Chevy Volt Loses Key Asset

GM has decided to cut the fuel tank capacity of the Chevy Volt, down from 600 miles to a paltry 360 miles.

I haven’t talked about cars much on this blog until now, but I’m an avid car enthusiast. It runs in the family. Maybe I’ll take you on a tour of the family garage someday.

I will say that I happily drive a Buick. Yeah, call me old for my age… I’ve only been hearing that for my entire life. It’s a nice city driving car, with good fuel economy. I get a good 375 to 400 miles to the tank. That’s right. My Buick has better range capacity than the Chevy Volt. In reality, that’s not totally fair. The Volt has a total of 400 miles when you take into account a fully-charged battery.

I’ve been holding onto the Buick waiting to buy one of the first Volts off the lot. Yeah, paying sticker price might sound nuts (and I prefer certified pre-owned vehicles for both cost and environmental reasons). However, with fuel at $4 to $5 per gallon, what used to be thought as nuts now sounds reasonable.

The good news is, the Volt hasn’t had its battery cut. You can still go 40 miles without using a drop of gas. That’s 80 miles round trip between work and home (if you can plug it in while at the office).

Based on the statements today, I have to suspect that the gas tank has been cut to less than 12 gallons in order to make the vehicle lighter and cheaper. I doubt that it will impact the retail price though, rather help ensure GM can meet it.

So, between battery and gas, you can still get 400 miles. And, I’ll still probably buy one right off the assembly line (assuming it doesn’t get yet another bump up from $40,000).

Also, hopefully GM will have the foresight to make a 220 volt converter so that we can plug Volt into the Electric Vehicle Charging Stations in California. There are a lot of them, and thanks to bureaucratic stupidity… they were built for cars which won’t ever be able to use them.