2011 Chevy Volt
I thought the show car was a bit too weird to go into production. I can actually call the production car pictures quite attractive! There's still no pricing, but even at perhaps $30,000, it would be tempting, just to be able to plug it in every night, and not need to gas it up except if you were going on a long trip. The claim is that anyone who drives 40 miles or less a day will have no need for gasoline.
One obvious thought: there are a lot of solar panel chargers out there designed to plug into the cigarette lighter. These are very useful if you leave a car parked for a couple of weeks (for example, at an airport). These keep your battery charged. I wonder if the same strategy will work for the Volt? Harbor Freight sells this "5 watt" solar panel for that purpose. (I put that in quotes because I have discovered that mine doesn't produce more than one watt, even at the heights of a summer day.) If so, an awful lot of people are going to be buying these to leave on the dashboard during the day. It won't fully recharge the battery, of course, but for people who have a 45 or 50 mile commute, even a partial recharge during the day might enable the Volt to get back home without the gasoline engine starting up.
And you know, while it isn't practical to use solar panels on the roof for any great amount of power, I can picture ecocrazies buying the 45 watt panel, and bolting it to the roof, just to keep the evils of petroleum and carbon dioxide at bay a little longer!
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