Chevy Volt Engine Won't Recharge Batteries While Driving; Just A Regular Plug-In Hybrid?

Edmunds Inside Line is reporting the Chevy Volt apparently doesn't use the engine to recharge its batteries while driving, going against what every media outlet — CNBC, the buff books and every web site including this one — have reported as fact for the past two years. Confusion apparently stems from a press release issued when the concept version of the Chevy Volt was first revealed in 2007 indicating: More »

Production Chevy Volt Press Photos Revealed, Now Without Engineers!

You saw the live shots of the Chevy Volt already, but now here it is, folks: the long-awaited Chevy Volt press photos — without engineers covering up all the important bits of the car. As we've already said, the plug-in hybrid should achieve a 40-mile all-electric range, after which point a 1.4-liter inline four-cylinder will be doing the electricity-generating duties. Just don't call the gasoline mill an engine: In Volt parlance it's a "range extender." More importantly, a full charge on the batteries will take just three hours from a 240-volt socket — eight on a standard 120-volt outlet. But our favorite number has to be the 273 ft-lb of torque from zero RPM. If everything (and by everything, we mean the batteries) comes together, expect the Volt to start rolling out of GM's Hamtramck assembly plant toward the end of 2010. Full press release and details are below the jump. More »

First Full Picture Of Chevy Volt?

Remember when the first shots of the Chevy Volt dropped yesterday? It was like a pinup calendar of hunky GM engineers; you could barely see the car itself for their chiseled features and toothy grins. Well here’s the Volt de-hunkified, courtesy of Edmunds Inside Line. We’re still waiting for Edmunds to call us back, so we don’t know if GM slid them this shot under the table or if they spent hours photoshopping all the man-on-Volt action out. Either way, this is the Volt as it will be when it’s officially unveiled later this week. More »

2010 Chevy Volt: Concept Versus Reality

The 2010 Chevy Volt has been a landmark project not only for its daring powertrain and breakneck development cycle, but also for GMs general openness with the media during the process. Along the way we've been invited in to see the development first hand, even spending a whole day with the Chevy Volt. But despite the buddy-buddy, easy-publicity PR maneuvering, up until the wee hours of this morning, we still didn't know what it looked like. Now that we've seen it in all but minute detail, it's time to compare the concept against the reality. More »