The car is so pleasant to drive that I can’t imagine finding early adopters to be a problem. But after that, I’d like to see the Volt become available to the rest of us. Which is why we should hope for a kind of EV arms race, for a significant drop in battery prices and a rapid expansion of plug-in infrastructure. Because after putting a couple dozen highway miles on a vehicle like the Volt, plenty of people simply won’t want to go back to a conventional car."
Jonny Lieberman in Motor Trend: "At the end of the journey, we’d covered more than 120 miles. City, hard-core mountain roads and freeway — we even took the Volt up to its limited top speed of 101 mph. ... Factoring in the mountainous part of our romp, where Frank and I acted like utter hooligans and neglected (on purpose) to put the Volt in Mountain Mode, we still averaged 74.6 miles per gallon over 122 miles. Sure, that’s less than the 126.7 mpg we got driving the car from the office to home, but it’s still pretty dang good. Also, remember that if we had simply stopped driving when the battery went dry, our mileage was infinity."
Dan Neil in the Wall Street Journal: "I get it. A lot of people don't like GM because: 1) the bailout, or 1a) Obama; or 2) the United Auto Workers; or 3) because some Monte Carlo or Cutlass Sierra or deuce-and-a-quarter left them walking a long time ago. That's understandable. These are sour times. But for the moment, we should suspend our rancor and savor a little American pride. A bunch of Midwestern engineers in bad haircuts and cheap wristwatches just out-engineered every other car company on the planet. And they did it in 29 months while the company they worked for was falling apart around them. That was downright heroic. Somebody ought to make a movie."
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Coming up, I will have a test drive of the car on November 1st. That's right, I put down money to buy the car before I had laid my own eyes on it, much less actually driven it. That's how compelling this technology is, based on my exhaustive research and a few drives in electric vehicles over the last two years. That said, I do want to sit in the car and feel how it drives as soon as possible, before I travel to DC to receive my own car (I just wish it had been more than just a month prior). At the very least, it will calm my nerves a bit and ultimately ease the stress of the day when I go get my car.
In the meantime, I'm also still paying attention to the rest of the EV market. I'm only going to have the Volt for 3 years, you know,and then I'll move on to another EV folly! IEEE Spectrum magazine (for us electrical engineering professionals) had an article recently about the coming wave of electric supercars. We're talking nearly a thousand horsepower and a thousand foot-pounds of torque -- obscenely high performance, and yet they are still far more efficient than even an econobox hybrid since they can be plugged in. Of course, these are still six-figure cars, and 2-3 years away, but it's indicative of where the market is heading.
Exciting times. My one-man tech evangelism tour starts December 1st!
(I'll update this post with info about the test drive after November 1st)
See also my previous entries about Electric Vehicles, as I have studied this technology for the last two years:
part 1 from Sept 2008: my first thoughts on EVs (though rather dated by now)
part 2 from April 2009: I test drive a Tesla Roadster!
part 3 from Jan 2010: the Nissan Leaf roadshow comes to Atlanta