General Motors has decided to suspend the manufacturing of the Chevrolet Volt. The reason is that sales have been so slow that the manufacturer has a three month backlog of inventory.
Even though the Volt has been named Motor Trend's 2011 Car of The Year, the public has been slow to embrace it.
A Forty Thousand Dollar price tag for a 4 seater is most likely the reason. Even though the US government gives a 7500 dollar tax credit it is still out of the price range of most.
What is really sad however is the way the public has ridiculed GM and has taken a perverse pleasure in watching the Volt's Detroit-Hamtramck plant close down for five weeks temporarily laying off 1300 workers.
While it is true that the motoring public could get more bang for the buck with a Ford Focus, GM was not wrong in forging ahead with an electric vehicle.
Like a lot of innovations, the electric vehicle will take some time to catch on.
The internal combustion engine only has a thermal efficiency of 20% at best. That means that only 20% of the energy used from burning gasoline actually makes it to power the wheels. The rest is lost though heat which is dissipated through the radiator.
An electric motor can have an efficiency between 80-90% of the ratio between the electrical input power and the shaft output power.
The electric power grid that will power these new vehicles once they become more affordable is much more efficient than millions of individual internal combustion engines which rely on gasoline to run.
When color television was introduced in the early 1960's there were not many households that could afford to buy one. They were expensive and the picture quality was not very good. Often the end user had to get up and readjust the color many times during the viewing period. By the 1980's black and white televisions were only used as security monitors and portable televisions.
In the very near future there will be a change in the sales of automobiles from gasoline to electric. As battery technologies improve and the price of oil increases there will be vehicles made that will be 100% electric, charging stations will be everywhere and the motoring public will see the electric vehicle as a clean, efficient and economic means of transportation.
