On the same day the Today Show ran its piece on test driving the Chevy Volt integration prototype, Lindsay Brooke, a reporter from the New York Times published his.
Brooks was the only other journalist so far besides CNBC’s Phil Lebeau to test drive the Volt in generator or charge-sustaining mode and has written about it.
His [...]
A long awaited milestone has just been achieved, sort of.
For many months we’ve discussed, debated, deduced, asked about and imagined what it would be like to drive the Chevy Volt while its generator is running.
This mode is so critical because it represent the first mass market application an electric car operating at the same time [...]
On Tuesday morning, eight Chevy Volt integration vehicles left the Milford Proving grounds compound in Michigan on a historic extended test drive into Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The cars were driven for more than 9 hours and 300 miles continuously in a special effort to analyze their behavior, performance, and comfort on such a long drive in real [...]
Alex Cattelan is a GM engineer working on development of the Voltec powertrain, and has been involved in the Volt program ever since the beginning.
She recently had the chance to drive a pre-production Volt out among a fleet of seven cars to Knoxville, Tennessee. Cattelan also noted she has previously driven pre-production and mule Volts [...]
I am one of the 100 people in New York who have leased a MINI E pure electric car. Since I can’t get a Volt yet, I figured this was the next best thing for now. I have just passed 3000 miles in over two months of driving it.
The car is a 2 seat [...]
I recently had the chance to be one of the few people outside of GM to get behind the wheel of a plugin 2 mode hybrid prototype at GM’s test grounds in Milford. I was accompanied by Larry Nitz, GM’s director of hybrid powertrain development.
Originally this vehilce was set to debut under the Saturn [...]
Recently I traveled to GM’s Milford Proving Grounds for the opportunity with many other journalists to test drive the company’s entire fleet of production cars which were all laid out across a large swath of pavement called back lake.
To our surprise, in the middle of the event, suddenly Frank Weber pulled up in a pre-production [...]
I consider myself a fan of fuel efficient vehicles. At this point the Volt seems the best thing coming, although within the next couple of years there will clearly be a plethora of options to choose from. This will include pure EVs, EREVs like the Volt, plugin hybrids, and standard hybrids both mild and strong.
Right [...]
In late June, GM completed the production of its first true to form Chevy Volt prototypes called integration vehicles. We were given a brief video description of what it was like to drive one by the car’s chief engineer Andrew Farah.
GM granted an interview with Farah to Automotive News who got some new nitty gritty [...]
While visiting the GM Technical Center in Warren Michigan for the new battery lab tour and announcement, I had another chance to briefly test drive the Volt Cruze mule. How could I resist?
With the sheer novelty of the first drive behind me, I figured I could get a better feel for driving the car. [...]
General Motors has allowed the Cruze-bodied Chevy Volt mules to be test driven by more than a dozen journalists and various others including myself.
They have strictly restricted those driving experiences to the vehicle’s charge depleting mode. Outsiders thus only have the experience of driving the car in pure electric mode without the gas generator [...]
Several news agencies now have had their chance at the wheel of the Chevy Volt Mule.
1. Jalopnik – the tongue in cheek and heavily prolific automotive blog had a mule drive with Bob Lutz riding shotgun. They called it “utterly unremarkable” to GM’s delight because that is the goal. Making a car that doesnt use [...]