The Chevy Volt is Dumb.

Before I begin this musing, let me announce a new gadget addition - the countdown to graduation! Woo hoo!

Ok... moving right along.

We have all heard about the Chevy Volt. If you haven't - I'm sorry but this post wasn't intended for your demographic (again with my sledge hammer precision), and I recommend you to click here to go back.

A study by some CMU folks from the Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, Dept. of Engineering and Public Policy, and the Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering recently concluded that plug-in hybrid vehicles achieve optimal balance between range & energy efficiency when the vehicle is designed to exclusively run on electric power for 20 miles.

Click here for the study [WARNING: PDF, engineering speak, math, and colorful diagrams]. The study primarily addresses the environmental impact and energy efficiency of plug-in hybrids, which is really sorta interesting, but I'm not really interested in summarizing or repeating their findings.

I am calling the Volt dumb for another reason. Google the Chevy Volt's Price. Basically the industry is estimating a cost between $35,000 to $50,000 USD. What a consumer will be paying that amount of money for is... the ability to plug their car to a electric socket in their garage at night, charge the lithium ion batteries during non-peak hours and drive approximately 40 miles before the battery is flat (and the gasoline engine kicks in to uh... allow you to move it to a safe place to charge it some more).

Now... I'm not an electrical engineer - but pretty much everyone has experience with lithium ion batteries on their laptops. Lithium ion batteries (as opposed to the Ni-Mh batteries used in the current generation of hybrids) have the advantage of being lighter. However, a disadvantage to lithium ion batteries is that they begin to age from the moment they were manufactured. Variables such as the charge % and temperature greatly affect how quickly/or slowly lithium ion batteries age.

According to the experts at Wikipedia, a lithium ion battery stored at 100% capacity in 25 °C (77 °F) will lose approximately 20% of its total capacity per year. According to this guy, keeping lithium ion batteries charged at a recommend 40% storage level at 25 °C will minimize aging to only 4% after one year.

I don't have a business degree - but who would trust a car dealer to properly care for a car during the time it sits on the lot? Particularly during the summer months? In addition - who is really going to pay $35,000 to $50,000 USD, for a Chevy that might only have 32 miles (80% of 40 miles) after it has sat on the lot or has been driven daily for a year?

The Chevy Volt is dumb. And so are the automobile executives who claim it will save GM. Aside from people who buy vehicles to project an "eco" image - who in their right minds would spend that much money on a 40 mile range electric car?

And for people have that much money and want to project an "eco" image? I have a proposal. Take the $50,000 dollars, spend $20,000 of it to buy a VW Bluemotion Polo (diesel, estimated 60+ mpg). Then spend the remaining $30,000 to pay for persons of immense size to get liposuction. The human fat can be rendered into biodiesel (which you can now use to power your "People's Car"), the persons of former immense size might now walk more, and will also able to fit in a VW Bluemotion Polo. You would be able to project an "eco" image, be personally responsible for the reduction of short-term cardiovascular stress of persons of former immense size, while also recycling the unwanted fat.

EDIT - One of you (an Editorial Board member) has also informed me that another reason why the Chevy Volt is dumb is: Chevy has an ugly logo. I concur with that assessment.