I am just afraid that, when enough battery capacity is hung on it, it will become so heavy and expensive that it won’t work financially.  I mean, how many hybrid Tahoes do you think they are really going to sell at $53,000?

My biggest concern is that they will take their eye off the prize of the Volt.  I hope that it will be as light and aerodynamically efficient as it needs to be to really make a world altering statement about fuel economy.

I fell in love with the Honda Insight.  Clearly, Honda pulled out all of the stops to make the first hybrid statement.  1850 lb, all aluminum, with a no compromise aero package.  I would have bought one, but my wife wouldn’t have such a small car.  If it had been a GM product, I would have bought one anyway for my business driving.  Clearly Toyota , and now GM, are a lot smarter from a marketing point of view to go with a 4 seater, but man the Insight was an engineering tour de force.

I only hope that the Volt will make a profoundly powerful statement, and allow US manufacturers to reclaim the technological high ground forever.

Bob Lutz seems to have acknowledged the absolute necessity of doing this.  I only hope that he can make it so.

Nasaman, not only would I buy a 34 mile Vue, I’d consider it at 25-30 miles, as that would cover 75% of my trips with that vehicle… and that seems more realistic than the 34 mile range!  Of course, we’re hoping to make the Volt my daily commuter (about 50 miles a day) and longer range weekend choice, with the Vue my wife’s daily driver, so that would just make things that much more attractive for us!

The architecture is admittedly somewhat less efficient than the Volt’s series design, but that won’t prevent the car from functioning like plug-in Prius conversions do —or even like the Volt!

yes, i would buy a 35 mile aer vue over a 40 mile aer volt

What I failed to explain here is that GM’s own electric drive team (at least some of the same guys working on the Volt, I’m led to believe) –NOT ME– calculated that the Caddy Provoq concept announced in January (well after the Volt’s wind tunnel testing was completed), and with the same size & shape as the Vue (but with louvers in the grill that close at higher speeds to reduce drag) would be capable of a 20 mile AER using a 9KWh Lithium Ion battery under the center console. The plug-in Vue could also use these same Provoq-like inexpensive louvers (which can be actuated automatically by car speed) to achieve the same reduced drag as the Provoq.

Also, remember that GM told us last year their testing/analysis/etc had led them to conclude that drag is more important than weight for electrically-driven cars, which is not the case for ICE-powered cars. This is largely a consequence of the fact that, irrespective of the mass of a vehicle, a substantial fraction of the electrical energy needed to reach road speed from a stop (or to simply accelerate) is recovered by the regenerative braking system & by other efficiency-enhancing systems they’re able to use for any electric drive. How else can you explain GM engineering’s calculated AER of 20 miles for the Caddy Provoq with a 9KWh battery!?!

So once again I need to ask everyone, assuming GM’s own calculations are correct, "Would you be interested in the plug-in Vue if it had an added-cost option for up to 35 miles AER?"