Recently, my commute has become a bit more stressful.  Gas is hard to come by these days in southeast Texas.  Most of the gas stations in the Houston area are still without power, and the ones that do have power have lines up to 3 hours long.  Supplies are tight - 20% of the gas refining capacity in the US is located here, and has been knocked out of operation.  Even once the power is back, it will take a week or two for supply to get back to normal. 

I've been spending much more time than usual thinking about where the needle on my gas gauge is pointing.  Also, I've been thinking about how much it sucks that a huge metropolitan area like Houston has such an embarrassingly sparse mass transit system.  How bad is it? Well, according to the Houston Metro trip planner, it would take me almost an hour and half to travel the 8 miles between my office and my apartment by bus.  By train... oh right, there is no train.  If only I had a car that didn't need gas...

Against this backdrop, Chevy unveiled the production model of the long-awaited Volt.  The Volt is another step in the stutter-step evolution of the electric car, some of which has been documented on this site.  The short version: GM introduced the EV1 in the 90s, but quickly killed it off to focus their efforts on the production of highly profitable SUVs.  As the 00s have progressed and cheap plentiful gas has become a thing of the past, consumers have turned on GM, shunning their SUVs and turning fuel efficient hybrids like the Prius into sensations.  Oops!

The Chevy Volt is supposed to correct this mistake, and be the next step forward in the evolution of transportation.  A plug-in hybrid, the vehicle has the ability to run for 40 miles without using any gasoline at all.  When the batteries are tapped out, the gasoline engine kicks on to charge the batteries and keep you moving.

So, apart from my distaste for zombies, what is my problem with this new electric car?  Well, nothing, really - except that by compromising, they've doomed it to failure.

The EV1 had a range of 75 to 150 miles on a single charge, and the estimated sale price was $34,000 for the base model (EV1s were never actually sold - this was the price used to compute the monthly lease price). 

The Chevy Volt, on the other hand, will only have a 40 mile range, and retail for $40,000.  The problem is the inclusion of a gasoline engine.  Electrical energy storage has been sacrificed to make room for the gas tank and engine, and the added complexity of the system is adding to the cost.

The potential for an electric vehicle based on today's battery technology is staggering.  A vehicle with the same energy storage as the EV1 would have a range of 180 miles! Or, conversely, put in less batteries, drop the gas engine altogether, and decrease the cost. 

The problem is, this calls for a change in how we think about our vehicles.  We want the cars we buy to be everything for every occasion - take the kids to soccer, drive it to work, have sex in the back seat with prostitutes, go on vacations, vent your frustrations on the roads at high speeds, get the groceries, and make up for the insufficient size of your genitals. 

This is an American attitude.  The car, as demonstrated by the success in Europe of Smart Fortwo, does not need to be all things at all times.  The Volt is trying to conform to pre-conceived notions of what a car should be, instead of changing them.  That's too bad, because the Chevy Volt will likely be just another promising failure.