Chevy Volt priced at $41,000 before credit.

[Dino Scuderia]

or lease for $350/mo. three years with $2500 down.

I don't want one.

Who has one on order?

2011 Chevrolet Volt priced at $41,000* or $350/month for three-year lease Autoblog

[henk4]

what's the net price of a Prius?

[Dino Scuderia]

what's the net price of a Prius?

Starts at $22,800 in USA and top of the line is $28,000.

There are loads of them on the road in my area.

[henk4]

so in net terms the Volt will be at least more than 11 k more expensive than the Prius...has it that more to offer?

[RacingManiac]

Conceivably, if you are one of those "40 miles a day" people, you can stay off gas altogether and not need to fuel this thing for a while until you need to do more than 40 miles a day.

Prius at the moment can't do that, and when it does do electric only mode it won't have the 40 miles range, and AFAIK it'll still be load dependent(as in, the gas will kick in when you mesh the throttle, whereas in Volt you'll lose range but stays in electric only)

I think the Volt option will be more attractive if gas ends up costing more.

Neither one is that practical, Volt can potentially be more "green", it is more useful than a full EV like the Leaf. And for the US Hollywood type, they should be jumping on this thing since it'll benefit from the "buy American" image.

[PRC777]

And for the US Hollywood type, they should be jumping on this thing since it'll benefit from the "buy American" image.

Yeah, this is all I see from this car, as well as the Honda FCX "Clarity".

[culver]

so in net terms the Volt will be at least more than 11 k more expensive than the Prius...has it that more to offer?

From what I've read the Volt equipment will be similar to a top of the line Prius. With a federal tax incentive the car will cost $33,500 rather than a full $41k. This is the same subside that helped the Prius for a number of years (though the value is larger due for what ever reason).

I think the car does have more to offer than a Prius in some areas. For the techies the Volt is a level beyond the Prius in terms of technology. It is a pure electric driveline with a back of generator rather than a system trying to merge power from both a gas and electric motor at the same time. More significant to some is the ability to go 40 miles on electricity (in ideal conditions). That might allow many owners to go weeks between trips to the gas station. I can see that as a big plus. It also might sell to a few people who want to look patriotic and green at the same time. Of course only a few markets will initially get the car. I couldn't buy one locally even if I wanted.

Overall, I don't think we can expect the first generation Volt to be a game changer. The first generation Prius was not. What will be critical is gen 2. The second generation Prius was the one that changed the rules. The first generation Prius couldn't really be cost justified when compared to the Echo/Yaris. The later Prius got better mileage as well as was a more practical vehicle. It was the one that started to turn a profit and was the sales success. GM has acknowledged a number of areas where this car's design wasn't optimized due to limited development time. A number of systems could be combined in future versions of the car to save costs. I could see the second generation Volt delivering somewhat better mileage while cutting perhaps $5000 from the sticker price. ( I reserve the right to be drunk ass wrong when version 2.0 comes out )

[aiasib]

Wow, it looks NOTHING like the concept.

[NSXType-R]

From what I've read the Volt equipment will be similar to a top of the line Prius. With a federal tax incentive the car will cost $33,500 rather than a full $41k. This is the same subside that helped the Prius for a number of years (though the value is larger due for what ever reason).

I think the car does have more to offer than a Prius in some areas. For the techies the Volt is a level beyond the Prius in terms of technology. It is a pure electric driveline with a back of generator rather than a system trying to merge power from both a gas and electric motor at the same time. More significant to some is the ability to go 40 miles on electricity (in ideal conditions). That might allow many owners to go weeks between trips to the gas station. I can see that as a big plus. It also might sell to a few people who want to look patriotic and green at the same time. Of course only a few markets will initially get the car. I couldn't buy one locally even if I wanted.

Overall, I don't think we can expect the first generation Volt to be a game changer. The first generation Prius was not. What will be critical is gen 2. The second generation Prius was the one that changed the rules. The first generation Prius couldn't really be cost justified when compared to the Echo/Yaris. The later Prius got better mileage as well as was a more practical vehicle. It was the one that started to turn a profit and was the sales success. GM has acknowledged a number of areas where this car's design wasn't optimized due to limited development time. A number of systems could be combined in future versions of the car to save costs. I could see the second generation Volt delivering somewhat better mileage while cutting perhaps $5000 from the sticker price. ( I reserve the right to be drunk ass wrong when version 2.0 comes out )

I see it as a stupid move towards technology. It's not as cheap as it should be. Simple enough.

Simply put, it's a modern diesel electric locomotive except it runs on gasoline and has batteries. As a bonus it runs on batteries only.

How the hell did it become $40,000?

GM worked on this stupid halo project instead of giving us a nice mid sized car to sell to the public?

In addition to that, our government bailed them out for... this?

Henk, a Prius starts at 20k-ish. I'd go for an Insight, not this. Just because I'm a Honda guy. But no, I would not buy a hybrid any day. And even with the gas engine, this is still a hybrid.

[culver]

I recall reading that the original Prius cost Toyota $32k while they sold it for $20k. I don't think the technology is stupid any more than I think hybrids are stupid technology. However, in the long term they can't be subsidized technology.

It is incorrect to say GM was bailed out for this car. They were bailed out for a number of reasons. The Volt wasn't likely one of them. However, it was meant to be a green halo car. In the first generation it will be costly but another figure I recall hearing was that GM estimates the cost of production will fall by about 1/3rd in the next 5 years as volumes go up, component costs go down and many subsystems are better integrated.

The Insight isn't a very good hybrid. Honda's hybrid system trails those of GM, Ford and Toyota. GM's is perhaps the most advanced (the dual mode system) but hasn't been install in a vehicle that would really show it's strengths. The Ford and Toyota systems are very similar. The Honda system is a simple parallel system.

The Volt never claimed not to be a type of hybrid. I believe GM calls it an extended range hybrid indicating that it can operate both as an electric only car and as a series hybrid. Calling it nothing more than a locomotive system is a gross over simplification.

I will be interested to see how this system works in a few years and see what the price tag is. Like I said, the original Prius was very expensive and couldn't be cost justified. The current model seems to have solved that issue. Hopefully the Volt will do the same.

[pimento]

Once the tech matures and the economies of scale work themselves out these types of cars will become cheaper and more common. Especially when you have guys like Lotus preparing what's basically an off-the-shelf solution for this kind of thing. The next big thing is going to be battery tech, so we can move away from heavy, big, low-tech lead acid units in a cost effective way.

[wwgkd]

Once the tech matures and the economies of scale work themselves out these types of cars will become cheaper and more common. Especially when you have guys like Lotus preparing what's basically an off-the-shelf solution for this kind of thing. The next big thing is going to be battery tech, so we can move away from heavy, big, low-tech lead acid units in a cost effective way.

Even lithium-ion has a ton of problems that hopefully future technology will solve.

But yeah, it's not so much for now as for the future, same as the original prius. This way they're at least showing something for their efforts and drumming up more interest as they move closer to a better solution.

Also, many states are offering tax credits so you could get down into the 20's.

[Kitdy]

What bothers me about this whole green/electric car shit is that a diesel often would perform near enough as well for what I imagine would be cheaper.

That doesn't matter though - hybrids are cool amongst the liberal elite.

NSX, the Insight is a piece of shit, just like all other newly released (automotive) Hondas.

[pimento]

I wonder if the price took into consideration the rebate.. ie, GM could lose less money on each one sold because they knew the rebate would bring the price down to something competitive.

[ruim20]

So, it ended up costing twice what it should cost, i just don't see the value of 40.000 dollars in a car like this, i guess they ended up marking it like they do with diesels around here, they take in consideration the money you save in diesel vs gas, i wonder if the Volt doesn't 'sufer' from the same.

Any word on the Ampera?