I love the Chevy Volt. I haven’t seen one in person, but like the looks of it, the idea that I could run around on electric power, and love, love a hatchback. I think that it would work good here in San Jose, probably easy to service this auto. But they are expensive and hard to get, I hear.
I was surprised to read an article by Shane McGlaun, posted Jul 15th 2011, under the title, “NYC Police get Volt patrol cars,” on the Slash Gear website. McGlaun reports that New York City bought 70-new plug-in vehicles and some of the new police cruisers are Volts.
McGlaun says green is finally becoming a “big deal” around the country with government agencies needing to reduce imported oil consumption and pollution. He agrees with 2009 Green Car Vision Award, 2011 Motor Trend Car of the Year, 2011 Green Car of the Year, 2011 North American auto of the Year, and 2011 World Green Car that the Volt is one of the most interesting new green cars on the road. If they become popular I wonder how it will affect the local San Jose Auto Service shops overall.
In the Slash Gear piece McGlaun notes the Volt’s use of batteries to run the car on electricity alone and then when the batteries run out the Volt’s use of its gasoline engine to charge the batteries for longer driving range as increasing efficiency in town.
The NYC purchase of the Volt should help to bring it in to the main stream in the minds of us regular folk to whom it now seems an exotic specimen. But Chevy will have to increase its production to at least meet the demand and bring down the price.
Shaun McGlaun writes this about the auto overall, “As much as police drive that the battery power would only last a short time….”
I say the new field of green cars coming out is the most exciting thing since Henry Ford’s introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized the transportation of humans and their cargo and transformed American industry