cool pics to draw: First Drive: 2011 Chevrolet Volt

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

First Drive: 2011 Chevrolet Volt

Filed under: Hybrid, Sedan, Hatchback, Chevrolet, First Drive, Electric

"She Blinded Me With Science"

2011 Chevrolet Volt - Click above for high-res image gallery

The Chevy Volt has finally, successfully, made the leap from science fiction to fact. Quite a bit has changed in the nearly four-year journey from the 2007 Detroit Auto Show to last week, when General Motors let us drive a production-spec car. The Volt may not be the stuff of Blade Runner, but it's a technologically advanced showpiece for GM, and the first widely practical electric vehicle, ready and waiting for mainstream acceptance.

Give GM credit for building the Volt during the most miserable turn of events in the company's long and storied history.

But first some basics: The Volt is a four-passenger, compact hatchback. While there's considerable controversy over whether or not to call it a plug-in hybrid, that's how we'll be referring to it, following the lead of the Federal government. GM prefers "extended-range electric vehicle," which is somewhat misleading, since the Volt is only an electric vehicle for the first 25-50 miles. In EV mode, the Volt's electric drive system draws power exclusively from a 16 kilowatt-hour battery pack, at all speeds up to its 100-mph maximum. Once the battery gets drawn down to 35 percent of its capacity, the Volt's gasoline engine fires up, spinning a generator to produce more electricity.

Of all the changes GM's engineers have wrought since the first Volt concept, the most controversial has to be the design of the transmission, which GM kept a secret until last week. GM has been saying all along that the Volt was driven purely electrically, but as it turns out, this is not exactly the case. At highway speeds in extended range mode, the Volt's gasoline engine is actually clutched together with the electric drive system inside the vehicle's transaxle. There's no point in belaboring the controversy beyond saying that the design is 10-15 percent more efficient, according to GM. Since efficiency is pretty much the whole point of the vehicle, we're satisfied, even if we're not happy that we (along with the rest of the media) were misled. However, it's time to move on and focus on evaluating the Volt as a vehicle, and to that end, it's an amazing piece of machinery.

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Gallery: 2011 Chevrolet Volt: First Drive