Known for killing the first electric car of the modern era, the EV-1, GM has done an about face and is showing off the Chevrolet Volt at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. Hooray! But one caveat - it's still a hybrid, and it's not available until 'the end of the decade'.

Using what GM term the ‘E-flex System’, or their ‘next-generation electric propulsion system’, they promise that the car could nearly eliminate trips to the gas/petrol station.

It’s been built into the concept sedan known as the Chevrolet Volt, a battery-powered, four-passenger electric vehicle that uses a gas engine to create additional electricity to extend its range. There’s plenty more, so do read on, but there is one major downside: the car won’t be available until ‘the end’ of the decade. Still, that’s just under 3 years away, so we won’t have too long to wait, although anyone paying high gas/petrol prices would probably like one these cars right away.

According to GM, they’ve learned a lot since they launched the EV-1 back in 1996. GM Vice Chairman Robert A. Lutz says that “The EV1 was the benchmark in battery technology and was a tremendous achievement. Even so, electric vehicles, in general, had limitations. They had limited range, limited room for passengers or luggage, couldn’t climb a hill or run the air conditioning without depleting the battery, and had no device to get you home when the battery’s charge ran low”.

So far, it sounds like a bunch of excuses for not continuing development of the EV-1. Nevertheless, Lutz presses on and says that “The Chevrolet Volt is a new type of electric vehicle. It addresses the range problem and has room for passengers and their stuff. You can climb a hill or turn on the air conditioning and not worry about it.”

According to the press release, the Volt can be fully charged by plugging it into a 110-volt outlet for approximately six hours a day. When the lithium-ion battery is fully charged, the Volt can deliver 40 city miles of pure electric vehicle range. When the battery is depleted, a 1L, three-cylinder turbocharged engine spins at a constant speed, or revolutions per minute (rpm), to create electricity and replenish the battery. According to Lutz, this increases the fuel economy and range.

So, the Volt is clearly not an all-electric car like the Tesla Roadster, http://www.telsamotors.com, a car that gets 250 miles per charge, costs less than 1c per mile, goes from 0 to 60mph in less than 4 seconds and has 90% fewer parts than a convention car (or hybrid) as it has no gas/petrol engine at all to deal with. The Tesla Roadster also fully recharges in around 3 hours.
But back to the Volt. According to Lutz, “If you lived within 30 miles from work (60 miles round trip) and charged your vehicle every night when you came home or during the day at work, you would get 150 miles per gallon. More than half of all Americans live within 20 miles of where they work (40 miles round trip). In that case, you might never burn a drop of gas during the life of the car.”

To show how ecologically sensitive and efficient GM are, they promise that the Chevrolet Volt can also run on E85, a fuel blend that is 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline (petrol). GM assure us that “Using E85, fuel economy of 150 mpg would translate into more than 525 miles per petroleum gallon”.

So what happens if you forget to charge your car when you get home at night? Read onto the next page to find out!