Chevrolet Volt News

  • First 2011 Nissan Leaf delivered to buyer, San Francisco, Dec 2010, photo by Eugene Lee

    The first business day of every month is when automakers release sales data for the previous month. Today, we got January's sales figures, which are an improvement over last January's. But the question that we keep hearing is: Which sells better, the 2011 Nissan Leaf or the 2011 Chevrolet Volt? They're the first two plug-in electric vehicles sold in the U.S. by major manufacturers in a decade, and now they've been on sale for roughly six weeks. The first Leaf was delivered in San Francisco on December 12, and the first Volt followed three days later in New Jersey. Thus far (as of yesterday)...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt
    Want a Chevrolet Volt? GM Helps By Accelerating Delivery

    Are you in the market for a Chevrolet Volt? If you are, you probably are in two situations: waiting for delivery because you were an early adopter or on a waiting list with a lengthy wait to receive your vehicle. That is until GM announced an accelerated plan to bring the Chevrolet Volt to...

  • Map showing nationwide sales rollout for 2011 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car
    Chevrolet Shows Nissan How It’s Done, Speeds Up Volt Rollout

    Nissan may still be aggravating customers patiently waiting for their 2011 LEAFs with no news of delivery dates, but Chevrolet has just announced that it will be delivering its 2011 Volt plug-in hybrid to all 50 states by the end of 2011. Spurred on by massive consumer interest and a stream of...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt
    Congressmen Propose Lifting Number Of Vehicles Eligible For EV Tax Credits

    Hot on the heels of President Barack Obama’s pledge of support for expanding U.S. production and sales of plug-in electric cars in his State of the Union address earlier this week, comes more support for the zero emission vehicles from a pair of Michigan Democrats. Brothers Rep. Sander M...

  • 2008 Cadillac Escalade Platinum LED Headlights
    LED Headlights Give Your Electric Car An Extra Six Miles

    Your electric car can go six miles further on its battery if you use LED headlights. That’s the conclusion drawn by an automotive engineer with Osram Sylvania, according to Autoblog Green. Electric and electric-hybrid car ranges are impacted by external factors like temperature, whether...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt
    Question: How Do Electric Cars (Volt, Leaf) Heat Passengers?

    Another in our irregular series of answering questions from readers, this one from John Q of Eugene, Oregon: Question: I was wondering how an electric car provides heat and defrosting. Using batteries to generate the heat will drain them pretty fast. Maybe with the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, the internal...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt

    Earlier this week the judges in the North American Car of the Year announced that the 2011 Chevrolet Volt had won the coveted NACOTY prize. At the press conference kicking off the start of the 2011 Detroit Auto Show, the NACTOY team announced that the 50 or so automotive journalists representing a wide selection of consumer interests had cast their votes in favour of the plug-in hybrid. Out of a possible 490 points in the NACTOY system, the Volt scored 233 points. The rival nominees, the 2011 Hyundai Sonata and the 2011 Nissan LEAF scored 163 and 94 points respectively. So why did the...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt
    Battery Wars: General Motors Licenses American Argonne Tech

    A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... Actually, no--fairly recently and not so far from home, the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory patented a battery technology known as nickel manganese cobalt (NMC). Discovering and patenting new battery technology in an era so...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt
    2011 Chevrolet Volt Electric: North American Car of the Year

    It's been quite a year for the 2011 Chevy Volt, GM's range-extended electric car that went on sale last month. It garnered a slew of awards from various car magazines and other auto media, and now it's capped the year by winning the prestigious North American Car of the Year award. Voted on by...

  • Powermat wireless charge pad in Chevrolet Volt
    Chevy Volt First In Line For Powermat Mobile Device Wireless Charge Pad

    Soon you will be able to do away with those pesky charging cables for all your portable devices when driving as Powermat, a pioneer in wireless charging technology, is developing new technology that will essentially turn your car into a charging port for your mobile phone, MP3 player or handheld...

  • Volt Battery Pack
    GM To Use Argonne National Lab Advances In Next-Gen Volt Battery

    General Motors announced today that it has licensed lithium-ion battery technology developed at Argonne National Laboratories, the research institution that's funded largely by the U.S. Department of Energy. The agreement allows GM to use the technology throughout its supply chain, and covers a...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt
    2011 Chevrolet Volt: What Do Owners Think, A Few Weeks In?

    Much of 2010 was spent learning more and more details about Chevrolet's exciting new range-extended electric car, the Volt. Towards the end of the year our colleagues at GreenCarReports finally got to drive the vehicle, and more recently the first owners have taken delivery. So what do owners...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt EPA sticker

    If the idea of measuring the efficiency of an electric car, which burns no gasoline, in miles per gallon still irks you, spare a thought for our green car expert John Voelcker who goes to some length in this previous article to try and explain why the EPA deems it fit to do so. While that previous article looked at the EPA sticker for the 2011 Nissan Leaf electric car, now we’re putting the sticker for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt under the spotlight. As we all know, the Volt is a range-extended electric car, which essentially means it can drive on electric power alone for short distances...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt test drive, Michigan, October 2010
    GM Leads Nissan In December Electric Car Sales As Supply Trickles In

    Chevy’s electric hybrid vehicle, the Volt, beat out the cheaper Nissan Leaf in electric car sales in the last month of 2010 as each manufacturer struggled to keep up with demand for their newest rides, the Associated Press reported today. The Volt went into production in mid-November and hit...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt
    Counting Down To 2011: Top ASC Article for September and October 2010

    As we get closer to our current articles we though we would combine the last couple of articles as we make our way to New Years—the east coast sooner than others in the U.S. September and October saw articles on the New IBE Concept in Paris, a report on the L.A. Harbor reducing tolls for...

  • 2011 Mazda2 exterior and detail
    Most Popular Posts of 2010: Mazda2, Prius Crashes, Leaf, Volt, and Other EVs

    We love looking back to see what's been popular over the course of a full year. And 2010 was definitely chock-full of green car news. Our 10 most popular posts this year are a little less random than last year's most popular, which featured Muslims and ethanol, urine, hybrid Ferraris, and our...

  • Simplified diagram of the Cyclone steam engine
    Could Waste Oil Power Your Range-Extended Electric Car One Day?

    We're suckers for new kinds of combustion engines. Ever since we first saw and wrote about the Cyclone external-combustion engine, we've been intrigued by it. Now we have an automotive angle: Suppose you could power a Chevy Volt-like range-extended electric car on nothing more than used motor oil...

  • question mark on road: image via Flickr/ milos milosevic
    Will Charging Infrastructure Be Speed Bump For Electric Cars?

    This year — and next — will be a busy one for arrival of electric cars. The Ford Focus Electric and Coda’s sedan are slated for launch by 2011. The Nissan Leaf is slowly making its way to buyers in the U.S. and Europe, the Wheego Whip and LiFe are on sale in New York, and the...

  • Chevrolet Sail Electric Concept Vehicle

    Whilst the U.S. and Europe get the 2011 Chevrolet Volt and 2012 Opel and Vauxhall Ampera, it seems all the full battery-electric vehicles are going to the Far East, and they're keeping fairly quiet about it. A few months back we revealed GM's plans to test an electric version of the Chevrolet Cruze sedan in South Korea. The prototype uses a 31-kilowatt-hour battery pack and offers a range of up to 100 miles, competitive with the 2011 Nissan LEAF. Performance is competitive too, with an 8.2 second 0-60mph time, and a top speed of around 100mph. Now, Shanghai GM has revealed the Sail electric...

  • Jay Leno
    Jay Leno Takes Delivery Of Volt, Offers Up A Soundbite

    Never one to miss the opportunity for a pithy quote, petrolhead extraordinaire Jay Leno has come up trumps again whilst taking delivery of his new 2011 Chevrolet Volt. "Electricity is like sex. People lie about it," quipped Leno, referring to how owners are occasionally inclined to add a few more...

  • Renault Fluence ZE production electric sedan
    Is There a Business Case for Electric-Car Battery Lease or Swap?

    As 2010 draws to a close, we now have shipments of the 2011 Nissan LEAF and the 2011 Chevy Volt to customers around the United States. With the advent of these vehicles, is there still a business case for Better Place? To refresh your memory, Better Place is the venture between Shai Agassi and...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt
    And We're Off! Electric Cars Are Here; Now They Need a Charge

    It’s official: Electric cars for the mass consumer crowd have arrived. The first all-electric Nissan Leaf was sold last week to a man in California, and more are trickling in. And the first Chevrolet Volts (pictured) — GM’s model that can go up to 50 miles on battery power before...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt MPV5 concept, Unveiled at 2010 Beijing Motor Show
    Volt-Based 'Amp' Due In Detroit: Wise Move By Chevrolet?

    The Voltec powetrain used in the 2011 Chevrolet Volt has never been meant for just the one vehicle. Restricting a new technology developed at great expense to a single niche vehicle makes poor economic sense. The prediction by Car and Driver of a Volt-based Chevrolet Amp, thought to be close in...

  • First 2011 Chevrolet Volt delivered to retail buyer Jeffrey Kaffee, in Denville, NJ, December 2010
    First 2011 Chevy Volt Buyer in U.S. Gets His Keys In New Jersey

    It's been four years coming, but today, the first retail buyer in the U.S. took delivery of his 2011 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car. The happy event occurred on a cold winter day at Gearhart Chevrolet, in Denville, New Jersey. The buyer is Jeffrey Kaffee, a retired airline pilot who...

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