the inconspicuous “power” button on and then off again to see if I could hear any sound at all. But rather than a rumbling engine, or a gurgling turnover, all I heard was a faint, short charge up sound that reminded me of the phasers in Star Trek, and the racing motorcycles from Tron. If this is the sound of the next generation of automobiles, then we can credit science fiction sound engineers for tuning our ears to that note long ago!
As we drove out of the lot and onto the Tacoma city streets, the next thing I noticed was the ease of driving the Volt—it felt like any other car might, except without all the ruckus. Having a 1996 Honda Accord myself, the Volt was a quiet escape. The Volt also seemed to move more easily than my clunky car. It has only 360 pounds of batteries, as opposed to the 1,200 pounds that were in the original EV-1s from a decade ago.
The most appealing aspect of the Volt, however, was that the 20 minutes behind the wheel taught me to be a more efficient driver—of any car. In the Volt, in order to maximize efficiency, the dash display has a sizeable meter dedicated to measuring the efficiency of two of the most wasteful maneuvers—accelerating and breaking—as you drive. As I prepared to stop at lights, and turn corners, a small ball bounced out of the efficiency sweet spot in the center, and up and down the meter. Apparently my own driving habits, unbeknownst to me, weren’t particularly green. But the meter coerced me into slowing down and letting the car do its job, and I took my new green driving awareness home with me.
The Chevy Volt is not as flashy as some of the other electric vehicles on the market, namely the Tesla sports car. It is designed for the average consumer. The five-door, four-seat Volt starts at $33,500. And although General Motors is only producing 10,000 of the vehicles in the first year, Volt engineer Tim Perzanowski says the electric vehicle will be an increasingly important part of the company’s strategy moving forward.
“It’s very key to General Motors’ future,” he says, adding that the company plans to produce as many as many as 40,000 Volts in the car’s second year on the market.
While Perzanowski says the technology is available to build an entirely electric car with no gas-powered generator today, that’s not a practical project for Chevy. The result would simply be too expensive for the average consumer, and those are the customers the company needs to target. It will take time, he says, to build the electric car into the U.S. infrastructure, with enough charging stations. But with further innovations in battery technology and energy storage down the line, will come further innovations in affordable green transportation for the average person.
“We feel that the Volt covers the broadest range of consumers that are out there right now,” he says. “In the next 20 years we’re going to have people who were kids or in high school when these cars came out, so they will be the standard. For now, we have to think ahead to that.”
It’s the age-old dilemma of the chicken and the egg, according to Alder. “What comes first, technology or infrastructure?” he says.
Check out pictures of my drive in the Volt in the gallery below.
