too little too late.

What strikes me when looking at this is that almost all of the background vehicles are GM cars.

At around 0:43 there is an old red f150 in the background.
At around 1:01 there is a silver/gray chrysler minivan (behind the little blue sign)
A few cars behind the minivan there is a late model mustang.

There were probably 20 to 30 cars seen in the clips of this road test. Even if I missed a few non GM cars, I don't think the ratio is true to average "aimless driving". I wonder if they intentionally chose clips that were high in wholesome GM content.

If you watch the thing its just one after another...firebird, vette, rendezvous, several astro vans, etc.

Adding to my comment...it looks like they were close to some GM facilities...so it probably wouldn't be hard to pick clips they wanted. I think it was on purpose...

@neka
If they were close to GM facilities, cruising around (very likely), people who work at or are otherwise associated with the GM facilities would feel more comfortable driving a GM vehicle.

Its like, if you were a sales guy for SAN Switches, and you were trying to sell to IBM.... Wouldn't you want to walk into the room with a Lenovo laptop for your presentation? People around there probably just bought more GM vehicles... rather than this being intentionally edited that way.

The mule cars look exactly the like the new Honda Accord, and the actual Volt looks like an Acura.

I'm digging it.

Cars looks like between a Prius and a Insight.

Yeah, you'll get killed if you work at GM and show up driving a toyota or Honda.

The Volt looks pretty cool but I don't know why he is so excited about being ahead of schedule. We should have had electric cars like a decade ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EV1

GM is WAY behind everyone else... right?

On the bright side. They made it so expensive that no-one give a d@m!

I'm not surprised GM got to where they are today if they're still trying to figure out how the blinkers sound - ROFL. How many years ago was the car invented? Right. GM has made no progress at all since the days of the EV-1 - same redneck vehicles for redneck America, oblivious to new technology and stubborn to change.

It's a shame we are still an F150 nation, but while hauling 2-tons down the road won't get you 40MPG, it's backward thinking to not develop that kind of efficiency for passenger vehicles used in the big city. Big oil is losing nothing whatsoever from the development of EV's, especially since they hold the lucrative patents for the battery technology.

After billion$ of taxpayer$ dollar$....finally a car that has already lost much ground to the Prius. Too bad the middle class family will not be able to afford these as Obamanation planned or better yet buy a cheaper much more sofisticated Prius.

What a horrible investment.

@ bk420
I understand your frustration with GM taking bailouts. But if I could get a huge sum of money from Obama for my company, I would take it too and not give back the bonus I gave myself.... Maybe. Don't let the dishonesty from the execs fool you. Old Prius's have failing transmissions and very expensive batteries that fail, both of which often cost more than half the value of the car to replace (a "total-loss"). If you look at the numbers, GM's sales have not dropped much more than the Japanese car makers, and I see as many '09 GM rides on the road as I ever have new models. All the car makers are suffering. When the Volt is faster, cheaper to own, and gets better MPG than a Prius, will you eat your words?

F150 - Ford, not GM.
"chrysler minivan" - Chrysler is not GM, nor Ford.
"late model mustang" - Ford, not GM.
"firebird, vette, rendezvous, several astro vans, etc." - Yes, Pontiac, Buick, and Chevrolet are GM.

you mean sophisticated. lol

i don't think the volt will ever be better than the prius but i do think, the volt is one cool car similar to those expensive sports cars.

WTF HAPPENED TO THE BODY!!!?!?!?!?!??

Seriously??? That's all you're going to say about the specs on a Volt? While it is a hybrid, like the Prius, it's a totally different concept. The Prius uses an electric motor at low speeds (under 20 mph or so) and then uses a low power 4 cylinder gasoline combustion engine to cruise at higher speeds.

The drive train of the Volt is totally electric. It has a Lithium-ion battery instead of a Ni-MH like factory Prius's, and the battery can take you 40 miles when fully charged... yes you can plug it in to charge it. What happens when you need to drive more than 40 miles? It has a gasoline powered generator that makes electricity only - it does not add hp to the electric motor like a Prius. In theory if you commute less than 40 miles a day and always plugin at home, you never need gasoline for this car... VERY different from hybrids from toyota, honda, nissan, ford, etc.

Maybe everyone who reads Toms Guide already knew all that... but I'm surprised at the sloppy writing on this article.

Electric car is an interesting idea... so long as you generate the electricity with solar, wind, or (especially) nuclear power you'll actually be coming out AHEAD.

Over 50% of the U.S. electricity comes from burning coal... about 50 pounds of coal to replace 1 gallon of gasoline. What a HECK of a trade-off, eh? Good thing the battery in this car only lasts for about 100 miles so we're only burning 200 pounds of coal to replace those 4 gallons of gasoline. 200 pounds is also about what the car weights. I'd hate to be in one of THOSE when it has a head-on or side-impact collision... VERY high mortality rate in those deathtraps.

Oh ya, I remember seeing that on the road once. At least the Volt looks like something that the average consumer would want.

I forgot where i heard this but some group of people came up with a hydrogen powered engine that has a close system in which the water, that come out from combustion, is reused to create hydrogen through electrolysis. In essence it would keep reusing its own byproduct as fuel. This system alone is used to power a generator to recharge the batteries for the car. I wish GM and other car makers could follow this sort of thing.

population control is the only true long term answer. But in the mean time we need something like this at an affordable price. Also, bring back nuclear power. Mass transit and a more thoughtful forward thinking transportation system would do much.

Well at least the Volt should contribute less CO2 than the Prius (whose battery materials are sourced from 4 different countries on ships that, for arguments sake, average 120 gallons per mile [http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_fuel_does_a_container_ship_burn], then shipped to Japan and assembled...then shipped again in a soulless marketing exercise called Prius).

Of course if you want to use less fuel, have a decent car as well and not look like a try-hard Hollywood celebrity douchebag, you could just buy a Golf Diesel

Yes, I think many people misunderstand. The Volt in Fact only uses its gas motor when the battery is low. If I had this car where I live now I would almost never burn gas because I almost never drive more than 40 miles per day. The oil company's would want a bullet in my head for not buying their gas anymore. My response to them is "go to hell"

You suggest that I would want to take a Lenovo laptop to a meeting with IBM, but that no one would pick GM loaded clips for a GM advertisement? That is contradictory at best, because at their core they are the exact same tactic of forcing friendlier surroundings.

I specifically said in my second comment that it would be really easy to find clips they wanted, alluding to the naturally higher concentration of GM vehicles found where they were driving. Not choosing friendly clips in that environment is (in your analogy) like already owning the Lenovo and just choosing to take along a Macbook for the hell of it.

As much as I think that first part was hypocritical though...I should point out that you're crazy if you think taking someone's product to a meeting with them is going to help your negotiations with a company of that scale. They don't care, and your "SAN switch salesman" example particularly sucks because they probably use their OWN switches (duh).

But by far the best part is that you don't seem to realize that a Lenovo is NOT even an IBM product to begin with and the two companies have no relation. Lenovo only bought out IBM's PC division, and taking one to an IBM meeting is probably more like a slap in the face than it is a cutesy, clearly uninformed attempt at a compliment. I mean you might as well have taken the (intel) Macbook after all.

Are you slow? I was pointing out the only non GM vehicles I saw and then listing all of the GM ones...so I don't need you to tell me what goes where.

Cover the car in solar panels and drive that thing in Texas and you will actually be doing the environment a favor. But if you are going to plug the car into an outlet that receives power from a fossil fuel power plant which loses a lot of its initial power from the powerline to you house, how is that doing anything , instead of the exhaust coming from your car its is now coming from the power plant instead.

Power plants alone in the us are beeing severely overtaxed because of people constantly running air conditions now we are gonna plug our cares to it?

sure the care can go 40 miles on a charge, but does that include blasting the ac on full in 100 degree weather, or when windshield wipers going constantly in a rainstorm, or even having your radio at a moderate level. plug in your gps /charge your cell phone what does it dwindle down to?

Well, no one said any one car (including the Volt) is for everyone.