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Goodbye Chevy Volt, The Perfect Car For A Future That Never Was

Author: Roger Cheng / Source: Hackaday

A month ago General Motors announced plans to wind down production of several under-performers. At the forefront of news coverage on this are the consequences facing factories making those cars, and the people who work there. The human factor associated with the closing of these plants is real.

But there is also another milestone marked by the cancellation of the Volt. Here at Hackaday, we choose to memorialize the soon-to-be-departed Chevrolet Volt. An obituary buried in corporate euphemisms is a whimper of an end for what was once their technological flagship car of the future.

2006: Gas-Electric Hybrids Hit Their Stride, Battery Electrics On The Horizon

That was a future envisioned in 2006, the year of An Inconvenient Truth and a time when Hollywood stars would arrive at the red carpet in a hybrid instead of a limousine. Hybrids didn’t always make economic sense as only a fraction of Prius owners would save enough on gas to offset their up-front cost. But it was a high-tech car within reach of everyday consumers who wanted to do something for the environment (or at least, be seen as such). Eco-friendly was in, and Toyota basked in praise for their fuel-efficient hybrids. Tesla shared in this adoration, as their Roadster hit the show circuit and promised to be the start of a wonderful zero-emissions future, even though its price tag was far from mainstream.

GM found themselves out of step. Their big introduction that year was the new Camaro: a tire-shredding muscle car derided as primitively backwards. Whenever there is talk of environmentally friendly technology, GM was the villain Who Killed the Electric Car. A faction within GM was unhappy about this public perception and sought to change it.

Car Hacking to Be The First To Take The Next Step

Since that perception won’t be changed by merely following, the team looked for something to put them a step ahead. Toyota’s Prius is an affordable efficient car, but still entirely powered by gasoline. Lithium-ion batteries that gave Tesla’s Roadster intense power and long range were very expensive, forcing an affordable car to have both a limited range and a small audience. In GM’s search for a compromise they chose an answer between those extremes: an electric car with a small battery to keep it affordable, backed up by a gasoline-powered generator to provide the in-between-charging-stations range consumers expect from a car. Their vision was a vehicle that was electric first and gasoline second.

First Chevrolet Volt prototype road tests in 2008 [via TopSpeed]

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