The Chevrolet Volt

Will the first primarily electric car be ready for the market in 2010? Stay tuned. Until then - this interesting article in this month's Atlantic Monthly overviews the development of the Chevrolet Volt. What's the big deal?

If it meets specifications, it will charge up overnight from any standard electrical socket. It will go 40 miles on a charge. Then a small gasoline engine will ignite. The engine’s sole job will be to drive a generator, whose sole job will be to maintain the battery’s charge—not to drive the wheels, which will never see anything but electricity. In generator mode, the car will drive hundreds of miles on a tank of gas, at about 50 miles per gallon. But about three-fourths of Americans commute less than 40 miles a day, so on most days most Volt drivers would use no gas at all.