80 miles electric range would get me to and from work every day. Sure some people don’t need that much electric range, so MAKE IT AN OPTION AT LEAST!!!

EDIT: and I am *NOT* talking about demanding that they make a longer range one right now, but rather plan it for the next version when they have more room to extend the range even if they have to do it as a PAID OPTION!

I hope GM is forward thinking enough to realize that 40 miles is simply not enough electric range if they can do more easily at a later time. As batteries become more powerful and the vehicle becomes more efficient I hope they won’t leave us long distance commuters out in the cold.

Sure make the basic model of Volt 2.0 cheaper with a smaller/lighter battery back… go right ahead! But plan well enough so that those that want to upgrade to 80 miles (or more) electric range can.

I would love to be able to drive 40 miles to work, have a solar panel trickle charge the batteries and drive 40 miles back home on all electric. Since my car sits out in the sun all day long I might get an extra few mile buffer there. That would be perfect.

You can’t just make and sell a 150 mile EV to even the upper middle class right now because of the tradeoffs between cost, range, performance, and service life of the batteries. It would be 100% idiotic of GM to try to do that now because the batteries are a combination of too expensive for how much you get out of them. The Volt is going to cost around $40K with just these smaller batteries, how could it be viable in the near future if you use 3-4 times more batteries??? That criticism makes no sense.

The Volt is already stretching what current batteries can do. We can only get there in steps that make sense. There is no such thing as selling a 150 mile BEV today. It’s impossible today.

Believe me, plug-in hybrids will have a much larger effect on reducing oil consumption than a 150 mile BEV, becuase you would be able to sell more of them. You would end up with more electrical miles driven. This isn’t GM’s fault, it is an absence of your dream technology. People are working on it but it isn’t there yet. It might never be. We might always be stuck with a plug-in hybrid (possibly using a renewable liquid fuel as the range extender). It all depends on how good electrical energy storage gets vs how available liquid fuels are.

Another cool thing about the PHEV is that it makes the goal of a BEV more attainable. A person can buy a PHEV and through that they have increased demand on vehicle batteries which increases their production which will ultimately make them more affordable compared to today’s prototypes. PHEV’s will also slowly increase the demand for plugging infrastructure as more people will get chargers at home and lobby for them at work, all the while it will take away their range anxiety because they know they can count on gas stations if a charger is not handy or they need to refuel quickly.

This is paving the way for BEV’s if they are ever economically and technically feasible. Until then, please stop criticizing the automakers for not making long range BEV’s. Criticize them all you want for not making more fuel efficient vehicles.

Since a 40 mile commute is probably 20 each way:

I predict that a new business selling electricity at parking lots will emerge.

You drive your Volt to work, plug it in and drive back.

The GM Volt WILL create new jobs, new opportunities