Chevy's Volt and Nissan's Leaf are the high-profile, well-received electrically charged headline grabbers, but Ford has also arrived with critically acclaimed hybrid versions of its Escape SUV and Fusion sedan.
The Volt's battery needs to be both a sprinter and a marathoner in power output.
The lithium-ion battery that sends electricity to the Volt's motors takes about six hours to fully charge.
The Volt's gasoline generator is mechanically independent of the wheels--easily swapped in the future for ethanol, biodiesel or fuel cell generators.
Store enough kilowatt-hours for 40 miles in a battery (the Volt's planned range) and you capture daily driving for most people.
The Volt's battery would permit forty-miles of travel between charges - enough to allow most American drivers not to use gasoline at all.
Chevy's Volt could be different--there aren't too many other plug-in hybrid electric cars to compete with at the moment--and the Vincentric data is just a prediction of future worth.
GM's Chevrolet Volt, an electric car with a combustion engine range extender, could be another beneficiary.
GM's Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid, which begins production this fall, is also on display.
If the rest of 2012 holds similar to the first 8 months, U.S. Volt sales will increase from the 13, 497 to date up towards very approximately 20, 000.
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If you're launching a line of extended-range electric vehicles, ala the Chevy Volt, it's hard to imagine a better person to help you with the launch than Bob Lutz, the driving force behind that very car.
As for McKinley's 42-volt turbocharging system, BorgWarner decided to shelve the idea for the time being.
You talk about their hopes for the Volt, but that's just one car.
Batteries for Chevy's all-electric Volt car, for example, won't depend on that element, Mintzer says.
The breakthrough is that the SAE International standards agency has finalized work on a U.S. 480-volt fast-charging standard.
The fully electric car charges via a standard 100-volt AC outlet, and it's decked out with gull-wing doors and motion detection courtesy of Microsoft's Kinect.
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There are currently over 15, 000 charging stations across the U.S., with many of them 240 volt rapid chargers.
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The Volt is more of a hybrid--it's got a gasoline engine that takes over when the batteries run down after 40 miles.
GM's plug-in electric hybrid, the Volt, won the coveted North American Car of the Year award, while Ford won the award for best truck.
In China it's putting up an 800, 000-volt line, the most powerful ever, to move 6.4 gigawatts 1, 300 miles from a station near the Three Gorges Dam to Shanghai.
Around 1, 100 people work there and that's the plant where General Motors will be making the Volt.
The Volt is the 133rd most popular car sold in the U.S. out of 262 total through the first 8 months of 2012, according to Timothy Cain at Good Car, Bad Car.
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But from the very launch of Volt three years ago, GM arguably has done a poor overall job of communicating that identity and has failed to mainstream the vehicle perceptually among American consumers so that Volt would have a shot at joining the mainstream of U.S. auto sales.
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The Volt can go 40 miles on a single charge (about a average day's miles for the typical American), and it also has a gas-powered generator that gives it the ability to drive 300 more miles, Chevrolet says.
GM's vice president for research and development, Lawrence Burns, says consumers have to start thinking of their car as a power-supplying appliance as well as a means of transportation. (A hybrid car, for example, might be an alternative to an emergency generator during an ice storm.) Meanwhile, GM is endorsing Huber's thinking with plans to introduce plug-in versions of the Chevrolet Volt and a Saturn vue crossover by 2010.
GM's response is to expand its own hybrid offerings, including the new Chevrolet Volt concept car (pictured).
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